To my clever, mathematically adept father's chagrin and my shame, I could never reach an answer in my head, because I had forgotten the result of the first part of the question. I only began to understand multiplication and division, when I did this with physical objects: lining up multiples and dividing them into equal parts. Reading questions aloud, helped me comprehend what was being asked and writing down my working out, helped me keep track of where I had reached, in my processing. Learning mathematical tables was for me, like learning an incomprehensible foreign language that neither related to anything, nor meant anything.
In adulthood, dyscalculia raises its head in remembering dates, times, door numbers, numbers in groups or numbers of absentees and this is why I have to write these down. I can never recall the date, when something happened, from memory. Also, my dyscalculia means I cannot remember new procedures, which involve retaining a previous action and building on, in further steps. This is particularly so frustrating, in IT, because, by the time I have completed a process, I have forgotten how I started it and I feel such an imbecile, having to ask again. I cope by writing down each step and it is only through repetition that these become embedded. Certainly, people who show me one way and then show me another, do not realise the stress this causes, as I fight to remember just one of those ways.
To help others:
* I recap very often
* Separate concepts, one at a time
* and keep them understandable, by relating them to: etymology, history, geography, biology and physics.
