How to Help Your Child Get Better at Math: The SLOW Framework
I spend a rather large part of my life immersed in leadership. I teach it, read about it, write about it, think about it, and am always hungry to learn more about how people solve problems, make decisions, recover from mistakes, and learn to trust themselves. So when I come home and sit beside my fifth grader to work on math, it is actually a pleasant change for me.
Instead of emotional intelligence, communication, or design thinking, we are talking about decimals, fractions, equations, and word problems. There is something oddly refreshing about having one problem in front of you and knowing that somewhere inside it there is, in fact, an answer.
A number of Frolific students have asked me over the years if I can tutor them in math too. I have always politely declined. There are people far more qualified than I am to teach algebra, geometry, calculus, and everything that comes in between.
But while working with my fifth grader recently, I have started noticing a pattern that I think applies just as much to a middle schooler working through pre-algebra as it does to a high school student preparing for the SAT or taking calculus.
Quite often, the student actually knows the math. What gets them into trouble is what happens in the few seconds before they begin doing the math.
They see numbers and immediately start calculating. They recognize something familiar and assume they know what the question is asking. They remember a formula and reach for it before fully understanding the problem. Then, when the answer is wrong, we hear that familiar explanation: “I knew how to do it. I just made a silly mistake.”
I am beginning to think many of those “silly mistakes” are not really math mistakes at all. They are thinking mistakes. And if you are wondering how to help your child get better at math, one of the most useful things we can teach them may be how to slow down their thinking at exactly the right moments.
Because apparently I cannot notice a pattern without eventually turning it into a framework, I have started calling this one SLOW:
S — Simplify
L — Look for landmines
O — Observe the clues
W — Work it again and check
The irony of telling students who are constantly racing against the clock to SLOW down is not lost on me. I am not suggesting they spend ten contemplative minutes staring at every question while the test ends around them. The point is to slow down for a few seconds before deciding what the problem is asking them to do.
How to Help Your Child Get Better at Math: Start Before They Start Solving
There is a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein about spending far more time understanding a problem than actually solving it. Whether or not those exact words were his, I love the principle behind them.
Students often think that being good at math means getting to the calculations quickly. I am beginning to think that strong problem-solvers do almost the opposite. They give themselves enough time to understand what they are looking at before they start doing anything with it.
I see this with my own child. The moment a word problem contains three numbers, there is an almost irresistible desire to put those numbers into action. Something must be multiplied, divided, added, or subtracted immediately. Allowing the numbers to simply sit there while we figure out what they represent can apparently feel unbearable.
I suspect the instinct does not disappear as students get older. The numbers just become accompanied by variables, graphs, formulas, and increasingly intimidating symbols.
S: Simplify the Problem
Before solving, ask: What is this problem actually asking me to find?
Simplify what you are looking at by putting it into a form that makes sense to you. Draw it, label it, write an equation, make a small table, cross out information that does not matter, and separate what you know from what you are trying to find.
Simplifying does not mean making the math easier. It means removing the clutter so you can see the actual problem more clearly.
In our Innovation Module at Frolific, students learn the same principle when solving real-world problems: before jumping to solutions, they first strip away assumptions and clarify what the real problem is. A broad problem like ‘students waste too much food’ may become something far more specific and solvable once they understand what is actually causing the waste.
Math works the same way. A long word problem may really be two simple relationships hiding inside a paragraph. A geometry question may suddenly make sense once the student draws the figure and labels what is known. Sometimes the biggest breakthrough does not come from remembering another formula. It comes from simplifying how the problem is represented so the path forward becomes easier to see.
L: Look for Landmines
The next step is to ask: Where could this problem trip me up?
This matters especially for students who think quickly. Fast thinking is a wonderful strength, but it can also make familiar-looking answers feel so obvious that we stop checking whether they are actually right.
One of my favorite examples is the classic bat-and-ball problem:
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Most people feel an immediate pull toward 10 cents. But if the ball costs 10 cents, the bat costs $1.10, which makes the total $1.20. The correct answer is 5 cents. The math is simple.
The landmine is the answer that feels right before you have really thought it through.
Our children encounter these kinds of landmines all the time. They answer what they think the question asked instead of what it actually asked. They recognize a familiar pattern and stop reading carefully. They solve for one value correctly but forget that the question asked for something related to that value. Sometimes the mistake is not in the calculation at all. It happens a few seconds earlier, when the brain decides too quickly that it already knows what is going on.
That is why I would love students to build the habit of asking themselves, even briefly, “Where is the landmine in this problem?”
That one question can be enough to slow the brain down just long enough to avoid stepping on it.
O: Observe the Clues
Once a student understands the problem and has resisted the urge to jump ahead, the next question becomes: What clues have I been given?
Math problems are full of clues. Sometimes they are numbers, but often they are relationships, words, units, diagrams, labels, or conditions that tell the student what kind of thinking is required.
Students sometimes become so focused on remembering the correct formula that they overlook the information in front of them. But as math becomes more advanced, recognizing relationships becomes increasingly important.
This is why I have started asking my own child, “What clue in the question tells you what to do next?”
I like that question because I am not solving the problem for her. I am simply sending her back into the problem to look again.
That is ultimately what we want. We do not want children who can solve only the kind of problem they have seen ten times before. We want them to become comfortable looking at something unfamiliar and figuring out where to begin.
W: Work It Again and Check
And then comes the part almost every student would happily eliminate from the process.
Check your work.
Once a child has finally reached an answer, returning to the problem feels deeply unnecessary. They have finished, they have moved on emotionally, and the pencil is already halfway to the next question. Unfortunately, this is where many avoidable mistakes survive.
Checking does not always mean completing the entire problem again. It can mean plugging the answer back in, estimating what the answer should roughly look like, checking the units, rereading the original question, or simply asking, “Does this answer make sense?”
Students sometimes become so focused on the steps of a calculation that they stop evaluating the result itself. An answer can be mathematically produced and still be completely unreasonable.
And this, once again, sounds suspiciously like leadership. Strong decision-makers do not stop at, “I made a decision.” They also ask whether the result makes sense given what they know.
Why “Be More Careful” Usually Does Not Help
Parents of middle and high school students hear some version of this constantly: “I knew it. I just made careless mistakes.”
Our instinct is understandably to respond, “Then slow down and be more careful!” I have said it too. The problem is that be more careful is an instruction, not a strategy.
What exactly should a student do differently on the next test? That is what I like about giving them a process. When they see a problem:
S — Simplify
L — Look for landmines.
O — Observe the clues.
W — Work it again and check.
Over time, this does not have to make them slower. In fact, I think the opposite can happen. When students learn to understand a problem before attacking it, they spend less time heading confidently in the wrong direction and then having to find their way back.
Getting Better at Math Is Also About Becoming a Better Problem-Solver
The funny thing is that I started working on math with my fifth grader because I thought it would give my leadership brain a little break. Apparently, I am incapable of taking one.
Because underneath fractions, equations, geometry, algebra, calculus, and those word problems that somehow require an entire paragraph to ask one question, our children are practicing something much bigger. They are learning what to do when an answer is not immediately obvious.
They are learning to pause before reacting, separate what they know from what they assume, notice clues, recognize traps in their own thinking, choose a starting point, and check whether the answer they reached actually makes sense.
Those skills will eventually travel far beyond math.
They will use them when choosing courses, dealing with friendships, making decisions about college, working through setbacks, solving problems at work, and facing all the situations in life where nobody hands them a formula.
So to all the Frolific students who have asked me whether I can tutor you in math, I am still lovingly going to say no. Your calculus is much safer with someone else.
But I will give you this.
The next time you look at a math problem and feel your brain racing toward an answer, give yourself a few seconds before you follow it.
Understand what you are actually solving. Look for what might trip you up. Notice what the problem is telling you. And when you are finished, make sure your answer deserves your confidence.
You may discover that becoming better at math is not always about learning to think faster.
Sometimes it is about knowing exactly when to SLOW down.
