Dyscalculia, or am I just not good at maths?

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A child from a close family is one of those children about whom we say, ‘Maths isn’t his strong point’. His father noticed, when he was about 5 years old, that he didn’t understand the concepts of ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ numbers. He somehow managed with addition, albeit by counting on his fingers, but subtraction was a real struggle, and any understanding of the ‘difference’ between two numbers was simply absent.

At school, when they got to the multiplication table, he learnt it by heart like a poem, but without really understanding it. His parents spoke to his teacher about how he seemed to be guessing the answers rather than grasping the logic and working out the solution himself.

After a great deal of struggle both at school and at home, his father began searching online to find out why this might be happening, and that’s how he came across the term ‘dyscalculia’. It is often referred to as ‘dyslexia for maths’, because both are neurological differences in the way the brain processes information.

A diagnosis of dyscalculia is made by psychologists and speech and language therapists based on prolonged observation of a combination of the following:

Signs Learning Difficulties Might Be Impacting Your Child’s Maths Performance

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Learning difficulties such as dyscalculia, along with conditions like ADHD, can affect how children process and retain information and maths is often one of the first subjects where the impact becomes visible.

If your child is working hard but making little progress in maths, or if maths has become a source of distress, it may indicate something more than a simple knowledge gap.

Dyscalculia, dyslexia, dyspraxia, maths anxiety, ADHD and knowledge gaps can look similar on the surface, but they have different causes and usually benefit from different kinds of support.

How Education Dissertation Coaching Can Help Doctoral Students with Dyscalculia

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Education dissertation coaching is structured academic support designed to help doctoral students:

Plan their dissertation
Refine research questions
Choose appropriate methodologies
Break writing into manageable steps
Interpret feedback and data
Stay on track throughout the process

Unlike editing or proofreading, coaching focuses on how to think through the dissertation, not just how to present it.

Read it HERE

A practical guide for parents who think their child might have dyscalculia

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No checklist diagnoses dyscalculia. Only a trained evaluator can do that. But knowing the signs helps you decide whether your child’s struggles are typical math frustration or something worth getting checked out. If you recognize a cluster of these patterns, especially patterns that have lasted across multiple grades and teachers, take it seriously.