My Child Only Wants to Play Video Games. Can That Actually Help With Times Tables?

When I looked at what parents are searching for and talking about this week, one thing came up again and again. Not just "how do I help with times tables", but the specific exhaustion of the nightly homework battle. The thread that stuck with me was a parent on Reddit describing how their child happily sits for two hours on a multiplayer game but will not look at a times-tables drill for two minutes before the tears start.

That gap is not laziness. It is not defiance. It is a completely rational response from a child's brain.

Multiplayer games are designed by very clever people to keep children engaged. They offer immediate feedback, social connection, a sense of progress, and a feeling of genuine stakes. Flash-card drills and rote chanting offer none of those things. So the child's brain does what brains do: it chooses the more rewarding experience.

The problem is not that your child loves games. The problem is that most maths practice tools have not caught up with what games actually do well.

One of the things I keep seeing come up across every channel, from parents sharing on Reddit to teachers talking on X, is the damage that countdown timers do to children who are already a little anxious about maths.

Teachers are describing children who know their times tables perfectly well in a calm moment, but the moment a ticking clock appears on screen, they freeze completely. One teacher put it plainly: "As soon as the timer starts, half my class forgets facts they definitely know." That is not an exaggeration. That is a well-understood stress response. Anxiety floods working memory, and working memory is precisely what you need to retrieve a number fact quickly.

So if your child dreads times-tables apps and you suspect the timer is part of the problem, you are almost certainly right. Removing that pressure is not "going easy" on them. It is giving their brain the conditions it actually needs to learn.

Here is what genuinely interests me about the shift I am seeing in how educators talk about this. There is a real move away from isolated, single-player drill apps towards what some teachers are calling "academic e-sports": collaborative, multiplayer environments where children are practising real maths skills but inside a game structure that feels socially meaningful.

When your child plays against or alongside someone else, a few things happen that do not happen with solo drills. They pay attention differently. They care about the outcome more. And, crucially, they stop associating the maths with the feeling of being tested and start associating it with the feeling of playing.

From the parents we have spoken to so far at XTables Champions, the shift in attitude that comes when a child goes from "I have to do my times tables" to "I want to beat my score" or "I want to catch up with my friend" is genuinely striking. One mum told us her son, who had cried through every times-tables homework session for months, asked if he could have "five more minutes" on his practice for the first time ever.

That is the thing we are trying to build towards.

If your child is resistant to times-tables practice, here is what I would suggest trying, in plain terms.

1. Drop the drill format entirely for a while. Flashcards, worksheets, and chanting have their place, but if they are causing distress, persisting with them is not going to help. Give the child's nervous system a rest from that association.

1. Look for multiplayer maths tools rather than solo ones. The social element is not a nice-to-have. For many children, especially those who struggle with motivation or anxiety, it is the thing that makes practice feel worth doing.

1. Remove the timer wherever you can. If an app has a setting to turn off the countdown, turn it off. Speed will come with fluency. Fluency will not come from panic.

1. Let your child have some control. Choosing their avatar, picking which table to practise, deciding when to play, these small choices matter enormously for a child who already feels like maths is something being done to them.

1. Keep sessions short. Ten minutes of genuine engagement is worth far more than thirty minutes of misery. Finish while they are still enjoying it.

As our founder Gal Darrash puts it, "We built this for the children who already believe they are bad at maths. Our whole job is to prove them wrong, gently."

I want to say something about this directly, because I know it sits in the background for a lot of parents. Letting your child do maths practice on a screen, especially one that looks and feels like a game, can bring up a lot of guilt. You might feel like you are giving in, or that it does not count as "real" learning.

It does count. The skill being practised is identical whether it happens on a worksheet or inside a game. What the game does is make the child willing to practise at all. And a child who practises willingly will always outpace a child who is dragged through it in tears.

The parents we speak to who feel most confident about their child's maths progress are usually not the ones who found the strictest approach. They are the ones who found the approach their specific child would actually engage with.

At XTables Champions, we built our platform around exactly this idea: that children with maths anxiety, or children who are neurodivergent, or children who simply find drills unbearable, deserve a tool that meets them where they are. We use games that children genuinely want to play, with a multiplayer design that builds real engagement, and we have removed the pressure features (timers, public failure, red-screen penalties) that trigger anxiety in the first place.

If any of this resonates with what you are seeing at home, I would love for you to take a look at what we are building. Head over to XTables Champions and see whether it might be the right fit for your child. No hard sell, just a look.