Times Tables Won’t Stick? 3 Things to Try Instead of Another Night of Drills

Why won’t the times tables stick, no matter how much we drill?

Cindy Palmer of STEM Tutoring works with children who find math hard. On a podcast, she was blunt about timed drills. Some children show signs of dyscalculia. For them, she said, the tables will likely not stick that way. Pounding 7 × 4 again “is going to do nothing but harm.” It “has nothing to do with their stubbornness, their dedication.”

Jordan, Hanich and Kaplan (2003) followed children who found math facts hard. That trouble was “highly persistent.” They also followed children who knew their facts. On story problems, both groups “progressed at a comparable rate.” Geary, Hoard and Bailey (2012) looked at fact trouble too. It was not tied to intelligence or reading.

Here is our view. Being unwilling is a choice. Being unable to do it that way is not. Nothing about a child crying over flashcards looks like laziness to us. Do facts show up one day and vanish the next? This guide to forgetting math facts covers what studies of fact recall found.

Practice still matters. In 2008, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel called facts and understanding “mutually supportive.” Palmer’s warning is narrower. It is about the timer, and the same fact pounded over and over.

What should we try instead of another night of drills?

Palmer describes three moves. None of them needs a worksheet.

1. Calm the fear first. When a child panics at math, Palmer does not open with math. She spends part of the session on what the child loves. If a child loves lizards, they talk about lizards. Then the math problems are about lizards. Your lizard needs food, and you have $10. Our view is plain: the panic is real, and it comes first.

2. Turn the stubborn fact into a story. Palmer shares one for 7 × 4. Mrs. Weeks is shaped like a 7. She sits on a chair shaped like a 4. She goes fishing and catches two boots and eight fish. That makes 28. Palmer says these children remember the story. They hold on to the names, the shapes and the details. Make up a story together for the fact that keeps slipping. Silly is good.

3. Keep the last step. Palmer’s pattern is “I do, we do, you do.” You show it. You do it together. Then your child does it alone. Children push back on that last part, Palmer says, so stay warm and close. Keep the “you do” in, even when it is short.

Tonight: pick one fact. Make its story together. Then let your child tell it back to you.

Will math always be this hard for my child?

One of Palmer’s adult clients asked her this after his assessment. Was there hope, or was this a “lifelong sentence”? Her answer: it is “not a death sentence.” With the basics rebuilt and the right strategies, she said, people get better.

Mazzocco and Räsänen (2013) reviewed studies that followed children for years. Math difficulty, they found, is not fixed in place. For many students it shifts from year to year. The learning around them plays a part. That is no reason to wait and see. It is a reason to start teaching now. A diagnosis describes where your child is today. It does not predict where they will be after the right kind of practice. This infographic on what kind of math help moves a child walks through it.

Part of the struggle sits outside your child. “Most teachers do not know what dyscalculia is,” Palmer says. She was a teacher herself. Teachers, she says, lack the time for that much one-to-one work. Bishop (2010) counted research papers on many conditions. Dyscalculia got far less research than how common it is would predict. The gap is in the system. It is not the teacher’s fault, and it is not your child’s.

Confidence comes back the way the facts do: in small steps your child sees. In our view, it grows from your child’s own proof, not from being told. The story a child tells about themselves matters too. This post on the emotional side of dyscalculia goes deeper.