Not sure if anyone can help with this but here goes.

I have severe problems with Maths. I can handle petty cash but can't do big sums, and financial information frightens me, so my Dad handles all of my finances. I still struggle to fill in cheques, despite being shown how to do so on numerous occasions.

I have always had Maths and shape problems, as well as visual-spatial difficulties. However, I learnt to read very quickly, but did not know the alphabet until I was over 7 years old. An educational psychologist report showed, when I was 10 years old, that I had a massive discrepancy between my verbal and performance abilities, and they thus called me 'an enigma' - this was years before my AS diagnosis.

Just wanted to post about this site I just found that may have some useful info on for you;

http://www.dyscalculia.org

Ming I have this exact problem with my daughter, maths is an area she is really struggling with. She is above average with reading/writing but her maths is below average. Like your son you can ask her a maths question, something simple like 10+12 and she will sometimes get it, ask her straight after what 12+10 is and she seems unable to process that it's the same question and will have the same result even when I tell her the numbers are just swapped around she will still sit and struggle to add it up. 

I've tried bringing it up with her teacher but she doesn't see it as a problem, even after I stressed just how much she struggles and how one minute she can get it and the next she has no idea what she's doing. She came home from school once upset because they'd had maths and they'd been using calculators and all the other kids got their questions right except her, she'd only got 3 questions right. I couldn't understand how she'd got the answers wrong when they were using a calculator, so I gave her some questions and a calculator and watched her do them she got the first few right, then she had 9+12 and she typed it in right and it showed up the answer '21' she wrote down 51. So I asked her to just check again and she did and said 51, so I typed in 22 on the calculator and asked what number it was and she said 55. 

She often gets her numbers mixed up putting 6 instead of 9 or writing S instead of 5, I brought this up with the teacher who again didn't think it was a problem but she's in year 3 surely she should not still be making the same mistakes as when she was in reception. She's been learning maths since pre-school so in total 4 years now and she will still check with me whether + means add, - is subtract, when I ask her if she doesn't know she laughs nervously and says yes but she needs to check (I always reassure her that it's okay if she doesn't know but then she becomes defensive and embarassed).

Another problem she has is that she's a very visual thinker something her year 2 teacher picked up on and she did in the last few weeks try to help my daughter more and asked us in to show us some games we could play etc to help her. She no longer gets that help in school now she is in year 3 but when she has maths homework we use visual methods (her monster high doll obsession) to help her. So if she has simple sums like 13+8 we get 13 dolls and place them in one pile and 8 dolls and place them in another and she can do the sum. Same with if the number gets bigger 52+33, we have 2 piles still but we use the girls as the units and the boys as the tens. So instantly she can see that she has 8 boy dolls out and 5 girl dolls and she almost instantly says 85, wheras if she tried to work it out in her head or on her fingers she will sit for a good few minutes before getting the answer wrong and she becomes increasingly frustrated with it.

I'm pretty sure she has dyscalculia as she often does things like misses numbers out when she counts and if she has to count in 2's it takes her quite a while and she can get muddled up and still doesn't fully know her left from right but her teacher is adamant that she will improve.

I do wonder how far behind the teacher will allow her to fall before allowing her extra support, we had her report last week and it has predictions for end of year achievements based on their current level/understanding. For her year they excpect the kids to be a 2a/3c in the 3 r's, she is expected to be 3c in writing, 2a in reading and 2c in maths and yet nothing is being done about that. Again it's on our shoulders to get her help and I'm having to look for a private maths tutor as well as do what I can to help her now.

Some other things I do to help is buy her little maths books aimed at kids, so she had a tinkerbell one the other week and she loved doing it as again it was very visual and she got most of the questions right. I've downloaded maths apps on my tablet that she plays now and again and any opportunity I can to bring maths up I do. So if she wants to get a comic that costs £2.99, I ask her how much change she will have if I giver her 500 pennies in the form of a £5 note, most of the time she will get muddled but now and again she manages it. We also have exercise breaks in the middle of homework time because she starts to get fidgety and her OT has said she needs alot of physical movement to self-regulate, so we will do maybe 5 sums and then I tell her to run around the house, do star jumps etc for a few minutes and then she is calm enough to concentrate again.

I hope you find something that works for your son Ming, good luck :)

I may not be so much about the sensory environment as how much you're asking him to do.

I remember when I was young my parents sent me for extra maths tuition, and, even though I'm really good at maths, I found it increasingly difficult to do the maths problems I was being asked to do, and they were only simple addition and multiplication problems, but the tutor stood over me a lot of the time, and was trying to force me to do them quicker, and quicker, and quicker, but the more she did that the harder I found it to think.

Thank you.  I will try that as well.

I sometimes find that if you give me a question with loads of words in, it's harder. (information overload?) Whereas if you remove many words and leave me with just the important words, I'm ok.

Thank you.  I had thought about this.  Although we do have a really effective sensory diet for him both in and out of school and make sure when we are working that we are in a quiet room with as little distraction as possible as you say it may well be internal thoughts that are occupying his mind. 

Thank you for that.  Looks like I have a bit of reading to do this weekend.  At a quick glance it certainly seems to fit.

He may simply be becoming overwhelmed.

I often can not access knowledge I know I have, usually words, and in particular names and dates.

I think this happens when I get overwhelmed either by external sensory inputs or internal thoughts and feelings.

I believe this is quite a common problem for people on the spectrum.

I am currently working with a young teenager who evidences similar behaviour.  He has a diagnosis of dyscalculia and I'm wondering if that may have anything to do with your own situation?

The issue appears to be about understanding.  I can remember, for instance, having heard it so many times and in so many ways, that e = mc squared, but I haven't a clue what the formula means or how I might manipulate it.  Dyscalculic children seem to have similar difficulties with the hidden meanings behind numeric symbols.

In my student's case a recent instance was that we were doing two and three digit addition sums such as 19 + 7 = 26.  This involves adding 7 to 9 to get 16 and carrying 10 into the adjacent column.  What emerged was that he carried the '1' which symbolizes 10 and which is enough to complete a range of sums but actually had no idea that the '1' represented 10.  

Just a thought.

I am not sure it is that he does not understand as I can ask him once and he will know the answer and then another time he will not have a clue.  I think it is a fair point that he may well need teaching both ways separately.  It is do hard to for me to understand that it is now obvious to him that 3 x 6 is 18 although he has just told me that 6 x 3 is 18.

I did ask him last night what was going on in his head when he did not know the answers and he told me that sometimes the information just fades away and it is harder to get to and sometimes it is just there.  Sort of makes sense but I have no idea how to help him with that.

He may not understand what you're asking him?

hello Ming,

i educated my daughter at home for years and at the moment my son is home school, ive come across this too.  Maybe it isnt that he does not know, it could just be his way of saying ive had enough of doing this. who knows?. Although dont persume this is the case, My daughter used to not relate the facts, if you learned her that 75% was 3/4 that was exactly what she learned not also that each meant the other, for her to learn that you would have to specifically teach her that 3/4 was 75% if you understand what i mean.