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When Math Is Harder Than It Should Be
Math learning difficulties in children and teens | Calgary, Alberta
Your child may understand a lesson one day and feel lost the next. They might count on their fingers, lose track during multi-step calculations, freeze during tests, or struggle to work out what a word problem is asking. These patterns can have different causes. Understanding where the difficulty occurs helps us recommend support that fits.
Why is my child struggling with math?
Number sense
Difficulty comparing quantities, understanding place value, estimating, or recalling basic facts.
Attention and working memory
Your child understands the concept but loses their place, skips steps, or struggles to hold information in mind.
Math anxiety
Worry or pressure makes it harder to show skills your child can use in a calmer setting.
Language and problem-solving
Your child can calculate but has difficulty interpreting word problems or deciding which operation to use.
These patterns are starting points for assessment, not diagnoses on their own. A child may have a specific learning disorder in mathematics, ADHD, anxiety, another learning need, or a combination of factors.
How an assessment can help
At New Discovery Psychological Services, we consider your child’s learning history, schoolwork, observations, and test results together. Depending on the referral question, an assessment may examine mathematical achievement, reasoning, attention, memory, and other cognitive processes. Measures may include the KeyMath–3, WIAT–4, WISC–V, and CAS2 when appropriate.
The goal is to answer practical questions: Which skills need direct instruction? What helps your child demonstrate what they know? Which recommendations would be useful at school and at home?
Support matched to your child’s needs
Building number understanding
A student who struggles with number concepts may benefit from explicit, systematic teaching. An instructor can use objects, drawings, and number lines to show what a calculation means, then connect those representations to written symbols. Practice can focus on one skill at a time, with guided feedback and regular review.
Managing multi-step work
For a student who loses track of steps, supports may include a worked example, a short checklist, grid paper to align numbers, and space to write down intermediate calculations. The aim is to make the steps visible while the student develops greater independence.
Making sense of word problems
tudents can learn to identify the structure of a problem—for example, whether quantities are being combined, compared, or changed—and draw a diagram before calculating. Teaching the problem structure is more reliable than asking students to choose an operation from a single “key word.”
Reducing math anxiety
When anxiety is part of the picture, support may include a calmer practice setting, predictable routines, coping skills, and gradual opportunities to show learning. We consider anxiety alongside the student’s actual math skills so that either need can be addressed.
School recommendations and progress
Assessment recommendations may include targeted instruction, visual supports, access to worked examples, reduced emphasis on speed, or a calculator when calculation is not the skill being assessed. The appropriate supports depend on the student and the task; the school determines how recommendations are put into practice.
Progress should be checked regularly using brief measures of the skills being taught. If a strategy is not helping, the teaching plan can be adjusted rather than waiting for another full assessment.
Let’s find out what will help
If math has become a source of frustration for your child, a free phone consultation is a place to describe what you are seeing and discuss whether an assessment is the right next step.
Book a free 20-minute phone consultation to discuss your concerns, ask questions, and explore which service may be right for you or your child.
Available Tuesdays and Thursdays
8:00–10:00 a.m. Mountain Time
By appointment, for new clients.
New clients: choose Register when prompted to sign in.
The consultation provides guidance about our services. Assessments and therapy sessions are booked separately.