How Dyscalculia Impacts Getting Out the Door on Time

It felt like my daughter was always late. It was especially obvious when we tried to get out the door each morning for school. I constantly felt frustrated by her inability to be ready to go when we needed to. Until I realized WHY she was having trouble…

Initially I assumed she needed some of the usual helps to get out the door on time. Things like, putting the shoes and socks near the door, having her clothes laid out, packing her backpack the night before, even a checklist of all the things she needed to do each morning.

Those were all helpful tips and tricks. But for my daughter, those didn’t solve the real problem. When we looked deeper at what was going on, we realized the troubles were because she had no sense of time.

Reading a clock was so complicated to her, even if she looked at the clock and saw what time it was, that didn't translate to knowing how much time she had left until we needed to leave. It didn't translate that as she was getting ready, time was going by and she was using up time.

Time is an abstract idea. It's an abstract concept that involves numbers and quantity, something that dyscalculics do not innately have. So this abstract idea of an amount of time and matching that up with an amount of tasks that she needs to get done, it was too complicated for my daughter. She simply couldn't track it. She would go about her morning doing the things she knew she needed to do, but she wasn't able to make that connection with how much time was left. She also couldn't estimate time, such as how much time was needed to get dressed or how much time she needed to brush her teeth. She couldn't do any of these things that so many of us just innately do.

All the lists in the world and all the things pre-packed the night before were not going to help her with this issue.

It's really important when you have a student or child with dyscalculia that you can take a step back and realize that their lack of an innate sense of estimating numbers, time, quantity, it's going to impact things like getting ready and getting out the door on time - anything that's a timed task.

One of the tools we use is we use a Time Timer Visual Timer. Over time, my daughter has become used to visually seeing and then sensing how much different lengths of time feel like in the day. This is one tool that helps her. Line Rothman has a TEDx talk on how she has connected lengths of a song playlist with how much time she needs on her commute.

There are different creative ways to help with getting out the door on time. They all begin with an understanding of the core issue as being a lack of an understanding of time, where they are in time, and how to track and measure that time.