Why your child can count to 100 but freezes at "what comes after 68?"
You have heard your child count to a hundred. They rattle it off without pausing — one, two, three, all the way up, barely stopping for breath. Then one evening you ask, "what comes after 68?" and they stop. Sometimes they go quiet. Sometimes they start again from one, racing up the ladder to get there.
It looks like they have forgotten something they clearly know. They haven't. Something quite different is going on, and once you see it, the fix is easy.
Try this yourself first
What letter comes after P? Go on — answer it without singing the alphabet from A.
Most adults can't. You have known the alphabet for decades. You know it perfectly. But you stored it as a song, not as a set of letters each with a position. To find P's neighbour, you have to hum your way there: L, M, N, O, P… Q. Say it out loud in front of your child and let them watch you do it. That little stumble you just felt is exactly what is happening in their head with numbers.
Two different skills that look like one
Counting to 100 and knowing what comes after 68 feel like the same thing. They are not.
- Counting to 100 is a remembered sequence. It is a track that plays from the start. Press play and it runs — one, two, three — smooth and automatic, because it always begins in the same place.
- "What comes after 68" asks the child to jump into the middle of the track. To do that, they need a feel for where 68 actually sits — that it has a neighbour on each side, a number just before it and a number just after.
The first is memory. The second is number sense — the feel for where a number lives and what sits next to it. And number sense is the one that everything later is built on: addition, place value, mental maths, and every good Olympiad question your child will ever meet.
So if your child can chant to 100 but freezes at 68, they have the memory and are still building the number sense. That is completely normal and exactly what you would expect at Class 1 and Class 2. It is not a sign that anything is wrong.
The fix — five minutes, no worksheet
You are helping them stop leaning on the track and start feeling where numbers sit. All of this can be done on a walk, in the car, or while laying the table.
- Start counting from the middle. "Count from 47." Not from one. This is the single most useful thing you can do.
- Ask for one more and one less. "One more than 68." "One less than 40." This is number sense in its purest form.
- Count backwards from 30. Harder than it sounds, and very revealing — you will hear exactly where the track breaks down.
- Use a hundred square or a number line. Let your child see that numbers have positions and neighbours, laid out in a row rather than trapped inside a song.
- Skip count in 2s, 5s and 10s. This gently breaks the one-two-three track and makes them think about the numbers themselves.
- Cross the tens on purpose. 29 to 30. 68 to 69 to 70. This is where children stall, every single time. Practise the joins and the freezing stops.
Do a couple of these most days. Keep it light — a question here, a question there, never a drill. Within a week or two you will hear the pauses shrink.
Why this matters to us
This is exactly why every Talyzo question comes with a hint before the answer and a full explanation after. A child who has frozen does not need a red mark telling them they were wrong — they need a route forward, a small nudge that shows them the way back onto the track. You can see how it works in the free chapter, and our free number sense guide takes these same ideas one at a time.
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