A New Jersey mom found herself so confused by her six-year-old daughter’s math homework, she had to ask the teacher for help.
Amanda, who lives with her fiancé and four kids, took to TikTok, posting under the handle @life.with.no.manual, to detail the “embarrassing conversation” she had to have with her daughter Mackenzie’s teacher.
The school year is a stressful time for parents. A 2025 Ipsos survey of more than 1,000 parents conducted on behalf of The Kids Mental Health Foundation found 40 percent experience higher levels of stress and a greater mental load during the academic year than they do the summer months. Of those dealing with the increased mental load, 44 percent cited helping with homework or aiding with academic struggles as a key contributor.
Dealing with the stress of homework is still a relatively new experience to Amanda. Her two eldest children are stepkids from her husband’s previous relationship and she says their biological mom tends to handle those kinds of issues. She’s taken responsibility for helping her biological daughter Mackenzie with her studies though.
“Mackenzie is physically disabled. She has osteogenesis imperfecta which is commonly referred to as brittle bone disease,” Amanda told Newsweek. “She had a major leg surgery in October so her public school teacher was coming to our house after school hours to teach her so she didn’t fall behind. Then during school hours I was doing work to review everything the teacher taught her the day before.”
It’s a busy schedule, but one Amanda is happy to stick to if it means Mackenzie stays on track. However, it’s not without the occasional headache, as Amanda discovered when looking over one of Mackenzie’s math homework assignments.
In the video posted online, Amanda explained her daughter has reached the point where she doesn’t “understand the homework she is doing anymore.” “I had to go to her teacher and be like ‘could you teach me, so I can teach her?” she said. Amanda proceeds to share one of the questions from her daughter’s assignment asking students to “make 10 to find each sum” and fill in the blank spaces in the sums presented with the correct missing numbers.
The question was baffling to many, not least Amanda herself. “I was very good at math which is why I was so confused about why they were teaching it like that,” she said. “I made that video for my friend group and sent it to them originally. Then someone told me to post it on TikTok so we had it handy to laugh about in the future. I was never expecting anyone to really see it.”
The video blew up, racking up 1.5 million views as other users struggled to make sense of the math problem. “That is more complicated than it needs to be,” one user wrote. “WHAT they’re confusing the kids AND the parents,” another said. Some, however, suggested Amanda was overcomplicating a straightforward problem. “As the top reads, you’re trying to make it to 10. So you know 5+5=10. And you have a 7. So 7-5=2. So 10+2=12 which means 7+5=12,” one said.
Amanda puts the video’s viral success down to the fact it is “so relatable” for many parents today who might struggle with modern teaching techniques. “We were taught this completely differently so even though when you think about it, it makes sense when you first look at it, it looks like hieroglyphics,” she said.
Though she struggled with the concept and still does on some level, Amanda is glad she reached out to her daughter’s teacher for an explanation and some help. She’s not alone. In fact, social media is littered with examples of confused parents confronted with baffling homework assignments.