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[quote=Anonymous]My generally-above-grade-level ADHD 5th grader has a very odd math profile. DC is at an MCPS CES program and in compacted math. MAP-M scores have been in the high 80th to mid 90th percentile for years, with a couple coming in at 98+pctl.  DC definitely has a lot of math anxiety and struggled last year with a teacher who loved speed drills, and math homework always provokes extreme anxiety/tears.  But from what we can tell, DC understands the material well, and math grades are usually good.  However, there have been several tests with an unexpected C or D, and the errors are from things like mixing up plus/minus or multiply/divide, swapping place values, or missing steps especially in word problems, and sometimes doing the work correctly but then selecting a multiple-choice answer that clearly doesn't match their work.  The mistakes are not consistent, either - for example when asked to multiply two mixed number fractions, the first one they did correctly, but the very next one they added the whole numbers and multiplied the fractions (2 5/8 x 7 1/3 became 9 5/24).

Is this just the ADHD and anxiety at work, or is there possibly something else here we should look into?  I've heard of dyscalculia, but it doesn't seem to fully line up.  I doubt they will go into a math-heavy career, but when we've tried slowing math down in the past (or doing extra practice at home), the boredom/repetition makes things even worse.  Anything else we can do to help?

(Not currently medicated but we will probably look into it soon.)

(I want to reiterate that we have tried extra practice/worksheets/drills at home and it Does. Not. Help.  The extreme distress it provokes will reverberate for hours or days, and it doesn't even measurably improve math facts recall or reduce errors.  We want to *reduce* anxiety around math, not increase it.)[/quote]

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