Math Struggles? Get the 411 on Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia may sound like a fancy term, but it really just translates to “county badly.” The neurological disorder includes specific and persistent challenges in learning or comprehending mathematics, regardless of intelligence or motivation. In fact, even very smart people can have math struggles! And it’s not just about adding or multiplying numbers. People with dyscalculia can struggle with time management, spatial awareness, comparisons, and visual discrimination skills.
So how do you know if your student has dyscalculia and what can you do about it? Here’s what you need to know:
How common is dyscalculia?
Unlike dyslexia or ADHD, there’s not a lot of research on dyscalculia, but the National Library of Medicine reports that 3% to 7% of children, adolescents, and adults suffer from it. It’s worth noting that, despite what you may have heard about boys being ‘better at math’ than girls, dyscalculia occurs equally in both genders.
What signs of math struggles should parents look for?
Dyscalculia may manifest slightly differently based on the student’s age. With young children, you may notice the following:
- Delays in learning to count
- Difficulty recognizing numbers
- Needing to use fingers or other visual aids to help count
- Struggles when trying to recognizing patterns
- Placing things in the wrong order
- Challenges connecting numerical symbols (“7”) with their corresponding words (“seven”)
As your child begins to incorporate math into more of their school day, you may notice:
- Difficulty estimating times regarding task completion
- An inability to grasp the concepts in math word problems
- Difficulty learning basic math functions, such as times tables, addition, and subtraction
- Regularly struggles with math homework and tests
- Challenges processing visual-spatial ideas (e.g., charts and graphs)
- Struggling to keep up with grade-level math
Outside of the classroom you may observe that they:
- Struggle to remember numbers, such as zip codes, game scores, and phone numbers
- Are challenged remembering multi-step directions
- Have difficulty reading clocks
- Have an inability to judge the length of distances
- Are challenged when making change or counting bills
- Get “left” and “right” confused
Do I need to get a dyscalculia diagnosis?
Although there’s no specific test for dyscalculia, it is helpful to evaluate their cognitive performance, math fluency, and other foundational skill areas that directly impact their ability to do math-related work.
Start with a discussion with your child’s teachers(s) to gather more information. Are they struggling in all their subjects? Do they “space out” or disrupt class? Are they only struggling with certain types of math (e.g., geometry) but not others?
A brain skills assessment is a helpful tool to identify skill strengths and weaknesses that may be contributing to your child’s struggles with math. While it’s not diagnostic, it can give you a helpful starting point to give your child the tools they need to reach their full potential.
How are math struggles addressed?
To understand how brain trainers address math struggles, you first need to understand what cognitive skills are. These fundamental brain skills—which include attention, working memory, long-term memory, logic & reasoning, auditory processing, visual processing, and processing speed—are the core skills we use to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. They work together to move incoming information to the back of knowledge that we use every day at school, work and in life.
Because each of these cognitive skills plays an important part in processing new information, learning ANYTHING can be a struggle if just one skill is impacted. In fact, research has shown that most learning struggles are caused by one or more weak cognitive skills.
A Cognitive Approach to Math Struggles
When it comes to math struggles, people may have poor working memory, visual processing, logic & reasoning, and processing speed, among other cognitive skill deficits. Using the results of a Brain Skills Assessment, personal brain trainers can create an individualized program to target and train those brain skills that need a boost.
Using game-like mental exercises to give core thinking and learning skills a workout, one-on-one brain training using the follow key features:
- Teaching math skills in order (from basic skills to complex concepts)
- Adjusting the intensity of training in each session to match the student’s skill level
- Repetition (with activities and concepts) to rapidly build the targeted skills
- One-on-one training (student-to-brain trainer) with encouragement and immediate feedback
- A customized training plan for each student
Best of all, personal brain training is designed to strengthen cognitive skills to make learning faster and easier in ANY subject—not just math, and the boost in confidence can help students gain a sense of competence, agency, and independence!
Just understanding which cognitive skills are underperforming can help inform your decisions regarding how to get them the help they need to thrive in school, work, and life!
