Children with dyscalculia are more prone to math anxiety than other children. The catch- 22 with math anxiety is that these children are less likely to engage in math- related activities, and therefore they fall farther behind their peers in math skill development. Falling behind exacerbates a child’s level of anxiety, which in turn diminishes his or her desire to engage in mathematics. And so it goes.
A child’s comfort with math is often proportional to that of his or her parent’s comfort with math. As your child’s study partner, you will need to become comfortable with basic math and present a positive atti-tude toward the subject. If you embrace an appreciation for math, your child will too.
Let your child know that learning math is a process and takes time.
Let him or her know you will always be there to help with math for as long as he or she needs you.
Many children with dyscalculia develop anxiety because they believe their teachers view their poor performance or learning pace as a result of not trying hard enough. These children can quickly become acutely anxious, making it harder to learn in class and then harder to perform well on homework and tests. Here are some ways to put your child at ease in this regard:
• Let your child’s math teacher know that your son or daughter has dyscalculia, and establish good communication with this teacher.
• Strive to provide your child with as much pre- teaching as pos-sible so that when your child arrives at class, he or she will have an understanding of what is being taught.
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• Ask your child’s teacher to provide your child with fewer and easier math problems when doing seatwork. Some teachers are willing to circle just a few problems on a worksheet for a child to do. This is subtle and does not take much time on the part of the teacher.
Jason’s story (continued)
I was conducting a presentation for a small group of teachers at Jason’s school when I happened to see Jason walk past just as I was discussing metacognition. Knowing that he enjoyed an audience, I waved him into the room and asked if he wanted to explain what the word “metacognition” means. “Thinking about thinking,” he stated proudly. Among the group of teachers there were several audible gasps of surprise and delight, which were followed by a great round of applause. This brought an immense smile to Jason’s face, and he continued on his way almost certainly happier, prouder, and more confident in himself and his ability to learn.
Conclusion
Dyscalculia is a common and challenging learning difficulty for many children. Fortunately, there are many things you as a parent can do to help minimize the detrimental impact it has on your child’s learning, skills development, and self- esteem. By taking a highly proactive role, you can cultivate a culture of math in your home and jump- start your child’s math learning.
In addition, you can provide crucial math support by staying apprised of your child’s math learning needs at school, actively participating in math homework completion, and providing your child with a reasonable amount of supplementary math instruction to boost his or her math skills.
Finally, I encourage you to introduce your child to the concept of metacognition. If it can help Jason, it may certainly help your child!
CHAPTER 9
Information Processing and Memory
Two areas where children with language- based learning difficulties can be significantly impacted are auditory processing (more specifically, spoken language processing) and visual processing. In this chapter, when I address spoken “language processing” and “visual processing” issues, I am not referring to deficits in hearing or seeing, but rather the capacity to process, understand, and remember information received by listening to spoken lan-guage or by seeing. This is an important distinction, because many indi-viduals who have been identified as having spoken language processing deficits are extraordinary musicians with a remarkable ear for all kinds of sound and sound relationships. In a similar vein, many individuals who have been identified as having visual processing deficits are extraor-dinary artists. They have a remarkable sense of line, shape, form, color, and spatial relationships that is critical for all forms of artwork. The problem these individuals experience with spoken language and visual processing is not a function of their hearing or vision, but rather a func-tion of the means by which informafunc-tion— specifically spoken language and visual information— is processed, stored, and retrieved.
Accurate spoken language processing and visual processing place enormous demands on children with LBLDs. These children are already overwhelmed by distractions, have a shortage of working memory, and have underdeveloped strategies for effectively processing information they hear and see. Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to help your child if he or she has slowly emerging information processing skills.
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Reading and writing challenges are relatively easy to identify.
Determining if a child has delays in spoken language or visual processing is more difficult. Pay close attention to your child’s ability: If you notice that you have to repeat directions several times or slow down your deliv-ery of directions, your child might have spoken language processing delays. If visual tasks such as putting together puzzles, recognizing differ-ences between objects, and understanding maps and diagrams are excep-tionally challenging for your child, he or she might have visual processing delays.
Do not be alarmed if you detect that your child struggles in these areas. Moderate delays in processing information are common for chil-dren with LBLDs. Your support might be enough to help your child manage the demands of school and homework despite his or her process-ing difficulties.
If you are concerned that your child’s capacities in these areas are significantly delayed, it might be beneficial to seek a consultation with an audiologist or vision expert. If the expert recommends a treatment regimen for your child, gather as much information as you can about the condition the clinician has identified, and carefully vet prospective pro-viders of any treatment that was recommended. For a list of important considerations when reviewing the treatment recommendations of an audiologist or vision expert, see this book’s website: http://www.newhar binger.com/40989.
In general, leading experts in special education recommend that efforts to improve spoken language and visual processing capacities be integrated with activities that involve academic skill development. In other words, treating information processing deficits in a way that has no direct relationship to broader areas of learning is unproductive (Fletcher et al. 2007).
In this chapter, you’ll learn strategies that will enhance your child’s processing capacities and memory by engaging him or her in learning- related activities. Most of these strategies combine both spoken language and visual approaches to process, remember, and retrieve information.
These strategies apply to all areas of learning and can enhance your child’s memory and retrieval skills even if he or she does not have a sig-nificant delay in spoken language or visual processing.
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