Dyscalculia Help For Adults - Part 2

Typical symptoms across all ages :

• Difficulty counting backwards.

• Difficulty remembering 'basic' facts.

• Slow to perform calculations.

• Weak mental arithmetic skills.

• A poor sense of numbers & estimation.

• Difficulty in understanding place value.

• Addition is often the default operation.

• High levels of mathematics anxiety.

Hopefully, you have read and mastered Dyscalculia Help For Adults part 1 and are ready to move on to part 2?

Have you done your Times Table practice? If not, the naughty corner for you!

You are only hurting yourself by not practising. Get started NOW it only takes 5 mins a day and is fun and easy on sites like www.tablefables.net where visuals are the key to learning.

Below are more areas that might be problematic for you and some solution ideas.

Problem : Poor sense of estimating numbers

Dyscalculia Help For Adults : Another area of life that is tricky is working out percentages %. God how I used to hate those.

% Game :

So you need to work out the 15% tip in a restaurant and the bill is $70.

Step 1

Work out 10% which is $7

Step 2

Divide $7 in half to work out 5%, which is $3.5

Step 3

Add the 10% & 5% together eg $7 & $3.5 = $10.5

Example 2

Now work out 17.5% of $400

Step 1

Work out 10% of $400, which is $40

Step 2

Now divide $40 by 2 to work out 5%. Which is $20

Step 3

To work out 17.5% you need to divide the 5% in half to work out the extra 2.5%

Divide $20 in half to work out the last 2.5%, which is $10

Step 4

Add them all together

$40 + $20 + $10 = $70

You are a GENIUS you just worked out 17.5% of $400

*It will take some practice but your brain will grow and you will be very proud of yourself.

Go conquer the world and no longer feel stupid

Problem - Remembering pin numbers and phone numbers.

Dyscalculia Help For Adults - When pregnant I suddenly thought jesus I had better remember my husbands telephone number incase I go into labour.

But how the hell do I do that when I have dyscalculia?

Neurosurgeon Larry McCleary says “Anything that has no meaning to you is tough to remember”. So you have to make things memorable.

Eg you can remember the word CAT very easily as we know what that looks like, you may have owned a cat or at least stroked one. But try and remember 8743, in half an hour or even 10 mins and you probably can’t as it has no meaning to us.

So how to remember a telephone number?

Tel no : 07814921945

Idea 1 :

Look for patterns eg there are two dates in the number above 1492 and 1945.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus Discovered America

In 1945 the second world war ended

All you have to remember is the 078 at the front. Which could be my Grandfather is 78 and he loves history.

Voila you have just remembered the whole number “My grandfather is 78 and he loves history and Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 and the WW2 ended in 1945.

Repeat this a couple of times and you will remember it. Now you have a number memory like an elephant!

Idea 2 : How the hell do I remember a telephone number?

Tel no : 07814921945

Most brains can only hold a few numbers at a time and dyscalculia ones have more difficulty than most.

So we have to break them down into smaller chunks and makeup funny stories until you remember them eg

07 - when I was 7

81 - I ate 81 sweets &

49 - 49 pieces of dog food and vomited everywhere.

21 - When I was 21

99 - I released 99 balloons in the air but

45 - 45 of them burst and I cried

So the whole story would be - ‘When I was 7, I ate 81 sweets and 49 pieces of dog food and vomited everywhere. Then when I was 21, I released 99 balloons into the air, but 45 of them burst, so I cried.’

*repeat that a couple of times, and you will easily remember that.

**You must make your stories rude, funny or unfortunately violent as that’s what our twisted brains remember the best!

Problem : Remembering Pin Number

Dyscalculia Help For Adults : Remember the pattern not the numbers

Have you ever gone to the bank teller machine and forgotten your PIN? I’ve done it quite frequently until someone told me to remember the pattern of the numbers, not the actual numbers themselves.

Examples

2563 - Looks like a small u on the keypad

1478 - looks like an L

4569 - looks like an L on its side

1379 - Are all the numbers in the corners

Problem : Maths Anxiety

Dyscalculia Help For Adults : The more you make people aware of NUMERICAL DYSLEXIA, the easier it will be to open up about your maths anxieties and begin to fix them.

Talk more about Dyscalculia or numerical Dyslexia so it becomes a normal topic of conversation like Dyslexia.

Joke about your maths problems so you feel less embarrassed / anxious about it.

PRACTICE MORE mental maths eg your Times Table, dividing and addition so you grow more CONFIDENT in your mental maths abilities.

Remember - your brain is PLASTIC and can be reshaped. Check out our section on NEUROPLASTICITY.