I, too, can only share our experience. DD8.5 is practing math as I type (akin to Chinese water torture in our house).
She has a province-wide grade 3 math assessment test next week and she is very anxious about it because she knows how poorly she does when required to use a pencil. I have verbally quizzed her on every criteria and that child knows it forwards, backwards and sideways. I gave her a sheet of sample questions and she got 5/10 for silly mistakes.
On her WISC, her working memory was in the 34%-ile. She has an incredibly difficult time keeping numbers straight in her head while manipulating them. It seems that adding the pencil to the equation is the straw that breaks the camel's back for her. She has never gotten better than a "B" in math, yet she is much farther ahead than all the others in her class in 'verbal' knowledge. In her case, this can partially be explained by her ADHD. I, too, worry that there is something more going on. But all of her testing failed to show any other red flags.
