What Is Dyscalculia? How To Deal With This Learning Disability?

Summary: Life has its own shades. Some are born with silver spoons in the mouth while some others work very hard all through their life, to make even the simplest of living. And there are still others, who are born to live with both the shades of life, mostly the latter part. Such are the people who are born with learning disability- Dyscalculia. People living with dyscalculia disability have very strong language skills and their vocabulary is many a times better than the normal pe...

Life has its own shades. Some are born with silver spoons in the mouth while some others work very hard all through their life, to make even the simplest of living. And there are still others, who are born to live with both the shades of life, mostly the latter part. Such are the people who are born with learning disability- Dyscalculia. People living with dyscalculia disability have very strong language skills and their vocabulary is many a times better than the normal people. They are very creative and can excel in the field of science and geometry. And their logic base is quite strong. But their excellence simply slides off when it comes to handle formula based equations. They find difficulty in performing calculations, counting efficiently, or for that matter, performing whole of mathematical calculations. But this does not mean that they are mentally retarded. A person who is suffering from the disability disorder like dyscalculia with no doubts has normal intelligence levels. Well, dyscalculia is not a very common form of disability. It is termed as "disease of the absent-minded." Recent Studies have shown that dyscalculia has gentical links. Therefore, many of the theories that were put worth in explaining the true cause of this disability have been held void. Thus, there are chances that if a father or mother is suffering from dyscalculia, then the progeny might also get afflicted. Scientists are working harder in the direction of finding out the causes or the adverse chemical reactions that occur in the genes, leading to this disability. There are several symptoms that confirm the presence of dyscalculia. The most visible and common one is poor affliction to mathematical calculations. A person suffering from dyscalculia will generally have difficulty in distinguishing the four common mathematical signs: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This puts them in a difficulty to balance equations. Also they are unable to differentiate between larger and smaller numbers. For them, all numbers, say, 1, 5 or 8, are similar, carrying the same value. Besides this, dyscalculia-afflicted people are predominantly absent-minded people. As a result of which they are unable to keep a track of any work or activity that involves sequences or use of active memory. For instance, such a person will find it difficult to remember the sequences of a dance set up. They are also unable to recall the events that have happened in the past because of short memory. They are also poor in remembering the rules of any game. But the world is not finished here. A child with dyscalculia needs proper training and assistance to overcome the disability. The parents as well as teachers need to make efforts in the right direction. Help child by making him use fingers, colored papers, diagrams, graph papers, colored pencils to differentiate the mathematical problems. Draw pictures or flowcharts to explain the concepts and problem sums. Apart from these, you can use several other methods to train the child.