When to stop if your child is stuck

Home practice should not become a fight. If it does, the session lost.

Stop now if

• Your child is crying, shutting down, or getting sharp with you
• You can hear your own voice getting sharp
• Twenty minutes have passed and you are still on the first question
• The page needs an idea the school has not taught yet (for example, regrouping when tens-and-ones is still new)

Close the book. Say something true and kind: “This one can wait. You already did the hard part of sitting down.”

What to do instead of pushing

Go back one step. If adding with a new ten is a mess, make tens with objects. If a story problem is a mess, just underline the numbers and draw. If a te reo greeting feels embarrassing, you say it, they repeat once, you stop.

Shrink the job. One problem, done well, is a complete session.

Change the mode. You write, they talk. Or they build the number with sticks and you write the digits.

Leave a note for the teacher if the same snag keeps happening at school and at home. After Tea cannot diagnose a learning need.

What “stuck” often is

• A missing idea from last year, not laziness
• Tiredness after a full school day
• A page that asked for two new things at once
• A parent who is trying to teach a method the school does not use

If school and home methods clash, follow the school. Ask the teacher which words they use for tens and ones, or for a greeting. Using two methods in one week is a common reason a child looks “stuck”.

Try again later — not immediately

Wait until another day. Start with a page they have already succeeded at. Then try one new question. If it still collapses, stop again. Repeated failure on the same page teaches the wrong lesson.

You are allowed to skip After Tea for a week. Term time is already full.