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Helping a child with maths (as we call it in the UK) is not a complicated business. It's mainly about conquering fear: the adult's as well as the child's.

The fact is that no-one would willingly admit to being unable to read, while no-one minds admitting, "Oh, I was always rubbish at maths. Could never get division or fractions." We have to face it: we are afraid of mathematics, as a society, in a way which does not apply to any other subject.

So you have to get over whatever fear you have first. Perhaps you are good at maths, in which case you can skip this paragraph. You may need to brush up on your skills first - your child's school is likely to be very pleased to offer you some advice (teachers like teaching, remember) and there are plenty of books designed for trainee teachers which cover some of the concepts underlying primary maths. A good example is Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers by Derek Haylock. Always try to be confident in concepts at least one level or so higher than the one your child is studying. For example, if your child is learning basic algebra, involving finding the missing number in a sum, you should try to be confident using terms such as x and y in expressions like this: 3y = 18. This is a lot easier to say than to do. But it is important if you wish to help your child with their maths, because only if you have a solid grasp of the concepts they are studying can you help them without confusing them.

Of course you can help with homework. But homework can be a minefield, not least because the methods your child is being taught may well be different from the ones you were taught. It does pay to familiarise yourself with those methods, most of which are easily grasped, if a little more involved than the standard "tricks" you may have been taught yourself. The emphasis in primary maths these days is on understanding more than calculation. The bedrock of much of this is place value - what the zero is for, what 254 actually means and therefore what we are really doing when we take 198 from it. So helping your child with times-tables might well involve breaking out some blocks or sweets in order to demonstrate groupings as a concept. Never be afraid to take it slowly and cautiously (even if that sounds like a tautology), because it is better for your child to be slow and understand than to whizz through something they don't get.

True help with maths involves showing that it is a wonderful thing to learn, not just a chore. We

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