Why Maths is so Hard for Teens: Understanding Maths as a Language
Many parents have had this moment. Your child sits at the kitchen table, staring at a page of maths homework. They’ve read the question. They’ve written something down. And yet, when you ask, “What’s going on?” the answer is a familiar one: “I don’t get it.”
Why does mathematics feel so much harder than other subjects? One important reason is this: Mathematics isn’t just something students learn. It’s something they have to learn to read and speak. In other words, mathematics is a language, but one that behaves very differently from the languages we use every day.
Reading maths is not like reading a book
Parents often observe that their child “read the problem” but still doesn’t know what to do. This is not carelessness. It’s a mismatch of reading strategies.
Most reading in daily life is passive. We skim, infer, and rely on context to fill in gaps. Mathematics cannot be read this way.
Consider a word problem on a test. Two students read the same question. One notices the phrase “at least,” the other doesn’t. They solve two completely different problems without realizing it.
To read mathematics properly, a learner must slow down, reread, and check meaning constantly. In effect, reading maths is closer to analysing a legal document than reading a story. The difficulty is that children are rarely taught how to read maths — they are simply expected to do it.
Mathematics says a lot using very little
In English, we tend to explain things generously. We repeat ourselves. We clarify. We use tone, gesture, and context to soften misunderstanidngs. Maths does none of this. It is a language that has been compressed to the extreme.
In a classroom, a teacher might write a single line on the board:
2(x + 3) = 10
To an adult who is comfortable with algebra, this looks simple and elegant. To a student, that one line is doing a surprising amount of work. It contains assumptions about order, grouping, equality, and operations, all without saying any of it out loud.
Every symbol must be unpacked correctly, or the meaning collapses. This is why maths textbooks often feel cold or abrupt. It assumes fluency long before most students feel fluent.
Small changes have big consequences
In everyday language, small mistakes usually don’t matter much. If a child says, “I goed to school,” no one is confused. Meaning survives grammatical imprecision. Mathematics does not work this way.
A very common classroom example: a student copies a problem incorrectly. A minus sign becomes a plus. A squared term is written without the exponent. The student works carefully from that point on, and still gets the “wrong” answer. From the outside, it looks like carelessness. From the inside, it feels unfair. The student did everything they thought they were supposed to do.
Parents may find it useful to understand that maths demands a level of precision that is foreign to most human communication, which is deeply frustrating for many learners.
Errors can remain hidden for a long time
Not only has maths very little tolerance for imprecision, errors are often invisible. Incorrect work can appear neat, logical, and confident. In fact, the learner may not realise anything is wrong.
In mathematics, a small misunderstanding — what a variable represents, what the equals sign means, why a formula works — can persist quietly for weeks or months. The child may continue producing answers, following procedures, and completing homework, all built on a flawed interpretation.
When the weakness finally reveals itself, it can feel like betrayal: I thought I understood this. From the parent’s perspective, their child seemed to be doing fine in maths, and then suddenly everything falls apart. But in reality, the problem has been there all along, hidden by the nature of the language itself.
Students are constantly translating
Maths class is full of translation, even when it doesn’t look like it.
A teacher explains something verbally. Then it appears as symbols on the board. Then it becomes a diagram. Then it shows up as a word problem on homework. Each version is the “same idea,” but in a different form.
A familiar classroom scene: a student understands the teacher’s explanation, nods along, but freezes when faced with the homework problem. The idea hasn’t disappeared, it just changed form.
Many maths learners struggle with word problems because solving them involves an act of translation between words and symbols. Complex maths problems typically involve multiple translation steps. Each translation step introduces opportunities for misunderstanding, especially when fluency is still developing.
Why this all matters
Lack of fluency in maths can look like inability. But just as with spoken languages, fluency develops gradually. It requires time, repetition, and exposure to ideas in many forms. Mathematics is hard because it asks them to become fluent in a language that is:
Extremely compact
Unforgiving of small errors
Devoid of context or emotional cues
Slow to reveal misunderstandings
Once parents see mathematics this way, many familiar frustrations start to make sense. The confusion, the inconsistency, the sudden drops in confidence, these are not signs that something has gone wrong. They are signs that a child is still learning to understand and speak one of the most demanding languages we ask students to learn.
