A Parent's Guide to Helping with Maths
I started adult life as a mathematician and worked as a maths teacher for a few years after I left university. When I left work to have my first baby, I soon discovered that I prefered being a mum (and eventually a writer) so I never went back to the classroom. But I have always remained interested in maths and especially in the difficutly people of all ages have with the subject. When I helped my daughter sort out her problems with maths, she told all her friends and her friends' parents starting asking how they could help their children.As a result, I wrote this book to answer those questions, and I hope it's helped a few children understand the subject better.
It builds on my theory that most people with who have trouble with maths have been taught the subject faster than they have learned it. So the book encourages parents to take children back to the beginning and work through the subject again at their child's own speed - going quickly through the parts they already understand and slowly through places where they need to fill gaps in their knowledge. In the process, children should gain confidence as well as understanding and develop the right base for further study. It's not a work book full of exercises. Instead, it shows parents how to create exercises themselves at exactly the right level for their child.
The book has been out of print for a long time, although there are still secondhand copies available. But my interest in helping people understand maths has grown, fuelled partly by my becoming involved in home education and seeing other ways of learning. In between writing more books, I'm hoping to produce some material for people who find maths difficult and, for the time being, I'll be including that in the articles part of the Other Writing section. One day, I may have a dedicated website about maths, but I'm not sure if that will ever happen.
I live in the UK so I spell maths with an s. But the subject is the same all over the world so you can still use my ideas if you call the subject math.