My Sixth Grader Cries Over Math and Here's What Helped

Monday at pickup a woman I only know by her minivan leaned out her window and said, before hello, "Please tell me yours cries too." Her sixth grader had come home Thursday, opened a math packet and put his head down on it. He hadn't picked it back up since. She wasn't asking for advice. She wanted company, and I gave her that first because it was true. Caleb threw a pencil at the baseboard last week and it rolled under the stove, where it still is.

Then I went home and thought about what I'd say if she had wanted the other thing. I taught third grade for five years, so I've watched a lot of children arrive at homework already spent, and what I'd tell her fits on an index card. Most of it happens before anyone opens the packet.

Why does my sixth grader cry over math homework?

At 3:15 the packet wants pages sorted, steps held in his head and a calm face when the third problem looks nothing like the example, and all of that comes after six hours of being a good citizen in a room with thirty other kids. At eleven those are skills still going up like a house frame. Nobody should be surprised when a child leans on them too hard and the wall moves.

When I taught third grade I sent home twenty minutes of work and still got notes from parents about tears. I took those notes as complaints about the work. I read them differently now. The article I found this week, from a tutoring company, put it plainly enough that I copied it onto a sticky note: tears usually mean the assignment has gone past what a child can currently organize or focus or regulate. That's a fair description of a Tuesday in our kitchen, and it says nothing about how bright he is.

Give the afternoon a gap before the table

The biggest change was the least clever one, which was that I quit meeting him at the door with "do you have homework?" and started meeting him with a snack and no questions. After he eats he goes outside for as long as he wants, usually fifteen minutes with a baseball and the side of the garage, and the table opens at 3:30, which is the time David and I settled on a couple of weeks ago when we argued it out over fall ball, which I wrote about in When Mom Says No and Dad Says Yes. Tuesdays have practice at 5:30 so the table closes at 4:45 no matter what, and whatever he hasn't finished goes in a note to his teacher.

I never needed a study to believe in the gap, because I watched teachers do it for years. Children get a break between subjects all day, and then a parent expects the same child to sit down for math the minute the car door shuts.

One number from my reading is worth knowing. A homework site I found puts anything over about seventy minutes a night as a lot for grades four through six. That's one site and I can't vouch for it, but it matched my own classroom sense of where the grumbling started. If your child is regularly past it, an email to the teacher comes before a new routine at home.

One table, cleared off, same spot every day

Caleb sits at the kitchen table and the table gets cleared first. Cups to the counter, mail into the basket, a wet rag across the wood. He thinks the wiping is a ritual of mine, and it is, though it also means nothing on the surface is competing with the worksheet. A library handout I found says the same about a clutter-free spot in the same place every day, which is the kind of advice I'd have shrugged at in September of my first year of teaching.

Where and when get settled before anyone is upset.

Whichever problem looks easiest goes first, an old teacher habit. The one printed at the top of the page has no special claim on him, and once two others are finished the dreadful third looks smaller than it did.

What to say when it starts to fall apart

The afternoon the pencil flew I gave about ninety seconds on frustration and effort, and I could see him stop hearing me around the second sentence, which is how I'm nearly certain that fewer words work better.

The next day I said something like "That one's hard, so let's stop for a minute," and then closed my mouth. He walked to the window, came back and picked up the pencil himself. I couldn't tell you that works every time and I doubt it does.

Proverbs was underlined in my Bible long before I had a child old enough to test it on.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
(Proverbs 15:1)

The tutoring sites call it co-regulation, which is a fancy name for letting him borrow my calm until his own comes back. It only works if I have some to lend. If I'm tight in the jaw he can hear it, so some days I take a slow lap through the living room before I sit down.

If he melts down over every small mistake and not only over math, I'd start with What to Say When Your Child Falls Apart Over a Tiny Mistake, since that question needs more room than I have here.

What happens to the work that doesn't get finished

Sometimes it won't get done.

At 4:45 we stop anyway and I write two lines on the corner of the page for his teacher, which problems he did and where he got stuck. A page with three wrong answers and a note tells her more than a page of right ones that cost the whole family an evening.

Under all of this sits the worry that he'll fall behind, and I had it too. In the second week of school he won't. If the pattern runs into October that's a conversation with his teacher and not a nightly argument with me.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much homework should a sixth grader have?

One site I read says more than about seventy minutes a night is a lot at this age. Your district may have its own guidance, so I'd ask the teacher what they expect before assuming anything. A child who takes twice as long as the other kids may only be tired or stuck.

Should I sit next to him the whole time?

At the start, yes, close enough to see the page. I sit at the other end of the table with my own work and look up when it goes quiet in the wrong way. Each week I drift a little farther off. If I hovered the whole time he'd learn that math is something done to him with an audience.

What if my child won't start at all?

Make the first step so small it's silly, like opening the book and writing the date and reading problem one aloud. I'll often do the first line myself and hand over the pencil. Starting is the hard part and it's usually where the tears are really coming from.

Is it wrong to let my child stop with homework undone?

I don't think so, as long as the teacher hears about it. A hard stop shows a child that the evening has edges, and it keeps homework from deciding how the whole family feels at dinner.

The crabapples out back are still hard and green, and Biscuit has eaten two of them off the ground and been sorry about it twice.

with love, Melissa