A Near Miraculous Change With Maths

My son Oscar was diagnosed dyslexic and dyscalculic last year (aged 8 1/2) and has since done Davis correction for language and for maths. He had a measured IQ of 135 at that time (about on the 98th centile for underlying ability) so should be fairly near the top of his class and about 2 years ahead of his chronological age (as is his sister who is not dyslexic).

Just before he did the maths course he had a maths test in school in which he got 4/40 marks (and he is in the middle stream for maths at school). He was nearly inummerate to my mind- didn't recognise the order of sums (eg in a sum of 23 minus 14 he might have tried to add the numbers or try to take 23 from 14), couldn't do any times tables and couldn't tell the time at all.

I arranged testing by a private ed psych as every time I queried his lack of progress with the school they said he was achieving average and was fine despite the fact that to me he was weeping with misery at his inability to do the work and starting to some home 'sick' and refuse to go in. After he was diagnosed dyslexic and dyscalculic our SENCO (in the UK this is the school special needs co-ordinator) fully admitted they would never have picked up his LD as he is so bright, and if pushed about his emotional problems they would have asked us if we had relationship problems whcih was causing his anxiety (!).

In one dyscalculia test he couldn't easily say whether a circle with dots in (up to about 5) was or was not the same as the written number next to it. His mathematical ability was measured by the ed psych as below the 10th centile.

After doing 5 days on language and then 3 days specifically on maths with the Davis facilitator (aged 9 1/2 now) he knew all his times tables up to 10 forwards and backwards and won the times table challenge in class, can multiply and divide sums such as 236x14, learnt to tell the time in one 45 min session with me, and says to me that maths is easy.

It is a near miraculous change. Lots to do with the problems dyslexics may have with order and sequence, time and consequence etc (he worked a lot on this in his language correction course). It is really worth reading [The Gift of Learning] as this gives a real insight into how its done.

Honestly I wouldn't have believed the change possible- the facilitator claimed he could teach Oscar all his tables in about an hour and I really didn't believe him but it was true and 2 months later he still has them absolutely clear in his mind, and really understands numbers. I urge you to consider this method, the change for our son is enough to make me cry with gratitude- I thought he would be really lacking in essential life skills (he couldn't even do simple money calculations such as change from £2 if you spend £1.50) and he himself was desperate and so lacking in self esteem, now we have a method that really works...

Good luck to you all and to your children.

Celi, posted April 2007 to http://www.dyslexiatalk.com/