Understanding time

[Dudley]

My son is 12 and really struggles to understand time . He is adopted with trauma background and is likely dyslexic. I just don’t get why time is such a difficult concept. 
 

Couple of years ago we were reading my fathers dragon about a boy telling a story about his dad as a boy. We had to stop after that description. That was way too complicated for him.

.Yesterday Dad was talking about how we were married 29 years ago and he asked if he was alive then? Today we were working on setting up a timeline for history and he was getting exasperated because he was so confused. I put today on the time line , when he was born and when he came to the US. I was seriously messing with his brain. 
 

Time seems like such a straight forward idea. 
Everyday we talk about what the plan is for tomorrow and then we live the plan. 
 

Topping on the cake is he has learned to read the digital clock but just reads the first number. So twice in the last day we had significant discussion(arguments ) over the fact that 9:55 is or is not 10. 
 

Sorry I’m just ranting because I don’t know what to do

[Rosie_0801]

Read up on dyscalculia.

And go back to an analog clock for now. Can he skip count by 5's?

How is he with place value?

I suggest you explain dyscalculia to him. It might help him trust a little more.

[Dudley]

20 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Read up on dyscalculia.

And go back to an analog clock for now. Can he skip count by 5's?

How is he with place value?

I suggest you explain dyscalculia to him. It might help him trust a little more.

he hates the analog clock so will use the digital whenever he can. We have made progress with the digital, but there is a lot of relearning  that goes on each time. And the concept of elapsed time  on the analog clock is also very difficult

Every time a  place value section comes up in math it feels like a disaster and usually leaves me in tears. I think we are making progress, but still. That is another significant learning issue. 

counting by five has been a struggle. We have made progress there too. He can. At this point he struggles to count on from a number by 5s 

I guess I do need to look into dyscalculia …

thanks

[Rosie_0801]

It is reasonable to hate the analog clock, seeing how he doesn't know how to use it, and it may not be a hill you want to die on, but he can't understand the digital clock either. My dd couldn't learn to tell time either until she could skip count. I used the clock to help her do that so it could then help her use the clock. After that, it wasn't a huge transition to digital. Ymmv, of course.

The best thing I've found for place value was the Papy minicomputer lessons found in CSMP maths. They also laid the foundation for fractions, for my kid.
http://stern.buffalostate.edu/CSMPProgram/index1.html

There are others on here who have dyscalculic kids and have had successes with other resources. Some do better sticking to one method, others, like mine, do better having to learn multiple methods.

Your boy needs to know these problems are called dyscalculia, that it isn't a character flaw, or an intelligence deficit, just a weird brain thing that makes maths hard to learn and easy to forget. It's frustrating as hell, but he needs to be patient with himself, so he can learn what his calm brain can learn. Nobody can learn when their amygdala is all shouty.

[PeterPan]

Sometimes diagnoses become more apparent with time. Might be time to update evals, get the math SLD diagnosed, and see if anything else is going on. 

[Lecka]

This can be a hard concept because it’s so abstract.

 

Here are some more basic ideas.

 

At times follow a schedule.  Go over the plan ahead of time.  Use time words like first, then, next, after that, later on, etc.  Use time words like beginning, middle, end.  Afterward, talk about what you did (or tell another person) using those words.

 

You can buy/make prompts for this where time words/phrases are provided and you feel in the blanks.  If you see he has trouble with this — it could be needed.

 

Talk about your day using these words.

 

Talk about things that happen over a year this way.

 

Talk about his own life with meaningful moments.  Don’t have it be “him on a timeline.”  Have it be — his life from when he was born to present, related to his own life.  This is going to be more concrete and provides something he can grasp and then later on apply to other timelines.

 

See if he can do summaries of books where he relates events in order and uses terms like “first, then, next.”

 

Very basically (but they can get harder) are using cards and putting them in order.  This could be words or it could be pictures.  
 

Is it this kind of thing, that seems conceptual?

 

I thought at first this question would be more about time passage and awareness of time.  For that I have heard to use a timer can be helpful.  And encourage use of a timer, and encourage figuring out how long things last and using those times to plan a realistic schedule.  
 

It’s hard to know from a short post but you might look into getting an evaluation.  You might get some targeted suggestions that way.  
 

Edit:  if these conceptual and language type of things are not an issue, that is good 🙂

Edited August 17, 2022 by Lecka

[Lecka]

There’s also stuff like yesterday/today/tomorrow, what did you do over the weekend, what do we do on (a day of the week, a holiday), counting how many days until a holiday or birthday, etc.

 

If this is hard, you can take pictures and use them as reminders.

 

This might be too basic, but it’s more concrete in its way.  
 

If you know what he can do, it can make it easier to see what he can’t do, too.  

[Dudley]

I appreciate everyone’s help here. My frustration isn’t stemming from a math point of view at the moment (only because we aren’t starting math till next week, when I will learn how much of a mistake it was to not do math this summer) .but it is helpful to see how his math struggles fit into his lack of concept of time. I have hit brick walls in seeking evals. Don’t know where to look next. 

It’s hard to explain what I see.  I think I’m just surprised he can’t understand that things happened in the past before his awareness and that people grow older . I wish we had pictures of him as a baby or could reinforce the memories he has from his past that help solidify that things and people change with passage of time.  That would probably help. Maybe he hasn’t had enough consistent relationships in his life to see people grow older.

[Rosie_0801]

Weird stuff with time is common enough with dyscalculia, but trauma itself concocts all kinds of weird stuff in our heads and bodies. Egocentricity is a basic coping mechanism as is blanking memory. 
 

I suppose you've read up on trauma and how it works?

[Storygirl]

If you are in the United States, your local school district is required to provide free evaluations to children suspected of learning disabilities, even if you are homeschoolers. A bunch of us on the LC boards have done this and can provide guidance, if it would help.

I agree that this sounds like it could be dyscalculia. Math disability is common with people who have dyslexia. My daughter who has dyslexia struggles with reading a clock. She's 17 and has definitely had instruction and intervention, but it's still hard for her.

Problems with understanding the passage of time and history could be related to dyscalculia, or it could be something else. Does he have trouble with social/pragmatic language? If you are not familiar, you can research that term to see if it rings a bell.

With a trauma history, it would likely take some specialty evaluations beyond what the public school offers, to get a fuller picture of the issues, but the school is one place to start.

You might also look into adoption resources. Some children's hospitals will have adoption centers to help with related issues. If the child came to your family as an older child, there may be gaps and delays related to adoption. Talking to a social worker or adoption specialist might help you figure some things out.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Storygirl

[PeterPan]

20 hours ago, Dudley said:

I have hit brick walls in seeking evals. Don’t know where to look next. 

It’s hard to explain what I see.

Have you explained this to your pediatrician? If there's insurance coverage to pay for it, the pediatrician can refer you for evals. This severe lack of sense of time is noteworthy and if he's worth his salt the ped will know what to do with it. 

[Lecka]

Here are some things I’ve had explained to me about abstract thought.

 

To remember things, you have to process them in some way.  Usually this is through language, and you make a little summary or narrative, highlighting key details or an answer to “why” something happened.  “This happened because this happened.”  For a visual memory you notice key, salient details. 
 

Sometimes people can have memories they haven’t processed in this way and then they process them later and make sense of their memories later.  
 

Sometimes people just don’t remember.  Or the information they took in at the time is too chaotic or scattered to make sense of it.  
 

So then — this is your memory and you recognize “gestalts” which are like main ideas of things.  You recognize patterns.  You have to have lots of stored memories that you remember and can compare and contrast to each other.

 

If an example is Christmas — there is a  “main idea” of all the things we associate with Christmas.  First we have to know what those things are.  If we don’t — it can seem random, things don’t fit into a framework (which is how we make sense of the world).

 

Then we can say what the most memorable things are and that has context with previous memories.  This can be what’s the same and what’s different.  This can be why something happened.

 

When we have a storehouse of information about Christmas, we can devote more thought to the things that are relevant, important, or special.  Instead of getting hung up on details that are not as important.  And maybe not noticing the things we “should” notice.  And then failing to form memories in which we have noticed the relevant things and associated “why” things happened.

 

And to compare the past to the present, you have to do all the remembering, summarizing (or processing etc), and then compare and contrast.  It’s a lot to do. There are a lot of steps where things can be hard.

 

So this is kind-of how I have had it explained to me “abstract thinking is very complex and hard.”  
 

Because it’s true, these are things that usually happen pretty automatically only through exposure and normal/minimal interaction.   But it’s still very complex!  

[Lecka]

I have read a couple of accounts of people with autism who learned this way at a later time in life (as teenagers  or young adults).

So for normal daily life — at the time it was happening, they didn’t “make sense of it” and experienced it as random things happening.  

For some people they remembered some “random” things associated with a strong emotion.  
 

Their memory with making sense of things, being able to remember well and compare and contrast…. Started as they were making progress in autism therapy.  I read one where he didn’t like to remember before that because it made him sad and upset.  
 

I have also read one where the person processed a lot of their earlier memories and was able to “make a narrative” and then pick out “why things happened” and just be able to have their memories make sense to them.  
 

I guess those are the two accounts I read but they were presented like each one was something that could happen.  
 

I have also seen that autism can be similar to trauma if:  the person with autism experiences the world as chaotic and not making sense.  With trauma the world can be chaotic and things can happen in a random way that doesn’t make sense or just isn’t the way it should be.  
 

With autism there are things where parents say “but they weren’t traumatized” but if you look at it that they had a perception where they didn’t know why things were happening and things seemed random, and they had strong emotions at times without knowing why, etc, it does make sense.  It’s something where I think it has a helpful side and is valuable.  

[Kanin]

Does he understand "before" and "after?" 

I worked with a kid once who did not understand this. For example, I put a bunch of toys in a line. If I said, "Which toy is right after the truck?" he wouldn't know what I was talking about. He had to be explicitly taught before and after (and then lots more prepositions.... between, nearby, etc).

So, saying "15 minutes after 2" would be really hard if he doesn't know before/after.  

 

[Dudley]

@Storygirl I have requested Evals from school district. They first required a English proficiency test. He had been in country 2 1/2 yrs at that point and conversed very well, but could hardly read or write. I was interpreting some issues He was having as audio processing problems and it felt like their test showed his problems (he struggles to listen and follow directions especially multi step )  and not how far he had come in learning English. They said the problems I see were typical of traditional language learners. So they would not pursue any testing. I was pretty angry.  And the psychologist we were referred to by primary is impossible to get into, they are booked 6 mo out and actually wouldn’t even schedule me. I’ve called for the last 3 months 
 

@Kanin I think he generally understands before and after. He does often confuse yesterday and tomorrow, which I just attributed to a language learning issue , whetting the words mixed up not the concepts, but maybe I’m wrong.

[Kanin]

11 hours ago, Dudley said:

@Kanin I think he generally understands before and after. He does often confuse yesterday and tomorrow, which I just attributed to a language learning issue , whetting the words mixed up not the concepts, but maybe I’m wrong.

Hmm. Might be worth investigating this a bit more. 

[PeterPan]

On 8/19/2022 at 2:04 AM, Dudley said:

I have requested Evals from school district. They first required a English proficiency test. He had been in country 2 1/2 yrs at that point and conversed very well, but could hardly read or write. I was interpreting some issues He was having as audio processing problems and it felt like their test showed his problems (he struggles to listen and follow directions especially multi step )  and not how far he had come in learning English.

They should have gotten you an SLP who was fluent in his native language who could do the eval considering both. This is a thing but it's harder to find. If those school evals were recent, you could file a dispute and compel them to pay for fresh evals.

On 8/19/2022 at 2:04 AM, Dudley said:

they are booked 6 mo out

Yes, every psych right now is booked out 6-9 months because of covid. There's just a terrible backlog, and psychs have their own issues (getting covid, health, etc.). If you need evals, you're going to have to call around till you find someone who IS booking and get on their list.