My Daughter Hated Maths. These Are the Five Things That Actually Helped.

My daughter is in S2, which means she has survived — so far — the jump from primary to secondary maths: algebra, geometry, introduction to statistics, things that look nothing like the bar models of her primary years. She does not love maths. But she no longer hates it, which is an outcome I genuinely did not expect when we were in the thick of it two years ago.

At the end of P6, her relationship with maths was what I would describe as hostile. Not afraid — she had moved past fear into active contempt. "I'm bad at maths and I don't care about being good at it." That exact sentence, sitting in the back of a taxi, delivered with the conviction of a twelve-year-old who has made a decision about herself. I said nothing useful in response.

Over the following eighteen months, I tried five things. Let me be specific, because vague advice is useless.

1. Changed the tutor. This worked.

Her secondary school maths tutor was competent, senior, and completely wrong for her. He explained things correctly. He also explained things with an efficiency that communicated, subtly, that questions were inefficient. My daughter stopped asking questions. She smiled and nodded and understood nothing and failed the next test.

The new tutor is a university student. Young, patient, occasionally gets things slightly wrong and has to correct herself. My daughter loves this about her. She will ask the same question four times without any sense that this is a problem. They laugh sometimes during sessions, which I used to walk past and find irritating, and which I now understand was the entire point.

Cost difference: the university student tutor costs HK$200/hour less than the senior tutor. She is better for my daughter. Not all expensive is better. I knew this professionally and forgot it as a parent.

2. Stopped talking about "being good at maths." This worked, but slowly.

I had been framing maths as an identity — "are you a maths person?" is a question that implies there are two categories of human being, and once you've decided which one you are, the decision sticks. I read about this framing problem and changed how I spoke about maths at home. Not overnight. It took months and I still catch myself. But I stopped saying "I was never good at maths either" (more on this in another article), stopped framing test scores as evidence about who she is, and started asking instead about specific problems: "which question was hardest?" "what did you get stuck on?" Granular and specific rather than global and identity-laden.

She didn't notice the shift consciously. I think it worked anyway.

3. Bought a different textbook. Mixed results.

Someone recommended a supplementary maths textbook from a Singapore curriculum publisher — cleaner visual layout, worked examples with each step explained, less dense than the HK school textbook. My daughter used it for about six weeks and found it helpful for specific topics (particularly fractions and ratio). She abandoned it when it diverged from what the school was covering. Worth the HK$180 for that six-week stretch; not a transformation.

4. The maths games app phase. Did not work.

I bought three apps. I spent probably HK$800 in total on app subscriptions. My daughter played the games briefly, found them patronising (her word), and deleted them. I cannot argue with this critique. The apps were designed for younger children and she was correct that they were patronising. I had hoped "gamification" would work. It did not. If your child is twelve and hates maths, they have probably not missed the part where maths is important. The problem is not that they don't know maths is real; the problem is something deeper about confidence and identity. No amount of cartoon characters collecting stars will touch that.

5. Let her quit competition maths. This worked immediately.

I had enrolled her in a after-school maths competition preparation programme — not because she was gifted, but because I thought exposure to more maths was more maths. It was a mistake. Competition maths is a specific skill set that selects for children who enjoy mathematical puzzles recreationally. My daughter is not one of those children. She found the sessions humiliating, the other students intimidating, and she came home from each session more convinced that maths was not for her. When I let her quit — genuinely, without the passive-aggressive "if you're sure" that I usually deploy — she was visibly relieved. Her performance on her regular school maths actually improved in the term after she stopped, because she wasn't spending two evenings a week being reminded of how far behind the curve she felt.

Where she is now: B in her most recent S2 exam. She still doesn't love maths. She finds algebra tolerable and geometry "actually fine." She will do what she needs to do to pass. That's enough. I had to let go of the fantasy of a child who discovers a passion for mathematics and accept the reality of a teenager who has a workable relationship with a subject that will be useful to her.

That's not nothing. That's actually quite a lot, from where we started.