Dyscalculia - does anyone have experience with this?

I have just found out what dyscalculia is as my 11 year old son has just been diagnosed with it. He has always found maths difficult even counting, sequencing especial anything visual. I met a lovely lady in Berkshire who assessed him who is a special needs teacher and can assess for extra time for exams. As my son is heading towards SATs I wanted to see if he could get any extra time. School has been absolutely useless and didn't want to know. The teacher who assessed my son is Annette Dickens and she wrote a report with was very easy to read. I took the report to his school and had to get upset with them because they took notice of me! They acknowledged it would get the extra time the report suggested.
The school are now putting in place extra work with him recommended in the report. I am so glad I went outside school to find the answer to my son's problems. It will be a long time but at least he is on the road to getting the proper help he needs.

I very much agree with you beafrog. I had a lot of "experts" tell me all sorts of things to do with dd (and ds before her)... (drugs were often suggested to improve their "focus"). when much of their issues are in fact working memory. However, I think it's important to note that although the issue may be working memory, the solution can vary immensely depending on the child's personality.
For example, both my dc's need extra time and space to complete certain tasks. However with ds, it's important for him to feel that you are giving him way more time and space than he actually needs. With dd if you give her way more than she needs, she will completely freak out. Dd needs repetition (to give her confidence), someone checking frequently and some time boundaries so the goal is not unknown. While ds needs a quiet room without distractions to work it out on his own. They both have working memory issues, but the solution is quite different.

My DD had what we thought was dyscalculia, and turned out to be working memory and anxiety problems. If it's anxiety, more maths tutoring tends to make things worse - DD came on in leaps and bounds once we stopped tutoring and Kumon.

My one tip would be to be very wary of some of the "experts" in dyscalculia. We went to one who seemed to be a leading figure in the field. She charged a fee for an "assessment" which suggested alarmingly severe problems with maths which could apparently only be helped by DD attending her centre. When we took her findings and suggestions back to school and then to an educational psychologist, they were found to be wrong on pretty much every count.

SofiaAmes- couldn't agree more with your last statement. Exactly how I felt at school. As a teacher myself, Dyscalculia just isn't as discussed as much as Dyslexia or Dyspraxia and as such, not a lot of people know how to approach it.

SofiaAmes - I don't think we actually do disagree. I too give my pupils (I teach Y5 and Y6) multiplication grids if they don't know their tables and I'm trying to teach a concept that is related eg factors or square numbers or even long multiplication (the grid method). I just don't think we should give up requiring children to learn them for whom it doesn't come easy. There are many ways of learning and reinforcing tables knowledge with the whole class that doesn't make children feel singled out and a failure for not knowing them too well.. I do give weekly tables tests and the children compete against themselves, not each other, in trying to improve week on week. I can think of 3 children that really struggle to learn them but are still much better now than they were this time last year and actually enjoy watching themselves improve over time AND they are beginning to use them in their learning without always having to rely on their multiplication grid.

It has been interesting to compare the general attitude to my dd's issue with math facts vs her issue with spelling. There seems to be a general acceptance that not everyone can spell and if they can't, it doesn't mean that they aren't smart or can't excel at reading/writing. However that same attitude does not exist with math facts and math/science.

Yami - it is so nice to hear from adults and how they cope. I have many of the same issues as you and am coping just fine as an adult because, like you, I use little tricks for things, knowing my limitations with numbers. I actually did extremely well in maths at school and university and attribute that to a fabulous math teacher who nurtured all his students and didn't expect one learning solution for all of them.

I really think it is super super important to get your child comfortable with math and numbers despite their issues. And don't ever put them down (or let anyone else do so) for doing it slowly or differently. I think my dd has found it very helpful to know that her mum doesn't know her times tables either and can't remember a phone number to save her life (quite literally....forgot the 3 digit emergency number the other day (in usa it's 911 which is a little more complicated than 999, I guess)), but still did well in math and in life.

Olivevoir I will look up those tools you mentioned. I disagree about learning the math facts, however. I understand the need to free up thinking space, but I believe that giving a child a chart or calculator has the same effect as having them memorize their facts. And for people who truly have difficulty in memorizing their facts, it eliminates all the brain space being taken up by the stress of not being able to memorize.

I used to be an educational psychologist in my pre-children days. As Olivevoir has said, until very recently, there was no good conceptual understanding of what dyscalculia actually is. The last talk I went to about it suggested, (just as Olivervoir reports) that the difficulty is in understanding the concept of number. In other words, what does a 3, or a 5 or an 8 actually mean. The suggestion was that children with this particular difficulty need lots and lots and lots of experience of using concrete objects to really get to grips with what 3, or 5 or 8 is and how they relate to each other. So something like numicon on cuisinnaire rods are probably the way to go. But you can't just let the kids play with these objects, you need to use the objects to actually teach the concept of number and you will probably need lots and lots of repetition.

Mathematical concepts explained without numbers can be pretty good, too. There is an app called dragonbox which is a really fun game that adults will enjoy, but my 6 year old also love which involves doing quite complex algebra in a completely intuitive way, mostly using concepts of opposites like light and dark instead of positive and negative numbers. You can play it without needing to be able to do more than count to about 5 and recognise symbols ( eg logos, weather symbols, that sort of thing).

TheYami that is really interesting, it's nice to hear from adults that "manage" this, thanks.

I've never been diagnosed, but am pretty certain that I have dyscalculia. I could read at the age of 3, but couldn't read an analogue clock until my late teens, can't read music (my violin teacher was not very understanding, and kicked me out of his class), I have no internal sense of time, terrible spacial awareness, can't give directions, and am terrible with money because while I understand in theory that lots of small amounts of money add up to a big sum, I have to really concentrate to remember that while shopping. I'm probably better than average at maths as an academic subject - I have an A at GCSE and a C in GCSE additional maths and have passed basic accounting exams, but I can't remember a phone number, street number or episode without crazy amounts of effort, and I can't hold a number accurately in my memory, which rules out all mental arithmetic, and means I can't use those card readers the bank makes me use for money transfers.

For me, the trick.is knowing what I can't do and working out ways around it. I set timers for things, have stickers with my phone number in which I stick to vital things (like my phone) and use a calculator, counting on my fingers, carrying a notebook so I can always write things down, and not being embarrassed to say if I can't do something or will find it hard to do properly.

I'm also fighting my feelings of guilt that I have let this go on for so long. She's 14 next month and at such a basic level I could cry.

I chose to tackle a lot of other stuff which seemed more important at the time, like reading and writing and social skills. I just hope it's not too late

My dd is a bit the same - she shuts down because I think she is scared it will be too difficult. The "easy" book she will tackle as a lot of it is really basic so she gets a sense of achievement. The book encourages her to use a number square / number line etc as well as giving her strategies to work things out.

I just looked at Dyscaluclia.org, it looks interesting. When I have more time I'll have a proper look. At a glance there seem to be a few dodgy looking 5 day "wonder" programmes

That's interesting haggisaggis - I bought Dyscalculia Activities 1 by Tony Attwood. It is meant to be used at school and at home. You use lots of counters and the aim is to do no more than 10 minutes at a time.

My problem is dd's absolute reluctance to engage. She literally shuts down when she realises that maths is involved.

thornrose - the school have very recently given me 2 books to work through with dd. First is "plus one" and second "power of 2". They must be done very often - preferably daily - but you only do a few minutes a time. It starts of with really basic counting, but then gets more tricky (we are finishing the first one at the moment). I find that if dd does it EVERY DAY then we see a bit of improvement - ie she can now count forward and backward in 10's which she couldn't before. It also teaches some strategies to work things out using what you already know which I've found really useful.

jibjib sorry for the hijack, our dd's sound quite similar!

Thanks PickleFish, she is so reluctant to even talk about maths/numbers at home I've tended to avoid it, or at least bury my head in the sand.

I need to get my head out of the sand and start being pro-active!

I wonder if there are specialist maths tutors to come to our home?

Numicon and other concrete materials are very good if you could convince her to try them, or possibly there are online versions where no-one would have to know what she is doing, but she's still manipulating (with the mouse or touch screen) tens and units and so on. Primary Games website also has lots of interactive white-board manipulative activities (not free but not expensive I don't think) that she could use with a one-one person without it being obvious that she was still using manipulatives. Bead strings are also good, and could even be disguised somehow as a necklace?! There are non-verbal/visual ways of remembering times tables and number bonds, through pictures, stories, mental maps, etc, if you google something like non-verbal times tables, various systems should come up. I know that some people with dyscalculia have difficulty building an internal number line, and even having something like a tape measure/ruler/metre stick etc in an easy to see place can help. Someone I know painted numbers around the edge of her daughter's wall, and because she saw it all the time, she finally developed that spatial sense of numbers that other people tend to have more intuitively.

haggisaggis-I still sometimes use my fingers to count! I too also struggle still with speaking by rote some of the times tables (mainly 4, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12) but can when I write them down or use fingers. The only way I can describe it is that I struggle to see the patterns with those tables but can more easily with the others, (5,10,15...) does that make sense? I'm not sure if there is an easy fix for your DD but I also wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as she can use a calculator come Year 7, it won't be an issue for her. The main thing is not making her feel like a failure for not 'getting it' ( I know you wouldn't but some teachers or TAs might) and focus on her confidence instead. This is what helped me. Best wishes

My dd is about to go into Year 9, she scored 0 in a level 2 maths paper. She has 1 to 1 tuition at school twice a week but I get the feeling they are at a loss as to how to really help her.

They did mention using Numicon and Cuisenaire but she is desperate not to stand out as being different and she worries it looks "babyish"!

She has dyspraxia and AS, she does have quite severe memory and processing problems according to the last SALT report.

I just asked her to count in 2's and she said 2,4,6,8 ...7,8,9

I asked her to try again and she said 2,4,6,8...13,15,17

She has a statement review next week and I wonder if anyone has any ideas what I can have school include in order to get her the best help?

I'm not sure if it is worth getting her tested for dyscalculia?

But what if they just can't learn their tables or other number facts? My dd has been trying to learn the 2 x table since about P2 - 5 years ago. She can now more or less manage to count in 2s up to 14 - but certainly can't repeat " 2 x 2 =4" etc. No matter how often we do it. Same with number bonds - she may appear to know them 1 day but not the next. I think what Sofia suggests - giving a multiplication chart and allowing her to use her fingers is a good idea. I taught dd to do simple column addition carrying the 10s over in about 30 seconds - she got the concept really easily. However the school have never done anything like this because she doesn't know her number bonds...