My almost 11 year old son has motor dyspraxia and has trouble doing a lot of writing, but he is able, so far, to do math quickly and easily if I let him do it his way which often means writing no more than he has to to get the answer--sometimes writing down only one or two numbers and doing the rest in his head or using a calculator. He is working from an 8th grade math workbook and is able to do the work quickly and accurately but he isn't showing his work.
For example, when using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the unknown length of a side of a right triangle when the other two lengths are known: I would have written everything out, including the formula, but then I didn't have handwriting issues and could do it quickly. He does it by remembering the formula, writing only two numbers and then using the calculator to get the final answer. On easy ones he doesn't even use the calculator, he just does mental math. I know that most people think writing everything out and showing your work is very important, but what if he is able to do the whole problem over again with the shortcut that he came up with that works for him to check his answer? Do I need to worry about this? Will it cause problems later? I think it might be useful to take shortcuts on timed math tests if he ever has to take one.
I sometimes find where other people have asked about dyspraxia and timed math tests like this one at
www.addforums.com/forums//showthread.php?t=24031 and the child sounds like mine but was dealing with these issues in school. The teachers didn't understand and gave him a D when he couldn't do the writing fast enough. There were no answers to the question and it was posted years ago. I wonder if people just give up asking when they can't find answers and think they are the only ones dealing with this.
I asked my younger sister who took a lot more math than I did when she was working toward an engineering degree. She took calculus III when I didn't even know there was a calculus III. I only took college algebra. I thought she might be able to answer my questions. She said she always wrote everything out.
So I thought I would try asking some of these questions here. Is it okay to let my son with handwriting issues do math his own way if he can get the right answer faster than he could by writing everything out?
He seems to be able to remember the formulas for things like surface area of a cylinder without any trouble and doesn't see why he would need to do so much writing if he can do some of it with mental math.
I would love to find someone who is good in math but also has handwriting issues, but so far I have not found anyone.
