Counting on fingers is not a problem to fix

A mother stopped me after a session last week, lowered her voice, and asked how we could "stop" her eight-year-old counting on her fingers. She'd read somewhere that older children who still use their fingers fall behind. She looked genuinely anxious about it.

I told her the truth: I'd much rather a child count on her fingers and get it right than do it "in her head" and guess.

Fingers are working memory you can see

A young brain holding "seven plus five" has to keep the seven somewhere while it deals with the five. Fingers are simply that somewhere — a place to park a number so the mind is free to do the actual adding. Far from being a crutch, it's a child externalising a hard step so it stops being hard. We do the grown-up version every time we jot a figure on the corner of a page.

The fingers fade on their own once the facts are quick enough not to need parking. You don't pull them away; you make them unnecessary.

What actually moves a child past it

Banning the fingers just removes the safety net and adds fear. Building number sense removes the need. A few things I lean on:

• Number bonds to ten. If a child knows every pair that makes ten by heart, most addition becomes a quick regroup rather than a count.
• Doubles and near-doubles. "Six plus seven" stops being a finger-by-finger climb the moment "six plus six" is instant.
• Subitising. Flash three dots, then four, then five — let them see the quantity without counting at all. Dice and dominoes are wonderful for this.

Speed in arithmetic isn't a child trying harder. It's a child needing the fingers less, one fact at a time.

So I left the mother with one instruction, and I'll leave you with the same one: when your child reaches for her fingers, don't sigh. It means the answer is going to be right — and that's the foundation everything else is built on.