Dyscalculia is not as often talked about as dyslexia. People often misunderstood a child’s struggle with word problems as a sign of dyscalculia. While it can be, it is often a case of confusion with the language used in such word problems and so is more of a comprehension issue.

People with dyscalculia struggle with understanding numeracy, trouble with counting, confusion with mathematical symbols, counting with fingers instead of advancing to mental calculations, etc.

Above is a list that you can refer to to see if your child could be exhibiting symptoms of dyscalculia.

This article was written by a Speech Language Pathologist some years back. What she described is commonly experienced by many of the dyslexics I encounter in the course of my intervention work. In addition to struggling with the English language, many of these children also struggle with the Chinese language.

As far as I know, there is no official test in Singapore for Chinese dyslexia and the diagnosis is not recognised. I agree with the author that dyslexia can occur in any language and I know for a fact that it has affected people learning other languages.

Regardless of which language a child struggles with, it goes back to the root cause of confusion with symbols that exist in languages. In the case of the Chinese language, the strokes, the radicals, the high frequency words, the similarity in characters and pronunciation.

I often get parents of dyslexic children telling me that their child struggles with multiplication tables. I remember as a child, the way I learnt the multiplication tables was through rote memorising.

Dyslexics, on the other hand, don’t learn the same way as we do. Multiplication tables can be mastered in a logical way and I agree with what the speaker in the video shared, through the process of first counting, then figuring out and finally, retention of facts learnt.

Dyslexics are good at seeing patterns and making sense of things. Are you still making your child memorise the multiplication tables? Try a different approach if things are still not getting through for your child.

So far, I have been talking about how confusion causes dyslexia and the source of such confusion stems from symbols that dyslexics cannot picture, such as punctuation marks and high frequency words, which impact their decoding, reading fluency and comprehension.

Dyslexics also encounter confusion when dealing with math subject (typically with word problems), not because they do not have the skill to do arithmetic but because they struggle to comprehend the questions.

You see them re-reading the questions. Frowns start to form, fingers start tapping on the table, they start fidgeting and soon, they throw their hands in the air and give up.

There are math specific vocabulary such as “remainder”, “more than”, “twice as much as” and even concepts such as “1/5”, “1/2”, “2/3” that a dyslexic struggles with.

The first step to help the child is to acknowledge the child’s picture thinking style. The child needs to master not only the meaning of those specific vocabulary that confuses them, but also be able to picture and understand how fractions are represented visually. Once the confusion is replaced with certainty, things become more easeful for the child.

Dyslexia is an alternative way of thinking and learning. Dyslexics have a preference for using pictures or images in their thought process rather than words. This allows them to view the world from many different perspectives and in creative ways.

As picture thinkers, dyslexics easily become confused by things that do not make sense to their non-verbal, picture thinking style. They have fewer issues with words whose meaning they can picture, such as “dog”, “rainbow”, “dinosaur” but they often make mistakes with words like “as”, “so”, “just” in their reading.

To give an example, a client I worked with identified that she could read and spell the word “as” but she doesn’t understand the meaning and hence when constructing a sentence, used it incorrectly. In order to help her master the word, she needs to create all 3 parts of the word - the meaning, the spelling and the pronunciation.

One of the more commonly used meaning for the word “as” is - at the same time that. The way she captured the concept of that meaning is to make a clown and an elephant, both balancing on the ball at the same time - As the elephant balances on the ball, the clown does the same. To her, that clay model embodies her understanding of what “as” means. Once she has a way to think with a picture of the meaning of that word, the word doesn’t confuse her anymore.

Besides punctuation marks (touched on in my earlier post), another source of confusion for dyslexics which impacts their reading comprehension is the common sight words, which makes up about 75% of each page of text.

Dyslexics tend to think primarily in pictures and images as opposed to words. They typically get confused by the common sight words because they cannot picture the meaning. When they cannot picture those words, they cannot make sense of what they read. They are merely mouthing the words they see in a text.

A way to assess whether they know what they are reading is to get them to retell the story. Identify how many facts they can recall.

Also, ask them questions (both explicit and implicit) about the passage and you will notice that they struggle to give you the correct answers, especially the implicit ones where they will need to draw an inference or they’ll give a different version from what was in the text.

Very often while reading, dyslexics will also trip up on those high frequency words, either omitting, substituting or altering those words.

Ron Davis, the creator of the Davis Dyslexia Correction Programme says, “if you remove the reason why a problem exits, the problem ceases to exist”. Therefore, knowing the why is critical in identifying the solutions in order to eliminate the problems.

In my previous post, I wrote about how confusion causes dyslexia. To illustrate further, let’s now look at how confusion with punctuation marks, one of the symbols we encounter in languages, impacts comprehension for dyslexics.

Some time back, I worked with an adult dyslexic. She is a good reader and spelling is not an issue, but she struggles to comprehend what she is reading. While she reads fluently, her reading pace was quite fast and she was not aware whenever she made reading mistakes.

I then identified that she did not have a good understanding of some of the punctuation marks used. Punctuation gives meaning to what we are reading. The lack of certainty on what each punctuation mark means leaves us with uncertainty as to how to interpret the sentence read. This then gives rise to confusion. To resolve that confusion, dyslexics need to have full mastery of the punctuation marks.

There is still a lack of accurate understanding of what dyslexia is. Ron Davis, the creator of the Davis Dyslexia Correction Programme says that “dyslexia is not a complexity. It is a compound of simple factors that can be dealt with step-by-step”.

Simply put, what you see your child experiencing stems from confusion. Confusion (with words, symbols, environment, etc) is what caused dyslexia. The more confused a dyslexic is, the more the dyslexic symptoms (such as letter reversal, making reading mistakes, especially with the high frequency words like ‘of’, ‘from’, ‘this’, etc) will show.

Conversely, the dyslexic symptoms will diminish when the confusion is replaced with certainty. Without addressing the source of confusion, a child will continue to show inconsistency in his/her learning.

Did you know that dyslexics can think and visualise in 3D images? This perceptual talent is also one of the contributing factors to their learning difficulties.

This video provides a good explanation on how this perceptual talent works and how it causes mistakes in a learning situation when it is engaged.

I first met Kilian, the main character in the book early this year when I provided intervention to him. While observing how I work with Kilian, his mother, Katherine was inspired which led to her writing this children's book to help young children understand their dyslexia.

A truly inspirational book borne out of a mother's love for her dyslexic son. It captured the heart of a parent who witnessed her son's struggles with learning difficulties.

More than that, it was written to bring hope and encouragement to young children, to help them understand the unique way they think and learn and to embrace their strengths to help them overcome their challenges.

Colourfully illustrated with an ocean theme, it would definitely appeal to the imaginative minds of our wonderfully creative dyslexics.

The book is now available on Amazon and the kindle version is free until 1 January 2024. Don't wait! Get hold of a copy to bless someone you know who needs a book like this.