School is all about learning skills to set you up for adulthood – but some parents may have to go back after failing to understand a five–year-old’s math homework.

The problem in the child’s workbook has gone viral after the bewildered parents shared it to Reddit.

In the post, they admitted they struggled to complete the work and found it ‘so confusing’ that they decided to ask the internet for help.

The worksheet shows groups of items – shells, candy, buttons and bones – along with the numbers six, seven and eight, both written out and in figures.

The page instructed participants to ‘draw the line to match the numbers.’

But many online users were just as confused as the parents and declared the directions were unclear and said the workbook’s layout didn’t identify what should be matched.

‘I’m with you OP, confusing as hell,’ one user comforted the parents in the comment section.

Another tried to appeal to authors of educational books, writing: ‘Always have an example, authors, please. I beg of you.’

Others hypothesized that students were meant to cross off the number marked in the middle.

‘I would guess… crossing out the correct amount,’ one Reddit user suggested.

‘Looks like it’s one of those books that can be written on with dry-erase markers and can be re-useable,’ they added.

Others thought the instructions were asking the student to link all of the matching numbers together.

‘Top left has seven items, so you’d draw line from that group to seven (diagonally). Top right has nine, so you’d draw the line going to nine at the bottom of the page,’ someone suggested.

They continued: ‘I see that shown items top out at ten, so I expect that there are still nine and ten shown on the rest of the page as numbers.’

The mystery was eventually solved, with someone sharing a snap of the entire page in the workbook completed, explaining that you were supposed to match all of the pictures showing the same amount of items.

‘It’s messy and the formatting isn’t great but this is what it wants,’ they commented.

It’s not the first time a parent has taken to the internet after their child’s mathematics equation got the better of them.

Earlier in the year, a father took to Reddit and revealed that while his son is usually ‘gifted’ at math, they were both baffled by an equation that he felt was too ‘advanced’ for a nine-year-old.

Social media users were also left scratching their heads, with some saying the homework question ‘made zero sense.’

The original post read: ‘My nine-year-old was given this math problem. I can’t even solve it. My son is quite gifted with numbers but I thought this problem was pretty advanced for a nine-year-old, right?

‘I tried to solve it (I’m no math geek) but I’m having some trouble. Any thoughts?’

The problem stated: ‘In a number pyramid, each number in the middle and top rows is the sum of the two numbers below it. Below is an example.’

The question then presented another number pyramid with three missing values – identified by a star or heart – and asked the students to work out what numbers belong in the missing spaces.

People rushed to the comments and attempted to solve the problem – but even adults were defeated by the question.

Sharing the correct answer, one more user said: ‘Wow, every single post is way overcomplicating this, even the highest vote getters.

‘We don’t care what star equals or what heart equals. We just need their sum. The first entry in the second row is clearly seven + star. Adding the two second row cells, seven + star + heart = 40. Subtract seven from both sides, and you have star + heart = 33.’