As a parent of two young kids, it felt in many moments that a huge part of my job was to help them grasp the idea of time. This meant teaching them how to tell time, how to keep track of time gone by or time remaining, and when it’s time to use the bathroom!

I remembered having my share of parental frustration over my children lacking a sense of time. As they grew, our eldest daughter did not grasp what seemed like common sense for telling time. She also lagged behind in knowing how to calculate time such as figuring how much more time she had to play before bed.

“Didn’t you learn how to tell time in school?” I queried one day out of frustration that she couldn’t tell what time it was on our mantel clock.

I wondered if maybe I needed to take matters into my own hands, so several times I sat down with her, explaining how a clock and time works. It was confusing to her, but she seemed to get it mostly, only to not remember how to read the clock the very next day. I remember even being annoyed and thinking that this child wasn’t even trying to learn how to tell time, she was just being lazy.

It was eye-opening when our other daughter, who is almost three years younger, began to read the clock with ease, while our eldest daughter still couldn’t figure it out.

On some occasions our daughter would say, “Wait, Mom” and proceed to stare up at the clock mumbling to herself, pointing, and counting on her fingers. It seemed maybe she was going to figure it out, only to turn around and proudly announce the wrong time. It was a rare occasion that she had the correct time.

Some people suggested that a digital clock would be better for her. Right. Well, here’s the deal with that. If my daughter sees 9:15, all she knows is that the hour is 9 and the minute is 15. She doesn’t know that 9:20 is five minutes away, she doesn’t know how long it is until 10am, and she certainly doesn’t know she’s 20 minutes late to school, which starts at 8:55. The digital clock can really only tell her what hour she is currently in, it does not give her a sense of where she is in the day.

One day we walked by the digital clock in the hallway at her elementary school. By now she was in the 5th grade and we were well into our learning about Dyscalculia. I was curious, so I asked her how she figured out if she should go straight to class, or go to the playground before school started. “Well”, she said, “If there is an 8 and a 50 (8:50) then I go straight to class. But if it says “8” and any other number I go to the playground.”

Basically, she could only tell what to do if the clock was right on the money at 8:50. The problem was that she didn’t understand that if the clock said 8:49, than it was just a minute before 8:50. There was no understanding of the minutes sequence being 1 through 60, and where any number in there was in relation to the 1-60 sequence. To compound the problem, she didn’t have any sense or feel for how long any amount of time was, be it a minute, 15 minutes, or an hour.

When our daughter was in the fourth grade, her teacher let me know that our daughter had been expressing how stressed out she was about being ready for an appointment with the dentist. The appointment was in late afternoon, yet our daughter was stressed in the morning because she didn’t know when the time would come for the appointment, and she wanted to be ready. The teacher tried to explain she was hours away, but that wasn’t helpful to our daughter because she had no feel for what hours meant. In her experience the time to go to the appointment would be suddenly upon her and catch her unaware.

It’s a tricky thing to live in a culture so time-centric when you don’t have a sense of time and have trouble telling time. Sometimes I think about how she’s more wired to live in a culture that has a more flexible understanding of time.

Anyway, because we live where we do, we have adopted a few tricks to help her through the time hurdles.

About a year ago we created a unique clock for her to use. We purchased a wood clock at Target with no glass, so we could access the face of the clock, and with no numbers. We then marked out each hour with different pieces of colored paper, showing the whole hour clearly with the hour-numbers in the middle of the colored area. As the hour clock moves through the hour, she can clearly see what hour she in, which is much less confusing to her. She also added small minute designations around the clock to help her get an approximation of the minutes.

View a YouTube video on this clock here.

A year later I was reading something that helped me understand why this one aspect of an analogue clock is confusing to Dyscalculia learners. It was from Ronit Bird’s in one of her e-books:

Number tracks are constructed from discrete areas, with a defined space being allocated to each number and with each successive space allocated to the next consecutive number… By contrast, number lines are much more abstract… On a number line there is no area that corresponds to a particular number. Instead of areas, points are used to mark the position of numbers, which may or may not be consecutive numbers. This means that any given length on a number line shows the 'space between' two numbers. This is the cause of the confusion that so many dyscalculic children suffer from: they feel constantly muddled about whether they should be ‘counting’ numbers themselves, or the steps between numbers.

- Ronit Bird, from her e-book “Exploring Numbers Through Cuisenaire Rods,” 2013. Apple Books. Page 88)

Our daughter loves her new clock, which has a defined space for each hour. At one point she even made a little key showing what her day looked like. Six of the colors were the hours she was in school. Dinner was the Orange hour, Bedtime was Blue, etc. Now she sees the clock each morning, knowing that when the minute hand reaches the top of the clock, she needs to be headed downstairs dressed and ready for breakfast.

Another valuable tool we purchased when we had toddlers, but still use to this day, is the Time Timer. It doesn’t help with telling time per se, but it helps our daughter visually SEE how much time she has. I set the Time Timer before we leave the house so she can see how much time she has to get ready. I use this tool daily for all sorts of timing such as time before bed, how long we will have a quiet time, and how much time before dinner. It gives her the ability to visibly see and have a better feel for time, which has drastically reduced her anxiety about time.

I have more to say about the unique time difficulties related to Dyscalculia and will write more about this topic and share more stories as there are so many interesting angles to it.

While the concept of time used to be a huge frustration for our family, we are now in a much more relaxed place of understanding and have ways of successfully navigating the differences. Now, you may even find our family playfully laughing and teasing together about how each of us has a different experience of time!

If you want to learn more about dyscalculia awareness, education, and support, you can receive a new article from me each Saturday. Privacy respected, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.