Why Do So Many Kids Think Chemistry Is The Worst Subject? Practical Tips For Parents
The backpack hit the kitchen counter so hard half a bag of cheddar Goldfish spilled out onto the folded laundry I’d been working through. My 10th grader, Lila, dropped onto the adjacent stool, dropped her head into her hands, and groaned so deep it felt like it vibrated the water glasses on the table. “Chemistry is actual garbage. Am I the only one who thinks it’s the worst subject to ever exist?”
I almost said the thing most of us default to: it’s not that bad, you just have to study more, it’ll click soon. But I didn’t, because I remembered tutoring high school chemistry after college, before I had kids, and I heard that same exact groan from at least half the kids that sat across my kitchen table back then. I even thought it myself when I was 15, sitting where Lila is now, staring at a worksheet of balancing equations that looked like a foreign language written by someone who hated teenagers.
So instead I said, “It sounds like this whole thing feels totally random and unfair right now, huh?” She nodded, and started flipping through her notebook to show me. The page was covered in half-erased attempts at mole conversion problems, the margins scribbled over with “why do I need to know this” and “this is made up to torture us”. She said what every kid says when they hate chemistry: none of it connects. You memorize 27 polyatomic ions one week, forget half the next, and none of it looks like anything you care about outside of class. It’s just a list of rules that change for no reason, and you’re supposed to just accept it and get a good grade.
I leaned over, and saw the chapter they were working on was polymerization. I remembered Lila spends every Sunday night doing her gel nails at home, complaining that drugstore polish chips in two days. I closed her textbook, pulled out my phone, and searched “why do gel nails need UV light to harden”. Pulled up a 90 second Reel from a nail tech that breaks it down simple: the liquid gel is made of little monomer chains, the UV light triggers a reaction that links those chains together into big, solid polymers – that’s why it hardens and stays hard. I turned the phone to Lila and said, “That’s exactly what you’re learning this week. Polymerization.”
She stared at the phone, then stared at her textbook, then flipped back to the chapter heading. “Wait, that’s this? I thought this was just… whatever.” It didn’t make her jump up and declare a new love for chemistry, but it broke that “this is all useless” feeling a little. She even pointed out that the top coat she uses says “UV cure” right on the bottle, and she never thought about what that meant before.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that most kids don’t hate chemistry because it’s harder than algebra or biology or any other subject. They hate it because it’s almost always taught the other way around: you get all the abstract rules and memorization first, and if you ever get to see how it applies to real life, it’s a last-minute lab that feels like a gimmick, not something that matters to you. So of course it feels like a made-up torture device. It’s presented that way.
The first thing I tell other parents when they ask about their kid hating chemistry is don’t start by dismissing how they feel. Saying “it’s not that bad” or “you just need to try harder” just shuts them down. The specific thing you can say instead is what I said: “It makes sense this feels totally random and unfair right now.” It takes 3 seconds, it validates their frustration without excusing them from doing the work, and it opens the door to actually talk about what’s hard.
The second thing, that takes 5 minutes max a week, is find one tiny connection between what they’re learning that week and something they already love. It doesn’t have to be a big fancy at-home experiment. If your kid plays video games, the batteries in their controller run on chemical reactions. If they love baking, bread rising is yeast causing a chemical reaction that builds gluten. If they love fireworks, different metals burn different colors – that’s the same emission spectra they’re memorizing for their quiz. You don’t have to turn it into a whole lesson. Just point it out, that’s it. It’s enough to break the idea that chemistry is only for textbooks.
Third, if they’re struggling with all the memorization that chemistry requires, don’t force them to sit with a stack of flashcards for an hour every night if they hate it. Lila hated flashcards for her polyatomic ions quiz, so we recorded a 15 second voice note of her rapping the list to the tune of that viral TikTok song she’s obsessed with. She listens to it once while she walks to school in the morning, and that’s enough for her to remember most of them. It’s low effort, it fits into their existing routine, and it works way better than forcing something that feels like extra homework.
A month later, Lila still says chemistry is the worst subject. She still complains about homework, and she still gets half the mole conversion wrong on her first try. She got a B- on her last quiz, which is a big step up from the D she got before we started doing these little connections. Last week, her class did a lab testing the metal content of different sparklers for homecoming bonfire night, and she sent me a picture of her holding a bright green sparkler that said “barium makes it green. thanks chemistry, I guess.” That text had an eye roll emoji attached, so I knew it was still not her favorite.
Last night, I found her chemistry notebook left open on the counter when I was cleaning up after dinner. Next to a half-solved problem set, in the margin, she’d drawn a little gel nail polish bottle and written “polymerization = my nails don’t chip for a week. Fine, chemistry, you win one.” Under that, in bigger letters, she wrote “still the worst subject though.” I closed the notebook and put it by her backpack. It’s not a perfect happy ending where she suddenly decides to be a chemist. It’s just a little less stressful than it was, and that’s enough for me right now.
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