When I went back to college I was amazed at the recent high school grads who couldn't make a sentence that made sense of do even simple arithmetic.  

I have witnessed this innumerable times: when the kids started taking arithmetic in school and came home telling the parent about it (also needing help) the parent says "arithmetic is so hard, I just hated it".   What do you think that does to the child's attitude toward arithmetic?   Yes, it is difficult at first, but if you loose the attitude, and are willing todo a little work (yes I said work) the benefits, over your life time, will amaze you.   It seems to me that if the parent would get over their own resistance to learning math, the child would have a much better shot at it.   All of us want our kids to have it easier than we did, but some things require effort to learn, not everything is going to be easy.   You can't just read about arithmetic, you have to practice it to learn it.