My child can do the math but not the word problems. What's going on?

A child who can do 8 + 5 on a worksheet but freezes at "Maya had 8 stickers and her brother gave her 5 more" is almost never bad at math. They're stuck on one of three things that come before the math: getting the words off the page, figuring out what kind of story it is, or a keyword trick that pointed them to the wrong operation. Read the problem to them, have them tell it back, act it out with objects, and name the kind of story before anyone writes a number. And if someone has taught your child that "altogether means add," that's the first thing to unteach.

Why can my child do the math but not the word problem?

Because a word problem is three tasks in a trench coat. First the child has to read it, which for a six- or seven-year-old can take most of their attention. Then they have to turn the words into a picture of what happened: who had what, what changed, what's being asked. Only then does the arithmetic start, and by that point a young child may have nothing left for it.

Schools know this, which is why the federal What Works Clearinghouse, in its 2021 guide on helping elementary students who struggle with math, makes word problems one of six recommendations, all rated as having strong evidence. Its advice is not "practice more word problems." It's to teach the problem types one at a time, start with stories that have no missing number at all, act problems out with objects or gestures, and have children restate the problem in their own words before solving it. All of that is about the steps before the arithmetic, and all of it can be done at a kitchen table.

Is it a reading problem or a math problem?

There's a quick test. Read the problem aloud to your child, word for word, with no hints. If they solve it, the math is fine and the reading load is the wall. If they still can't start, the trouble is the story, and the next section is for you.

Reading a math problem aloud is not cheating, and the people who design tests agree. On the Smarter Balanced tests used by many states, having math questions read aloud or by text-to-speech is a "designated support" any student can get when a teacher thinks they need it, while the same support on a reading test is an accommodation that requires an IEP or 504 plan. The logic is simple: a math test measures math. A seven-year-old who is still becoming a fluent reader is not a weak mathematician because the sentence "Some bunnies were sitting on the grass" is slow going.

So at home, for a child in first or second grade, read the problem to them as a matter of course. Then ask them to read it back, or say it in their own words. The retelling is the real check, because a child who can't retell the story can't solve it, and a child who can retell it usually can.

Should I teach keywords like "altogether means add"?

No, and if a worksheet or a classroom poster already has, expect to spend some time undoing it. Keyword lists ("altogether" and "in all" mean add, "left" means subtract, "more" means add, "each" means multiply) are everywhere because they work on the easiest problems and fail on everything else. Sarah Powell and Lynn Fuchs, two of the most cited researchers on word problems, wrote in 2018 that tying keywords to operations "discourages mathematical reasoning and frequently produces incorrect answers," and that the approach has no evidence behind it.

Here's the failure in two sentences. "Julie has 3 more apples than Lucy. Lucy has 2 apples. How many does Julie have?" The keyword "more" says add, and 2 + 3 = 5 is right. Now: "Julie has 3 more apples than Lucy. Julie has 5 apples. How many does Lucy have?" Same keyword, and adding gives 8, which is wrong. The word "more" told the child nothing about what to do; the story did. Children drilled on keywords stop reading the story, and they get the second kind of problem wrong for years.

What kinds of word problems does my child actually get?

Fewer than you'd think. In kindergarten through second grade, nearly every addition and subtraction word problem is one of four stories. The math standards most states use list them in a single table, and the standards for second grade expect children to handle all of them, with the unknown in any position:

• Something is added. "Maya had 8 stickers. Her brother gave her 5 more. How many now?"
• Something is taken away. "Maya had 13 stickers. She gave 5 to her brother. How many left?"
• Two parts make a whole. "Maya has 8 red stickers and 5 blue ones. How many stickers?" (Or the reverse: "She has 13 stickers; 8 are red. How many are blue?")
• Two amounts are compared. "Maya has 13 stickers. Her brother has 5. How many more does Maya have?"

What makes a problem hard is not the words; it's where the missing number sits. "Maya had 8, got 5 more, how many now?" is easy. "Maya had some stickers, got 5 more, and now has 13. How many did she start with?" is the same story with the unknown moved to the start, and it's much harder for a six-year-old, because they have to hold the whole story in mind and work backwards. The standards' own footnote singles out the "compare" problems that use "fewer" when the answer is the bigger number as among the hardest of all, which is exactly where keywords do the most damage.

Once you can see the four stories, you can see what your child is missing. A child who can do "got 5 more" but not "started with some" doesn't need more practice; they need that one story type, slowly, with objects.

How do I help at home?

A routine that takes five minutes, four or five times a week, and never involves a worksheet.

Read, then retell. Read the problem aloud. Ask: "What happened in this story?" If the retelling is wrong or missing a piece, read it again. Don't move on until the story is right.

Find the question. "What is it asking us?" Have the child say it, or underline it. Half of wrong answers in second grade are right answers to a different question.

Act it out. Use whatever is on the table: crackers, coins, bottle caps. For "Maya had some, got 5, now has 13," put down 13, take 5 away from the pile as "the ones her brother gave her," and look at what's left. The child sees the start number appear. Drawing works too; a bar or a row of circles is enough.

Name the story. "Is something being added, taken away, put together, or compared?" Children who can name the type pick the operation correctly far more often than children hunting for keywords, and the question itself forces them to read the story.

Write it with a box. 8 + 5 = ▢, or ▢ + 5 = 13. The box for the unknown is a second-grade standard for a reason: it makes the child decide what's missing before deciding what to compute.

Check against the story, not the arithmetic. "Does 8 make sense? Maya started with 8, got 5, has 13. Yes."

Then make up your own. The problems that teach the most are the ones about your child's actual stickers, with the unknown moved around: "You had some, I gave you 3, now you have 10. How many did you have?" Keep the numbers small so the story stays the hard part.

Here's what it sounds like with a seven-year-old, in about a minute:

• Parent (reads)"Some kids were on the bus. Four more got on. Then there were eleven. How many were on the bus at first?"
• Child"Four plus eleven?"
• Parent"Tell me the story first. What happened?"
• Child"Some kids were on the bus, then four got on, then there were eleven."
• Parent"So which number are we looking for?"
• Child"How many at first."
• Parent"Put eleven crackers on the table. Those are the kids at the end. Which ones just got on?"
• Child (moves four aside)"These four. So... seven were there before."

The child did every step. Notice the parent never said "subtract."

If you'd like some of this to happen without you reading every problem, that's the design of Mathwell. Mathwell is a browser-based K–5 math tutor that reads every problem aloud and teaches with hints instead of answers, so the arithmetic in a word problem isn't blocked by the decoding, and when a child is stuck, the Tutor's hint points at the story ("what happened first?") rather than at the answer. Anyone can try the demo lesson without signing up; after that there's a 7-day free trial with a card on file, then $19 a month, $99 a year, or $169 for a three-year K–5 pass. It's for kindergarten through fifth grade only, and the child answers by tapping or typing, not by speaking; it won't replace the kitchen-table retelling, which is still the best teacher.

When should I talk to the teacher?

If reading the problem aloud fixes it every time, mention that to the teacher; they may not know how much of the trouble is the reading, and most will read problems aloud in class or during tests when asked. If retelling fixes it, ask which problem types the class is on and practice those. If your child can retell the story perfectly, act it out, and still can't get from the picture to the number, that's a math question, and the finger-counting and fact-strategy work in the age-by-age answer on finger counting is usually the missing piece. And if word problems end in tears, the words matter less than the moment; what to say when your child cries over math homework is about that.