Living with Dyscalculia

This might look like a typical primary 2 work to most of you but it is actually my 12 year old's work. This is an achievement for her because Sofi has Specific Learning Disorder- Mathematics or what is better known (to those who ever heard of such a condition) as Dyscalculia

Just a year back, around this time, I was sitting with an MOE officer trying to figure out why my daughter badly failed her math and science primary 4 exams.

Math is about patterns and rules that define a language of its own but Sofi couldn't see them. She was randomly walking around in Mathland (Scienceland too because there are overlapping concepts and skills) and trying to look like she knew what she was doing but that only lasted for the first three years of formal homeschooling.

She couldn't tell the time nor have a sense of it. She just figured out left from right and was fearful of paying for something because she doesn't know which note to pay with and how much she should get back.

The pieces fell apart with long division. No matter how many times I repeated the process and even printed out a card that outlined them, Sofi couldn't make head or tail of it and was random.

Randomness turned up in her multi digit addition and subtraction too. Drilling her only made it worse.

So one day I just Googled in all her symptoms and found Dyscalculia. It was like a light from heaven, and things started to fall into place.

I had to get her tested. After getting a referral from the polyclinic, we were sent to the Children's Clinic at NUH. At our first appointment, I was told that there was a long wait between 3 to 6 months before getting an appointment.

About a month later we got a call that someone cancelled and would we like to meet the psychologist? So cut the story short, we got her tested and found out that she had a wide discrepancy between different abilities like a high working memory and literacy skills but poor spatial skills and numeracy and my suspicions were verified. She has Dyscalculia.

All this time, Sofi of course realised that not everything was alright with her. She diligently read alternative math books I bought for her. A biography of a girl with dyscalculia joined her favourite novels on her bookshelf and she read it over and over again like her other favourites.

We are now taking baby steps and celebrating every small achievement she reaches. There are many ways to the same end and we are always learning new ways to do math because Math is more than what the textbooks present to you.