Working in AAC with a Child with Numeracy Problems.

Numeracy Woes with a Nonverbal Child

Numbers is a subject I waited a long time to even bother with, as we didn't have much of a need for quantity discussions until she began truly communicating with her AAC device. Also, as I began homeschooling her this year, numeracy became one of the subjects to cross of our todo list. Not so fast, as I discovered!

number apps: not very helpful

As an e-learning app developer, I can appreciate that most of the apps dealing with kids numbers have to move at the pace that the average child would need. They basically go from 0 to 10 in about an hour of play. Even the apps for autistic children tend to flash an image showing quanitity (like 5 apples), then the English symbol for the number 5, and expect that the kid will relate this quantity with this symbol. If the kid can hit the button showing that a couple of times, they move on to another number. And even if the kid gets it WRONG, most of the apps move to another number anyway.

Many number apps focus either on matching quantity of objects to a numeral, or counting. That usually goes sequentially, where they show the each number is a sequence, assuming that the kid is understanding what they see. In my daughter's case, I've seen her arrange numbers all around a ferris wheel in the adorable Todo Math app, without any comprehension that each number represented a large quantity. She also went through all of the numbers in the very sleek Endless Numbers, without being able to answer any questions I posed to her with her talker afterwards about numbers or quantity.

My daughter is pretty awesome at pattern matching, and has an excellent memory. So she can fake these activities amazingly well! She'll get a wrong answer or 2, but through trial and error she manages to move to the next level. Yet that doesn't mean she has understood quantity. Not at all.

possible dycalculia

I realized this when I tried getting her to tell me how many objects were in front of her - using her talker. 1 bean bag. 2 bean bags. 3 bean bags. I could see that despite working with the number symbols 1, 2, and 3 - that she really didn't have any grasp on the fact that these referred to quantities. Wow. Weird, I thought!

So the kid who completed nearly 300 puzzles in a couple weeks in the superb Pooza app created by autism brain researchers at Imagiration, surprised me when it seemed that she just didn't seem to get numbers. I realized that I was going to have to approach this much slower. As in, beginning with 2 numbers: 1, and 2.

But another thing I did was to begin researching. I remembered some kind of dyslexia for numbers, and wondered if maybe she had that. I found that this is called Dyscalculia, and she meets some criteria for it, while not other.

Signs of Dyscalculia

• Doesn't connect numbers to groups of things
• Has trouble sorting things
• Has trouble matching patterns
• Doesn't seem to understand the meaning of counting
• Has trouble connecting number symbols to words (in this case, AAC picture equivalents like dice)

What's weird is TT is very good at sorting, and has great pattern matching skills. But everything else on that list seems to be spot on. So as with many thing, it's up to the parent to give the kid a "possible diagnosis" way before any professional person can do that for you.

what comes next?

Sadly, I deleted all of the ever so cute numbers apps. I installed a few additional apps revolving around number concepts rather than numbers themselves, and in particular found a company called Step by Step with several really nice, free ipad apps that that allow the child to work with the concepts around numeracy, in a mainly visual way. Don't worry that they say they're for ages 1 to 5, they are awesome for autistic children of all ages who need to work on numeracy skills. They designed these apps with special needs kids in mind, and have progress tracking as well as a slower "work at your own speed" pace. I don't know if these apps will make a dent in her numeracy understanding, but they are at least a step in the right direction.

We are trying to focus on her baking as the main method to advance the concept of quantity, as well as the corresponding symbols in her AAC device. I sometimes pull out my full page laminated "1", "2", and "3" pages and try working with her with balls, beanbags, etc - but I'll a admit I don't think that will be as helpful as the baking. To sum up the approach I'm trying:

• slow it down to learning 1 number at a time
• use real world activites where quantity matters, like baking
• get her using her fingers for 1, 2, and 3 whenever I can

It's all trial and error, and I'll certainly write an update if I find something that seems to work well!