Primary teachers often want to nurture children. They find it difficult to let them struggle and be frustrated. However, as children begin to learn that they can make sense of mathematics and they can invent their own solutions to problems, they want and ask for challenging problems. They do not find satisfaction solving easy problems. A major advantage of using everyday problems is that they strengthen children's problem solving skills and build a strong understanding of concepts.
Children begin to find complex and multi-step problems relatively easy.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this work is devoting substantial amounts of time to having children share their thinking in class. It requires the one who is sharing to translate thoughts into words that make sense to others. It is also important for the listener, who may hear a different strategy or representation, validate the thinking of another student, or compare the efficiency of various strategies. These students learn both ways of reasoning and mathematics content during these discussions. Teachers, who had been using this approach, wrote their views of children and mathematics and some guiding principles about teaching mathematics as a result of their work with problem-centered learning.