Maths anxiety in children: signs and what helps

Where we describe research, we say how strong it is. Nearly all of it was done in the United States, and nothing here tells us whether it holds for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

What is maths anxiety?

It’s an unpleasant emotional response to maths, or to the prospect of doing maths: tension, worry or fear.¹ It is not the same as being bad at maths. The same researchers point out that maths anxiety is not simply a stand-in for low maths ability.

A well-established finding is that highly maths-anxious people tend to avoid maths.² Avoiding maths means less practice.

What does maths anxiety look like in a child?

There’s no checklist that tells you a child “has” maths anxiety, and we won’t offer one. These are things you might notice, any of which has other possible causes:

• Avoiding maths homework, or finding reasons to put it off.
• Tummy aches or tears before or during maths homework.
• Saying “I’m just bad at maths” about a topic they can actually do.

Avoidance is the one with research behind it. The others are things a parent might see, not research findings. Noticing any of them is a reason to be curious and kind, not a diagnosis.

Does it mean my child is bad at maths?

Not necessarily. A review that pooled 49 studies and 8,680 people found that more maths anxiety goes with lower maths scores, but the link is modest, and it is weaker in primary school than at older ages.³

It probably runs both ways. Finding maths hard can cause worry, and worry can make maths harder, each feeding the other. Researchers still debate which comes first, and one review concluded that neither explanation alone fits the data.⁴ That’s a good reason not to blame the child, or the worry.

Worry may also hold back children who are otherwise doing well. In one US study of children in their first two years of primary school, anxiety was linked to lower scores mainly among children who otherwise had the most mental capacity to spare.⁵ The authors’ explanation is that these children use memory-heavy strategies, and worry disrupts exactly those. It was a single correlational study, so treat it as a hint, not a rule.

How early does it start?

Early. Children in the US equivalent of Year 1 and Year 2 reported maths anxiety in two studies, one with 154 children⁵ and one with 438.⁶ Severe maths anxiety, though, is uncommon in young children, and it tends to rise with age.⁷ So a little early worry is not a cause for alarm.

Why does worry make maths harder?

Working memory is the mental desk space a child uses to hold numbers and steps while they work. Worry seems to take up some of that space, so there’s less left for the maths. The clearest evidence is in adults: in experiments where a heavy memory load was added, high-anxiety adults made more errors on carrying sums. That adult work is summarised in a later study of children.⁵

For young children the evidence is thinner. In a study of 154 children, the link between anxiety and achievement showed up on the harder test items that need more steps held in mind, and not on simple facts.⁵ The confidence here is moderate: it is one study, and it shows a link, not a cause.

Is the clock the problem?

Not exactly. There’s no good evidence that time pressure causes maths anxiety. A review of 19 studies found that it acts as a stressor and pushes people toward quicker, sometimes less accurate strategies.⁸ The evidence in children is thin and mixed: one study of children in Years 3 and 4 found that children with high test anxiety did worse under time pressure, while one of gifted Year 6 children found the opposite.

Where the clock matters is that timed tasks are where anxiety does the most damage. In adults, the effects of maths anxiety on whole-number arithmetic showed up on timed tests, while standard achievement tests showed no difference in competence.²

So taking the clock away is a reasonable, low-cost step for a worried child. It removes the situation where anxiety does the most damage. It doesn’t cure anxiety.

Can I pass my own worry on?

Possibly, and it’s worth knowing about without feeling guilty about it. In a US study of 438 children in 29 schools, parents who were anxious about maths and who helped often with maths homework had children who learned less maths over the year and ended it more anxious. When those parents helped less often, there was no link. The link held for maths, not reading.⁶ This was one correlational study, so it can’t show that the help caused the result.

The authors do not recommend that anxious parents stop helping. They suggest giving parents better tools instead.

They also suggest that voicing negative beliefs about maths (“I was never a maths person”) could be demotivating to children. A wider review makes the same recommendation, to keep your tone positive.⁷ That’s a recommendation from reviewing the research, not a tested intervention. Researchers also think frustration at a child’s mistakes may be part of how anxiety is passed on, but that is a hypothesis for future study.

What helps at home?

There’s no proven quick fix. One review of 60 years of research concluded that “no miracle cure seems to be in sight”.⁷ What has some support is smaller and slower:

• Short, positive, low-stakes maths together. In a randomised US trial, 587 Year 1 families used a maths story-problem app about once a week. Children of high-anxiety parents gained about three months more maths than children in a reading-app group.⁹ A follow-up found that the usual difference between children of high- and low-anxiety parents closed in the app group and stayed closed through the end of Year 3, even though app use fell sharply.¹⁰ The trial used an app. It hasn’t been tested without one, but the behaviour is easy to copy: brief, regular, friendly number talk. Both studies were funded by a family foundation whose chair also founded the foundation behind the app. The authors report no financial interest.
• No clock. See above. It removes the setting where anxiety does the most damage.
• Building skill and confidence together. In a small US study of 7 to 9 year olds, eight weeks of one-to-one tutoring was followed by less anxiety in the high-anxiety group.¹¹ There was no comparison group of untutored children, and only 28 children had usable data, so it can’t show tutoring caused the change. It fits the idea that getting better at maths can ease the worry.

Expressive writing has been tried mostly with older students and adults. The Dowker review calls its benefit for maths “a presumption in need of verification”,⁷ so we wouldn’t recommend it for young children on this evidence.

When should I talk to someone?

The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne says that if you think your child may have a problem avoiding school, speak to their teacher.¹² The teacher is also a sensible first stop if worry about maths is affecting your child’s willingness to do maths. That second part is general guidance, not a research finding.

On when to get health help, we’ve followed the same fact sheet closely, because the line between ordinary worry and something more is a health question, not a maths one. It says it is best to get help if your child seems excessively worried or anxious, feels anxious most of the time, or stops taking part in typical daily activities, such as socialising, playing, eating or sleeping well, because of their anxiety. It suggests starting with your child’s doctor or another trusted healthcare provider, who can provide strategies or refer your child to another health professional, such as a psychologist, for diagnosis and treatment.¹²

How Workings fits

Workings is not a clinical product. It doesn’t diagnose or treat anything, and we aren’t claiming it prevents maths anxiety. What we can say is narrower: it leaves out timers, speed scores and streaks you can lose. There are no countdowns, and response time is never used as evidence of ability. Your child never sees a clock or a count of questions left. Practice weeks and reps only add up, so a short week takes nothing away and there’s no streak to lose.

Questions are pitched so that seven or eight in ten go right, a session opens with confident warm-ups, and it ends on a question the engine expects your child to get right, with Gus saying something specific they did. Sessions are about 20 minutes, and you can set anywhere from 10 to 30. Read the science behind the no-clock rule.