Dyspraxia and maths

Dyspraxia doesn’t determine intelligence.

You can be great at English, maths and science yet hopeless at throwing a ball, tying your shoelaces, and mastering chopsticks. Maths, in fact, was a key indicator for both my daughter and me that dyspraxia explained so many of our struggles.

Throughout school I found the vast majority of maths topics easy to learn. During year 10 I was asked by the Head of Maths to represent the school in a city-wide maths competition; that same year he also asked me to take GCSE Statistics in addition to maths. I said ‘no’ to the first (I wasn’t giving up a Saturday) and ‘yes’ to the second (an extra GCSE was enticing).

So I was relatively capable in maths. Same for my daughter, who consistently got 90% when taking past papers ahead of her recent exams. Yet there are a handful of topics whose questions we have to try that little bit harder to answer - that just don’t come as naturally.

Some examples:

• Rotation of shapes;

• Drawing graphs (not interpreting already-drawn versions); and,

• Using tools like compasses and protractors.

Sketching 3D shapes is where we tip from having to try a bit harder to full-on struggles. Both my daughter and I can confidently calculate the volume or surface area of a three-dimensional shape, but ask us to reproduce the shape by sketching it and you’ll see a clumsy attempt at a cuboid.

How about you? If you find these tasks more cognitively taxing than, say, algebra or probability, maybe it’s an indicator of dyspraxia.