Tips for Supporting a Child with Dyscalculia

See also: Understanding Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia is a specific learning difficulty that affects the ability to process and understand numbers, or understanding the concept of quantity. People with dyscalculia have problems recognising and using numbers and mathematical concepts. They may find it hard to understand addition or subtraction. Ironically, however, they often cope well with subjects such as geometry or algebra.

Our page on Supporting Children with Dyslexia and Dyscalculia outlines general ways in which parents can help children with these specific learning difficulties. However, there are also ways in which parents can help children with dyscalculia in particular. This page explains some of these.

Tips for Supporting Children with Dyscalculia

These tips can be used at any age, and with any child with dyscalculia. However, some of them may be more appropriate at older or younger ages.

1. Play games with dice and dominoes

One of the simplest, but most effective ways that you can help children with dyscalculia to develop their number awareness is by playing games that involve dice or dominoes.

However, there is a catch.

It is important to encourage children NOT to simply count the dots, especially as they become more familiar with the shapes on the tiles or dice. Instead, they should use their familiarity to build up an understanding of the concept of each of those numbers, and how it might appear.

It is helpful to show them how larger numbers such as 5 and 6 are made up of smaller numbers. For example, on the ‘5’ side of the dice, you can see the same patterns as on the ‘3’ and ‘2’ faces.

The pictures on both dice and dominoes help children to get a mental picture of numbers. This helps them to understand how numbers work.

2. Play games, don’t do worksheets

On a similar note, it is almost always more effective to play games or do activities than to try to engage children in doing worksheets.

This goes for all children, but particularly for those with dyscalculia, who may already have developed some kind of ‘maths anxiety’.

A game that involves dice and counting—such as Snakes and Ladders, or Ludo—will always be more fun, and your child probably won’t even realise that they are learning.

If you don’t want to play games, everyday activities like baking or shopping can be useful substitutes. You can count the number of cups or spoonfuls of each ingredient that go into the bowl, and look at the different ways to make up a quantity like 100g. You can look at the numbers on the scales as you weigh something out, and watch how they go up. These are good ways to introduce the importance of numbers in everyday life. When you go shopping, ask your child to help. Counting three apples or the number of bananas in the bunch won’t seem like maths—but will help them to learn.

3. Help your child to learn mathematical concepts using blocks or other tangible objects

Maths is a very abstract subject.

Anything that you can do to make it more tangible, and less abstract, will help.

Stones, beads, Lego blocks, sticks—all these can help children to grasp mathematical concepts like addition, subtraction, and even equations. Using tangible objects that your child can move around and hold makes everything much clearer.

This is why primary school teachers use aids like number lines, and you can reinforce this at home. You can even help your child to understand positive and negative numbers by counting up and down squares on the pavement as you go for a walk.

4. Use mathematical terms—and particularly synonyms

Children with dyscalculia often have very good language skills. It is therefore a good idea to introduce mathematical terms early on. However, it is especially important to use several synonyms for each concept, to help them understand that these are concepts, not simply words.

Sometimes children don’t understand one particular term, but using another can help to demystify the situation.

For example:
‘Subtract’ is the same as ‘take away’ or ‘decrease’. You are more likely to use ‘take away’ in everyday language than subtract.
‘Equals’ is the same as ‘is the same as’ or ‘equivalent to’.



5. Beyond tangibles, create visual models and pictures

Help your child by creating visual models and pictures of mathematical situations.

Graphs are one form of visual model of a mathematical situation—but there are many others. Some experts recommend things like moving furniture about in a room, or just drawing pictures of the situation. This allows you to go beyond what you can achieve with blocks or bricks, and explore more complex problems and situations.

6. Help your child to try out different strategies to develop their maths skills

There are many strategies that may help with problems with maths, including dyscalculia. These range from circling keywords or numbers in maths problems, through to using squared paper, calculators and other tools.

Look at what your child finds hard, and see if you can think of anything that might help.

If so, give it a go. If it helps—tell their teacher and ask if that can be incorporated into their maths learning at school.

7. Talk your way through maths problems

You may be able to work through maths problems in your head—but your child cannot.

As you work through a problem or question, talk through what you are doing. This will help them to understand what is happening. Show them how you reason your way through a problem, and encourage them to do the same.

Top tip! A two-step process?


As your child’s maths gets more complicated, it may be more helpful for you to work out the problems yourself first, then explain it.

This will be particularly helpful if you may have several ‘false starts’, or if you realise that there is a better way once you have finished.

It will avoid confusing your child about the method you have used, and will enable you to show them clearly what you have done.

It has the drawback that you can’t model repeated failure and trying a different method—but you can’t have everything.

8. Talk about time and direction as you go about your life

Quantity is very hard for anyone with dyscalculia to understand.

In everyday life, this is likely to make concepts like time and direction quite difficult.

It is therefore a good idea to talk about these things as you go about your life with your child. This will help to familiarise them with how long it takes to do things.

However, be careful that you are using time accurately. It’s very easy to say that you’re going in ‘two minutes’ and then keep talking for another ten or fifteen minutes when you are with friends. However, that gives your child a very distorted idea of the value of two minutes.

Up, down, left and right are also difficult concepts. Anything you can do to make them less abstract will help. With small children, it is a good idea to say things like ‘Up the stairs!’ as you take them up to bed, or ‘Down you go!’ when you lift them out of the car or they get down from the table at the end of a meal.

9. Build your relationship with your child’s school and teachers

It is always important to have a good relationship with your child’s school and teachers.

It is doubly important when your child has a specific learning difficulty.

You need to know what is happening in school, and what strategies they are using. Similarly, they need to know what you have found helpful—and where your child has struggled. You may find it easier to have these conversations when your child is in primary school. However, it is important to try to continue throughout secondary school, even if your discussions are mediated through the Special Educational Needs Coordinator or your child’s form teacher.

10. Consider specialist tutoring

If your child is really struggling, it may be helpful to find a specialist tutor with experience of teaching children with dyscalculia.

An hour a week of specialist support could make a lot of difference.

Dyscalculia is surprisingly common. It affects about one in 20 children, which means that on average, one child in each class is likely to be affected. However, most teachers are likely to be unaware or at least uninformed about the condition, and how to help children with dyscalculia. With the best will in the world, they are also unable to provide one-to-one assistance all the time in a classroom situation.

A specialist tutor will be able to give your child that one-to-one attention for the duration of their lesson. They can help to develop their understanding, and explain complex concepts in different ways. Later on in your child’s school career, they can supplement maths lessons in school with more information, or alternative models, or simply more time.


And Finally...

Always, always praise your child for the effort that they put in.

Their attainment really doesn’t matter all that much in comparison. Seeing that you recognise how hard they are working just to stand still is likely to be crucial to the self-esteem and self-confidence of children with dyscalculia.


TOP