Dsycalculia found at age 12?

[Anonymous]

What would symptoms and math attempts look like for a 12yo with undiagnosed dyscalculia?

She has a “mild adhd” Dx from age 9 and has have various “math refusals” over the years - refuses to do her math homework, check over incorrect problems, fights the parent instead.

So high error rate in homeworks, mediocre test grades- often math fact errors or sloppy mistakes, and then just shut down mode.

We have not tried a tutor yet since my spouse and I can handle the content, but she is at public school with no textbook or online resources. Not that she’d look up the teachings… but we try to with her.

[Anonymous]

I was diagnosed with LDs in K, 1976, by the time I graduated from HS my IEP accommodations screamed ADHD. I didn’t know this until I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid-20s. It is easy for there to be crossover between ADHD and LDs. So yes, ADHD can hide LDs.

[Anonymous]

It looked like 3 hours of homework when it should have only taken an hour. Writing everything down to line it up to add/ subtract/ multiply because of low working memory. DC broke a bunch of pencils at this age due to frustration. She was high functioning otherwise but going into High School Placement testing in 8th grade (Parochial) We finally paid for the private education assesment and found out it wasn't ADHD after all it was Discalcia and social anxiety. The psychologist explained it to us as not being able to memorize the simple math numbers well past the age expected. This is more than you asked for but then she got a 504 plan that allowed her to use a simple function calculator and it changed our life!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It looked like 3 hours of homework when it should have only taken an hour. Writing everything down to line it up to add/ subtract/ multiply because of low working memory. DC broke a bunch of pencils at this age due to frustration. She was high functioning otherwise but going into High School Placement testing in 8th grade (Parochial) We finally paid for the private education assesment and found out it wasn't ADHD after all it was Discalcia and social anxiety. The psychologist explained it to us as not being able to memorize the simple math numbers well past the age expected. This is more than you asked for but then she got a 504 plan that allowed her to use a simple function calculator and it changed our life!

I believe it, thanks!

Our 6th grader can memorize Spanish words each week to no end, but math facts in k-4 was like pulling teeth and never stuck well.

[Anonymous]

My kid was diagnosed at 10, with a whole range of disorders including dyscalculia, during his first full neuropsych evaluation. He had been diagnosed with tentative ADHD-NOS (the label used when a specialist thinks there's ADHD and autism going on but isn't quite sure) at 6 years old.

I had been re-teaching every day after school since K anyway, so it wasn't as if the diagnosis was a surprise. He was clearly dysgraphic, had severe ADHD, and had abysmally low processing speed. He read very well, so no dyslexia. It was only later that he got a formal autism diagnosis, but at the time, this was not our focus. He did get a calculator accommodation out of the dyslexia diagnosis, and the school was already giving him extra time. Some kids are given multiplication and formula tables so that they don't need to get bogged down in recall during tests and assignments, but my kid didn't have that.

Symptom-wise, for him, it was really hard to tease out what was ADHD, math disability, and low processing speed. He would take ten times as long to finish a task than the average kid. He had great difficulty memorizing his multiplication tables, but once memorized, he knew them. He did things like stare at his page and write down 1 minute equals 6 seconds. And then affirm several times that this was true... until I pointed out that he should have written 60 seconds. I will remember that episode all my life! He constantly mistook operational signs for each other, so he would look at a plus sign and understand it as a minus sign or multiplication sign. Constantly!

And yet, with extensive tutoring, he did reach AP Calc BC level in 12th grade, so I can attest to the fact that with sustained effort, an intelligent but dyscalculic kid can still do well in math. Speaking of intelligence, his IQ test had subscores that were all over the place: his verbal scores were at the 99th percentile, other reasoning scores were rather good too, except specific math stuff, his working memory was below average and the processing speed was in the single digits. The psychologist said she'd never seen a spread that extreme, and explained that the total IQ score would be meaningless in that situation (indeed, he has an "average" IQ, which doesn't begin to describe his functioning).

To be entirely honest with you, I think the diagnostic line can be a little fuzzy when there's several diagnoses at play. Is it mostly ADHD? Mostly dyscalculia? Autism? In the end, you need to be pragmatic and support your child where they need it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid was diagnosed at 10, with a whole range of disorders including dyscalculia, during his first full neuropsych evaluation. He had been diagnosed with tentative ADHD-NOS (the label used when a specialist thinks there's ADHD and autism going on but isn't quite sure) at 6 years old.

I had been re-teaching every day after school since K anyway, so it wasn't as if the diagnosis was a surprise. He was clearly dysgraphic, had severe ADHD, and had abysmally low processing speed. He read very well, so no dyslexia. It was only later that he got a formal autism diagnosis, but at the time, this was not our focus. He did get a calculator accommodation out of the dyslexia diagnosis, and the school was already giving him extra time. Some kids are given multiplication and formula tables so that they don't need to get bogged down in recall during tests and assignments, but my kid didn't have that.

Symptom-wise, for him, it was really hard to tease out what was ADHD, math disability, and low processing speed. He would take ten times as long to finish a task than the average kid. He had great difficulty memorizing his multiplication tables, but once memorized, he knew them. He did things like stare at his page and write down 1 minute equals 6 seconds. And then affirm several times that this was true... until I pointed out that he should have written 60 seconds. I will remember that episode all my life! He constantly mistook operational signs for each other, so he would look at a plus sign and understand it as a minus sign or multiplication sign. Constantly!

And yet, with extensive tutoring, he did reach AP Calc BC level in 12th grade, so I can attest to the fact that with sustained effort, an intelligent but dyscalculic kid can still do well in math. Speaking of intelligence, his IQ test had subscores that were all over the place: his verbal scores were at the 99th percentile, other reasoning scores were rather good too, except specific math stuff, his working memory was below average and the processing speed was in the single digits. The psychologist said she'd never seen a spread that extreme, and explained that the total IQ score would be meaningless in that situation (indeed, he has an "average" IQ, which doesn't begin to describe his functioning).

To be entirely honest with you, I think the diagnostic line can be a little fuzzy when there's several diagnoses at play. Is it mostly ADHD? Mostly dyscalculia? Autism? In the end, you need to be pragmatic and support your child where they need it.

Come ON.

[Anonymous]

Dyscalculia explainer and symptoms:

https://www.additudemag.com/what-is-dyscalculia-overview-and-symptom-breakdown

[Anonymous]

OP, my dd is 11 and I'm wondering about dycalculia also!

Dd has an amazing memory and has never gotten less than 100 on a spelling test, but struggles with basic math facts! She actually came to ME asking about dyscalculia, not knowing I was thinking about it also!

She is dx asd, and is considered to 'not' have adhd (but has siblings who do) based on a pyschoeducational eval from years ago. We are going in May to the developmental/behaviorial ped to get evaluated for the math stuff.

[Anonymous]

Do we really have clinical diagnoses for everything? This is a little ridiculous. As Barbie famously said, “math is hard.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do we really have clinical diagnoses for everything? This is a little ridiculous. As Barbie famously said, “math is hard.”

Math is hard, but dyscalculia is also real.

My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and dysgraphia in 1st grade. She was at a private school that had learning specialists who worked one on one win her during the week. However, she always struggled with math even when working with the specialist. She would do all of her homework except for math, sit and stare at her paper in class, and not understand even when the teacher would explain it. She had to have testing redone a few years ago for her accommodations and it showed she also has dyscalculia. She will copy a problem down from the board at school and flip the numbers. She does the same thing when writing her answers. She said that when she looks at the numbers it’s like they “vibrate”. She has had a math tutor for 3 years now and we moved her to The McLean school which has been amazing.

To the poster who made the comment quoted, these are real diagnosis’s and they are genetic. I was showing my daughter my homework from when I was her age (why my mom saved it, I’ll never know!), and I was making the same mistakes that she was. In 6th grade I was spelling ruined “Ruwend” and writing very short, incomplete sentences. I was at a high reading level, but I struggled to write. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 13, but I bet today I would also be diagnosed with dysgraphia and dyscalculia.