<p>Now I understand the stroke point. It’s been debunked.</p>
<p>Okay, a kid can wish his teachers (from school teachers to parents trying to help with homework) were more competent instead of wanting to feel better than them. It’s still a perception issue. Children have a very limited perspective of any given subject and they give undue importance to what they consider the ‘foundation’ of mathematics – what they learn in elementary school – when what they really learn is mostly mental algorithms and a few rules that tide them over until they learn the true foundation of mathematics later in life if they choose.</p>
<p>This leads to the presented scenario: a child who is actively learning arithmetic techniques asks for help from a parent who no longer needs to use those techniques (thanks to calculators); the parent can’t help (or could help, given proper context); the child silently judges the parent to be incompetent.</p>
<p>The same applies to any subject with both depth of specific techniques and breadth of overall understanding, where the child is working on something specific and the parent has a broad understanding.</p>