It's weird about the pictures. DD was taught to do all those stupid arrays and to draw blocks and circles and whatever for certain scripted operations early on (and God forbid you NOT do that, even if you already knew the answer without it). But these days, I am not aware of anyone encouraging her to draw pictures or use tables or other graphic representations to solve word problems, another strategy I used with success to help me get around my own poor intrinsic number sense. I'm always suggesting this, and she looks at me like I'm nuts because it's not something they seem to do. Of course, this is not always helpful, but it's just a thing to try when you don't know how to approach something. Meanwhile, DD does not like "trying things"-- when it comes to math, she wants to know "how to do it." Here, in fact, I see some emotional roadblocks to good problem-solving that may be a result of underchallenge OR of unimaginative teaching.
