The OCD Shopper's Trip to the Supermarket

I went shopping on Black Friday, only it was supermarket shopping and Black Friday hasn’t quite reached rural New Zealand. I should add that I almost never go shopping. That’s not true actually. I never go shopping; there you made me say it.

My longsuffering husband does the shopping and has done since the third child left home. For a while he did it with the fourth child and then by himself. He rather enjoys all the choosing and I absolutely-without-a-doubt-hate it. I used to do it once upon a time. I dragged four small children around with me on reins and in trolleys and could do it in record time. I also did it when we lived in Market Harborough and had no car and I was required to carry all the shopping a mile to my front door and arrive home with jelly arms and leaking bottles of milk. That was in my former, very distracted life of being all things to all family members and I didn’t notice things quite so much.

There’s something about the aisles and lighting nowadays which makes me leave my brain in the turnstily thing you push your reluctant trolley through before you can even begin the shopping process. On Friday I had a list, a very good list which Husband and I share on Google Docs so we can change and update it without me texting him to say, hey, ‘Don’t forget the red wine.’ Now I can sneak it onto the list and watch in the list updates as he deletes it. I can write, Countdown-belly-hugging-knickers and he can write, what size? 

It’s like a little communication war dance or a mating display. I love it. Husband probably doesn’t but I am fortunate in that he’s imbued with amazing patience.

Husband can update it on his phone because he has an android but my Windows 8 won’t let me. Thanks to an obscure argument between Microsoft and Google, I have to scurry home to my laptop to put WINE back on the list, only to watch him wipe it off using his extremely obliging phone.

I’ve said lots of times that I’m OCD and struggle with the offensive aisles full of products of differing colour and shape facing in all sorts of directions. I spend more time turning things around and putting things back which often means I come out with lots of things that weren’t on the list and only some of the items that were. 

For instance I came home with a lonely butternut squash that was bigger than all the rest and messed up the pattern in the crate. Now it sits alone in my vegetable box and matches nothing else because it’s not a potato or kumara. I’ve shut the lid on it and its fate will be sealed with the roast I’m plotting today...or perhaps tomorrow. It’s sunny today and not all the grass is the same length so I have other things to do.

In an hour and a half, Husband can drive the distance to Hamilton and back (20 minutes each way) and do the shopping. On Friday it took me that long to drive to Huntly (5 minutes each way) and do the shopping. In my defence I put many things straight along the way, reshelved items abandoned in the wrong aisle and had lots of meaningless chats.

In the car park I almost lost my trolley into the side of a flash BMW parked next to me but caught it at the last minute. That got me wondering why supermarkets don’t think about their pedestrian-trolley-pushing-shoppers as they angle the tarmac towards large storm drains at the edge. I also don’t know why they direct us towards a path with pedestrian crossings and then shove massive lamp posts in the centre for us to negotiate.

Needless to say I had an interesting morning during which I did no writing. I re-engineered the supermarket car park in my head in which all parking spaces were single and to be entered face first in lines, enabling shoppers to access the back of their vehicles and drive straight out. Behind each vehicle would be two tiny bumps to park our trolleys against during unloading and stop them wandering off to fill another vehicle with tangled metal and food. I put lots of things right in the store and had different conversations with the same lovely lady eight times as we passed in the aisles. I helped a lady find hair dye for her daughter and then put all the boxes neatly facing forward.

I spent way too much money.

I didn’t get gluten free/dairy free bread and Husband had to go out again later to a different supermarket.

I did buy fake cheese slices which apparently neither my husband nor our 3 house guests like.

I found some hummus with bits of things in which has no dairy or wheat and cannot make me ill which I am rather thrilled with.

When I got home I found the food cupboards offensive and reordered and cleaned the pantry, fridge and chest freezer. Now I shout when anyone moves anything.

I will not be allowed to do the shopping again and that’s ok because I’ve decided that shopping makes me unbearable to live with.

Husband says, ‘Yeah, right.’

#OCD #Supermarkets #amwriting

The Food Allergy Debate - MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

Should I be sorry for growing increasingly tired of the gluten-dairy-free debate? Well, you know what, I'm not sorry! I'm really tired of it so there, I said it!

Every man and his one legged dog seems to have an opinion on whether or not I should change my diet to suit them and worse, they even have the audacity to debate whether or not me and people like me, are genuine. Who gave them the right to have an opinion on MY diet? I certainly didn't. 

As the mother of a diagnosed Celiac and another child with severe dairy intolerance, I have developed mysterious food allergies over an eight year period and can tell you - it's no fun. A stupid, harmless virus that left no long term ills in anyone else, affected my stomach and left me unable to eat products containing gluten or cow's milk. I have no idea why, the doctors have no idea why but eight years on, I'm gluten and dairy free and manage fine as long as nobody contaminates my food by accident. All biopsies have come back normal, so despite having a Celiac child, I am not. Nor is there any medical evidence for why cows milk makes me instantly sick. Nobody can offer me a medical reason why I have such a strong allergic reactions to certain foods; I just do. And in case you've got this far and decided I'm just nuts, I saw a counsellor in case it was in my head, but it's not. You think I haven't investigated this? Then shame on you. My body doesn't want this stuff and it won't say why.

So, without a medical certificate to wave over my head like a truce flag when I enter the debate, I must apparently sit with the 'fakers', the 'fad tryers' and the 'weirdoes'. Thanks for that.

I watched the online posts from the Irish cafe owner who banned vegans unfold across the internet like a pair of badly elasticated granny-knickers. Oh dear. While I don't appreciate the way he handled himself, I'm inclined to agree with him. I ring ahead before dining out or stick to places I know sell food I can eat without getting sick. It's not fair to assume a chef will ignore the other forty regular customers to nip out to the supermarket to cater for me without prior warning. Why would I derail someone's business like that? I'm not that selfish. I regularly go out with family and enjoy a glass of wine while they eat; I want to be part of the experience so don't exclude me from that too. If I'm invited for dinner, I take something I can eat and make it big enough to share because I don't want to be a bother.

I once starved for a whole weekend at a church camp in Rotorua because the chef - who was warned about my diet a month before I arrived - didn't think I was genuine. He apologised a few hours before we departed for misjudging me, having watched as I lived off soy bread I brought myself for an entire weekend. At the time he said he was sick of catering special meals for gluten free people who poured gravy over their designer meals. Or whipped up individual portions for a dairy free person who then doused it with cheese sauce. At the time, I thought fair enough but now I DON'T!

How dare he? I PAID to be on that camp just like everyone else. Did he run around smacking people around the head because they slurped ketchup all over his shepherd's pie? NO! What gave him the right to starve me because he thought I was faking or might add something else to his meal? Isn't that my right?

Yes, I've stood at gatherings where I've been catered for. Not satisfied with their four tables of food, others do seem attracted by my tiny take away box and gravitate towards it like vultures towards a carcass. I've also watched others 'try' my small portion and leave me none. That's not nice either. If you want different then order it. And I'll stand next to you and eat mine. 

GF/DF Banoffee Pie my daughter made for me
I could eat the whole thing, but I won't.

There must have been a lot of hype because it made the NZ national news recently; that doctors are concerned by adults removing staple items from theirs and their children's diet without medical advice. What the heck? Do parents of overweight children drag their offspring to the doctor just before pumping them full of sugar-laden-energy drinks to ask if it's ok? NO! Do they give them supplements to offset the effects like most parents cutting out gluten or dairy? PROBABLY NOT! So they can obviously hurt their kids but we can't try and sort out inherent problems for ours without criticism. 

So a parent living in a nightmare and scratching around a problem at home is wrong are they? Why? 

Well, for wondering if all the crap sprayed on flour in its storage state might be making Jonny run up and down the walls at bedtime. Or if all the rubbish injected into and fed to cows might be causing his face to look like a fifty year old with shingles. They're trying to get by and solve issues, just like everyone else. They need the effort you put into condemning them to support them and make helpful suggestions. 

I want this debate to just go away. It puts people like me even more under the microscope as if it's not bad enough already. Is it fun clutching my home made salad or distinctly marked cardboard wrapper with GF/DF in neon marker pen, while someone scoffing chicken nuggets breathes all over me, asking, 

"What  happens to you when you eat gluten or dairy?" 

You think that's not bad enough? Imagine his face when I tell him. He won't be hungry for a while. And that's without mentioning the eczema, headaches or feeling poisoned for days. 

I'm over it; I'm really over it.

I don't have to justify myself to you. You get boozed up on Saturdays and eat chocolate until it runs out of your nose and I'll eat rabbit food and say nothing. Do I make you justify why you need that massive four-person lunch or the three vodkas before you go to work? NO!

You feed your kids what they want and I'll do the same, but mind your own business. You don't start a debate about what my kid's missing out on and I won't stare at the thighs on yours as it sips that sugary drink and chows down on those nuggets! 

Let's talk about something that really matters but basically, leave my diet alone! 

I made these scones yesterday for my husband who isn't GF.
I wore gloves but probably still breathed in flour particles because
today I have a sore throat and headache. That must be what happens
to fakers!

#dairyfree #glutenfree #foodallergy

Parents - teach your children the art of being alone

I love my own company; many writers do.

I said to someone recently that I felt it was a learned skill and it is, because there were times when I couldn’t stand to be by myself. Those were the times when I dumped myself on my poor mother or sister. There was a difficult period in my life when I would pick my 4 year old up from school and trail my whole tribe around to my sister’s house most days of the week. With four children under 4 it wasn’t a happy time and I’m still amazed my very forthright sister didn’t say anything about my constant visits at the worst time of day for someone with two children of her own. Any mother understands the misery of the 4pm demon. As the clock ticks round it’s the golden hour for grizzling, fights, tantrums and unreasonable behaviour as tired little bodies look for sustenance and relief from busy days packed full of activity. With adult children now leading wonderful lives of their own I’m still left with the 4pm legacy and find myself cringing as it arrives, imbued with a sense of grumpiness which seems to come from nowhere.  

I was a loner at school but not by choice. It was just easier. In a school where most people carried knives by the age of 13 and knew how to use them, it was safer to have nobody around me to mask the threat or join in. At university I had good friends but they came and went with the advent of unsuitable boyfriends and only one remains in my middle age.

Life tries to teach us to be content in our own company but we resist, plugging the gap with anything we can to avoid its lessons. We’re fools. We crave five minutes peace and then waste it, worrying, complaining, seeking busyness or other people and crying we’re bored. Fools. 

I tried to teach my children to be content with themselves and respect time as something to be valued and not killed, but only their imprint on the world will tell if I succeeded. I encouraged them to seek time alone and when they were lonely, tried to help them embrace it. When isolated as very young children in busy playgrounds, I sent them to catch fairies and hunt unicorns, feeding imaginations which had the power to create company and fill empty voids with better than this world has to offer. I knew they’d need that skill many times over. And they will.

I still remember those empty months after childbirth when my husband went to work and left me alone with my eldest daughter. She couldn’t talk back and tell me what was wrong, her crying filling me with a sense of inadequacy and desperation and I craved company, finding it less painful when someone else was there. I walked miles pushing her pram, finding something cathartic about being outside in the fresh air. But I was still alone.

Emigration put me back there, only this time my husband was at work and my children at school. The 4pm demon brought children off a busy bus nursing different agonies; isolation, friendlessness; loneliness and dissatisfaction. I had to learn to be alone and not waste my life wishing the hours away, knowing one day I might beg for those hours back.

I prayed, painted, studied and wrote. I learned to be alone and found a deep security there inside my faith and myself.

I met a wise lady once who had ten children. While we sat drinking tea and chatting she called to one of her children and patted the seat next to her. The child left her play and ran over, sitting next to her mother, popping her thumb into her mouth and just sitting quietly there. She didn’t demand any more attention than the soft hand on her shoulder and she made no sound. After a few minutes my friend praised her daughter, kissed her cheek and released her to play again. When I asked what she’d done, she said, “I need my children to come when I ask and do it without question because one day it might be important. I want them to sit without entertainment and feel secure in themselves as though it’s normal and my hand on their shoulder reassures them I’m there today. One day my hand won't be there and they'll need to remember that being alone is still ok. Later my daughter will tell me some deep thought she had in those few moments of peace and it may be profound or it might be random; but it will be her thought and not something shouted in her face by friends, siblings, TV or media. When I pat the seat my children know to be quiet and I can take them to church, restaurants and friends’ houses without worrying boredom will make them naughty.”

My friend was interrupted in her explanation by another of her children who sneaked onto her knee and whispered in her ear, “Can it be me next, Mummy?”

I wasn’t sure about her methods and pondered a little while she cuddled her son and fixed his Lego toy. She turned a wise face towards me as he skipped off happily and said something I’ve never forgotten. “I teach my children to be alone and satisfied because my lessons begin in love but the world conducts hers with unkindness, humiliation and fear.”

It strikes me that children today don’t know how to be alone, truly alone without the blare of the TV or the constant thrum of beat music. Computer games and online strangers fill the void and they don’t know what it is to stand in a crowded room with only their own selves for company and feel secure. The 4pm demon has morphed from a creature demanding sustenance and comfort to a raging monster needing constant entertainment. If they’re unlucky, our children will be dragged kicking and screaming into situations which call for self-assurance and a sense of confidence and find their strength in the pit of despair and the palm of misery. Those will be painful times of loneliness, rejection, friendlessness and poverty. Each of those things has the power to drag a vulnerable person down undesirable paths in order to dodge the pain of looking in the mirror and seeing only their own face staring back at them blank eyed and frightened.

Parents - teach your children to be alone, comfortable in their own skin and able to find peace.

Do it before the gravel road of life cuts their feet and makes them bleed on their journey towards peace and self-assurance.

Do it with a kiss and a hand on their shoulder before the world does it with a knife in their back and a blow to their confidence.   

#parenting #loneliness #raisingkids

A life without running - unimaginable!

I began running when I was 35. It was a shock to my body which enjoyed nothing more than a fast walk since the age of 16, but I didn’t feel I had much choice.

Overweight and with a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis, I took my last anti-inflammatory pill and broke out an ancient pair of running shoes borrowed from my sister. At 6am under cover of darkness in the middle of an English winter, I ran.

It was a hideous experience, only lessened by the fact I could lump along in the pitch black morning, dragging a yawning dog for protection. One and half miles of walking, jogging, gasping and heart-pounding-headaches seemed to do more harm than good. I think I leaned on every lamp post on Newcombe Street, Stuart Road and Bath Street in a miserable twenty minute circuit of agony and humiliation. By the time I clawed my way up the steps and pounded on the front door, the dog was awake and ready for a proper walk and I was half dead.

I ran four times a week for three months, dashing home to shower and get ready for work. Six months later and I’d ditched the dog because he pulled me into one too many bushes after stray cats and I was running as far as I could get in an hour. My arthritis had abated and my clothes hung off me like curtains. I’d get out of bed on running days and test my ankles, seeing how painful it was to stand. The more it hurt, the more I ran, releasing happy endorphins into my blood to carry me for the next few days.

I’ve run ever since and I’m sure I’ll meet my Maker running on some quiet country road; in New Zealand now, the dark mornings of England swapped a decade ago. Running provides my sanity, my pain relief and my reason for getting up in the pre-dawn peace. I talk to God; I plan my day and I find my equilibrium. It keeps my weight down and I’m better for it.

Below is a short story I wrote a while ago. Nobody else should get offended because it’s actually about me. It’s something of my journey those first few times at the running club - yeah, I even joined the Harborough Runners and still have the tee shirt they gifted me the last time I attended before we emigrated. I’ve treasured it enough to carry it across the world. It reminds me to keep running - and maybe one day I'll squeeze myself into it. 

First Place

Carmen tried not to look at her feet which padded along beneath her. Her body heaved with each new step and her lungs burned with the effort of processing the oxygen she needed. “You’re nearly there!” she shouted at herself, ignoring the flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck. Her body lied bitterly, insisting she gave up, her muscles protesting at the distance and the pace.

“Car-men, Car-men, Car-men!” The shouts unnerved her, calling her name. Emotion hitched in Carmen’s chest, sent up from the space in her stomach where she buried her feelings. She beat it down, not bothering to analyse it and concentrated on her race. The finish line loomed up ahead, coaxing and inviting and yet still so far away.

The way was open. No other runners blocked the view between Carmen and the coloured bunting fluttering in the breeze. Her vision blurred with tears and she heard the sob escape her heaving lungs.

“One hundred metres! You’re nearly there!” 

The shout broke through Carmen’s fragile concentration, filtering through the cacophony of noises to register in her brain. She risked a look towards the barriers and saw his face beaming out at her. The overwhelming urge surfaced, to stop running towards the finish line and the eager faces of the officials and run to him instead; to wrap herself in his comforting arms, eat a burger, watch TV, roll in their double bed with hot kisses and frantic hands. But the pride in Mike’s face crushed the urge as his blue eyes willed her towards the fluttering decorations and the cheers of those lining the home straight. 

“We’ve worked for this, baby! This is what you wanted; you’re winning!”

Carmen turned her gaze towards the ‘F’ on the flapping sign screaming ‘Finish’ and aimed for it, blocking out everything else around her and re-entering her zone of concentration. She pep talked her reluctant body, coaxing out a sprint as her feet pounded the asphalt, shaking every bone and joint with damaging impact. Her vision blurred with exhaustion and the grey surface beneath her danced, pushing up into her face and dashing away again like a freaky fairground ride. She tried not to notice, fixing on that ‘F’ as though her life depended on it, realising the longer she stared how much it mattered. Everything rode on her finishing this race; her marriage, her self-respect, her punishing regime, her sacrifice, herself.

Carmen plundered the depths of her sanity and fought the demons in her mind. They rode her back and laughed at her as her feet pounded the floor. She shrugged them off as the sign for the finish line gave an audible flap in the growing breeze. She was that close. It clapped her to the end, hanging loose from its ties, sticking around an extra hour just for her. The officials sighed with relief as the fat woman pounded under the awning, finally able to leave.

#running #amwriting #rheumatoidarthritis

Release of The Actuary's Wife

I just reread that title and it looks like poor Emma has been held against her will. She has. But fortunately only in my head.

My romance/mystery series, From Russia, With Love, is about a Russian family who moved to England in the 1990s at the end of the Cold War. Their lives took a sinister twist when widowed Alanya Andreyev dragged her two young boys into her marriage to a Lincolnshire vicar.

The Actuary picks up the story around 2014 when two of the stepchildren from that marriage are reunited after a six year separation, with interesting consequences. The series takes place in the sleepy town of Market Harborough involving a Russian actuary, an English vicar's daughter and a trouble-making Irishman.

The Actuary's Wife has been a labour of love and releases on 15th October. Why that date? It's my father's birthday and I tend to use release dates I can't forget, so Happy Birthday Dad and thanks for letting the Andreyevs share your day!

I love Emma's character and exorcise my sense of mischief writing her; she's plucky, impetuous and occasionally hilarious. But she's also deeply passionate, fiercely loyal, and there's a sense of unknown depths to her character, as yet unexplored. After a thoroughly rotten start in life, she's determined her own children will have a better go at life, inadvertently becoming the author of their problems as well as her own. She's great, I love her and I'm definitely not done with her yet.

For those who've done pre-order, thank you for having such faith in me. I can see the numbers racking up and it's cool. For those wishing to dip a toe in the water without too much commitment, The Actuary which is book 1, will be free from 15th to the 20th October. 




http://www.amazon.com/Actuarys-Wife-Russia-Love-Book-ebook/dp/B015OQNCAO

Enjoy and let me know how you get on. I love to hear from readers  and find it really encouraging.

Free from 15th October on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Actuary-Russia-Love-Book-ebook/dp/B00XQTQV00

The Hana Du Rose Mysteries
Free
http://www.amazon.com/About-Hana-Rose-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B00D135486

#MarketHarborough
#romance
#mystery
#free
#ebook

Mathematics and the Children with Dyscalculia

I tried to read the telephone number to my waiting colleague as he watched me with an odd look on his face. “04...” I began, wishing the numbers would sit still.

“What?” he looked confused. “That can’t be right.” He waited, his pen poised in the air and stared at me.

With a sigh, I watched the numbers bounce again. After a little shake like a waterlogged dog, the 4 moved away from the two. They settled and I started again. “0214...”

“That’s better.” Satisfied, he wrote the telephone number for IT support on a pad and thanked me.

I sat with my head in my hands and waited for the familiar panic to pass. It’s been a forty-six-year struggle and one I’m not alone in. I know not to transcribe numbers from paper to computer, or rewrite them on another piece of paper. I understand my brain drops them and picks them up differently in the time it takes between reading and transferring. I’m clumsy with the numbers like a card shuffler who sprays all 52 into the face of the other players by accident. He can do it once and his competitors might laugh and play a game of ‘52 card pick up’ with good grace...until he does it again. Then they get another card shuffler.

I was diagnosed with dyscalculia at the same time as my 8-year-old daughter. Ironically enough I worked at her primary school helping special needs children with their mastery of the English language. My daughter had all the classic symptoms and despite a proactive school, still spent another miserable year suffering until the UK education system pulled its finger out of its ear and gave her the label.

Dyscalculia is a form of dyslexia with mathematics and the statistics vary whichever source you rely on. I’ve seen it listed as high as one child in ten and I can spot them now, with very little effort. Why? Because I’m one of them and watched it ravage my own child’s confidence to the stage where she couldn’t add 1 + 1.

I hated maths at school. I grew up in the British Forces education system and back in the 1970s there was no such thing as a ‘dis’ or a ‘dys’. They didn’t exist and we were stupid children who exasperated our teachers when we cried over subtraction, or produced messy work born of confusion and misery. The only task I ever excelled at during maths lessons was times tables. I learned them like a song. I worked out tricks so I had less to remember and I counted on my fingers. My memory was good and it was my saving grace.

At fifteen I got a job working at a fish and chip shop in Lincoln. Adding the prices from the board on the wall was painful with the numbers jumping around, so my mother wrote me a list of every possible combination of food and added the prices up for me. I learned every one off by heart and it was a painful few weeks while I settled in. Cod and chips was £2.40 thirty years ago. See, I can still remember.

Nobody else can understand the frustration or misery of this condition. Kumon Maths helped my daughter with its constant repetition and ate our food budget for 4 years while she learned mathematical combinations by heart. It’s a gruelling, punishing programme which involves the child completing worksheets every single day, often 10 sheets of A5 paper filled with calculations. Then there are two compulsory classes per week. Ours were at the other end of town and I didn't have a car. It was a long, dark walk with my other three children tagging along after school and another long walk home with grizzling littlies. Often my daughter cried over the sums and covertly I cried over the answers, because that was the big whammy - I had to mark it. Who provides an answer booklet for something as easy as 7 + 9?

My nemesis numbers are terrifying. 0, 7 and 9 fill me with horror. In a line of working out, they can jump higher and further than all the others and potentially end up anywhere. I'm finding as I get older, they misbehave even more.

I worked with amazing teachers at that little school in England and they helped me so I could help my daughter. Writing numbers on paper was pointless, so we worked things out kinaesthetically. Fraction sums involved toys riding on each other’s shoulders and basic maths entertained giggly sugar highs, as we ate our body weight in Smarties and Cola Bottles, adding them, subtracting them and just plain scoffing them. We coped, we struggled and we shelled out money like an arterial bleed.

At 46 I’m fed up of dyscalculia. I avoid numbers but they’re still everywhere. If I have to enter phone numbers into the computer or swap them from one piece of paper to another, I get someone to read them to me. That works because I’m hearing the number and transcribing it and it’s a different mental process.

Everyone knows what dyslexia is but after almost two decades, the label dyscalculia still causes raised eyebrows and a sense of defeat amongst educators and parents. My daughter had great teachers in the UK but New Zealand was a whole other ball game. Few people knew what it was, let alone how to teach someone with it. We were lucky enough to come across a couple of people willing to help us and they were precious, selfless people. One was a teacher who got a babysitter to watch her children after school so she could give my daughter extra tuition. Another was a friend, also a maths teacher at another school who gave her an hour every Sunday afternoon in return for coveted bags of billtong.

These saints are few and far between and dyscalculia is a lonely, isolating label. There are resources online nowadays but if you believe your child is struggling - fight for them and don’t stop until someone listens. Then fight some more.

I’ve included this list of symptoms because it may have helped me all those years ago, knowing there was a problem but battling to be taken seriously.

There are other good resources and information at: 

http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/dyscalculia

I find it hard to accept that diagnosis and treatment can still be in its infancy after all these years, whereas funding has been put into dyslexia and other conditions. But that’s what the experts are saying. Maybe it will always be the poor man’s relation, I don’t know, but it’s real and it has the ability to ruin a person’s confidence for life.

Typical symptoms of dyscalculia/mathematical learning difficulties:

1. Has difficulty when counting backwards.

2. Has a poor sense of number and estimation.

3. Has difficulty in remembering ‘basic’ facts, despite many hours of practice/rote learning.

4. Has no strategies to compensate for lack of recall, other than to use counting.

5. Has difficulty in understanding place value and the role of zero in the Arabic/Hindu number system.

6. Has no sense of whether any answers that are obtained are right or nearly right.

7. Tends to be slower to perform calculations. (Therefore give less examples, rather than more time).

8. Forgets mathematical procedures, especially as they become more complex, for example ‘long’ division.

9. Addition is often the default operation. The other operations are usually very poorly executed (or avoided altogether).

10. Avoids tasks that are perceived as difficult and likely to result in a wrong answer.

11. Weak mental arithmetic skills.

12. High levels of mathematics anxiety.

Because mathematics is very developmental, any insecurity or uncertainty in early topics will impact on later topics, hence to need to take intervention back to basics.

Number 12 is huge and was a massive indicator for both myself and my daughter. Avoidance tactics such as feeling unwell or needing to frequently use the bathroom are a signpost to difficulty. And the other undocumented sign - messy work and numbers written in huge, untidy figures in a child’s work, who is otherwise neat and tidy.

People don’t look because they don’t want to see and they don’t know how to help. It takes effort to teach a child with dyscalculia because you have to think outside the box and who has time for that? I made time for it and can name other parents who sit for hours over their child's homework with them.

If your child is suffering, my heart goes out to you and to them. You will find strategies and you’ll both survive but it’s hard without back up. Find tricks and tips which help them get through and reassure them, they’re not stupid. At fifteen, my daughter underwent a very costly, privately funded test in NZ so the ministry would allow her an extra ten minutes in her exams. She had a mathematical age of 9 and a reading and comprehension age of 25. Work that out!

I write books for a living and leave the accounts to my husband because the tax man isn’t interested in my dyscalculia when I accidentally pay him the wrong amount.

Neither my daughter nor I died from this. We found our path and travelled it and your child will too. It just takes time and a lot more patience. Go well and feel comforted. You’re not alone.

#maths #school #parenting

Internet Bullies - who's had #enough ?

I’m sitting in the bright New Zealand sunshine in the middle of an unusually cold winter, watching my husband referee a soccer match. My work life has been fairly frantic this week, my writing life full of self-imposed deadlines and my family life ticking along on the regular undulating tide of semi-adult dramas brought home for Mum or Dad to sort out.

I log onto a Facebook reading group to issue my familiar promises - I will get the book read even if it’s at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute - only to discover another author friend reeling from a spate of internet bullying which has seen them abandon groups and retreat in fear.

Why?

Because they dared to give someone a constructive 3* review.

Any kind of bullying fills me with disgust. It twangs something deep in my stomach, to be honest. Yes, I was the slightly porky kid at high school who was often picked last for teams. My glasses didn’t help and my fuzzy hair topped off the image of the geeky, academic girl who’d do anything not to get noticed.

With the exception of a few rabid bosses over my quarter of a century in work (gulp) I left most of that-kind-of-behaviour behind at school, along with those-kind-of-people.

I commiserate with the author and make a mental note of the other person’s name, determined not to read or review their work in case I don’t like it either and need to remember they don’t want my opinion. Their work is clearly for admiring and not critiquing, as though they’re up there with Rembrandt and Michael Angelo. Look but don’t touch. Ok. Got that.

So I look through my newsfeed and see a comment about some point of view that I understand, but don’t necessarily agree with. I watch for a while and it seems fairly safe so I slip into the conversation and suggest another point of view.

Oh.

My.

Goodness!

What did I just say? Did I really dare to offer an alternative, as though I might actually have an opinion, even though I didn’t contradict or slate theirs?

Yes I did.

How very dare I!

I didn’t know there were abusive emoticons, but apparently there are. It must have taken someone hours to programme those hand gestures to work so perfectly.

In the space of five minutes, I'm shouted at in capital letters, emoticonned until the thread is light years long and told to do things to myself which I don’t think are physically viable. All because I thought differently.

It was a bit sickening and had that pervading odour, like when you walk into your lounge and smell the dog poo you just tramped across the carpet. That kind of feeling. I made it go away quite easily using 3 simple words. In fact it was quicker than getting the carpet shampoo out.

Block, report and unfollow.

Yep, they were gone. But with no desire to come across that person again in a social forum, I then culled my friends and made sure it wouldn’t happen, which means I’m now no longer friends with someone I actually quite liked. But their groupie gathering is dangerous, so it’s best I disconnect.

It’s interesting this internet mentality and how otherwise ordinary people, who smile at work, kiss their children goodnight and walk around like good citizens, suddenly morph into rabid mob fundamentalists when they get behind their keyboard.

Is it the lack of voice they feel they have which makes them the very definition of vitriolic?

Is it boredom?

What is it?

I remember once commenting on a friend’s hat on a photo they put up on Facebook. It was just a wee joke about an outing of a particular tweed cap in a photo of him pulling a funny face. The comments which ensued from one of his friends, allegedly defending said cap and man wearing it, were personal and spiteful and from a complete stranger. I’d known the cap wearer for years and it was a joke we had but I was mortified. My friend failed to intervene and the tirade continued, so I sadly unfriended him. A year later he private messaged me to ask why I unfriended him.

“What happened?” he asked. 

I answer in surprise, “Your ‘friend’ happened.”

“Oh, he’s not a real friend, he’s just a bit odd.”

“But you let him in your inner circle and he attacked me from there.”

“Didn’t see that. Sorry.”

I think we need to be a little pickier about who we allow into our personal space, especially if those in the inner circle still think there’s some kind of battle raging and their role is to capture the flag. To those who see it and do nothing, well, sadly you’re complicit and part of the problem.

Who are these people who spit venom to complete strangers and retreat behind a screen to lick the blood from their fingers? And why do the rest of us slowly draw back and hide when one of them starts?

It’s fascinating and I wish I took psychology papers at university instead of reading Jane Austen and James T Farrell. Actually I don’t, I’m lying. I loved Austen and Farrell. But I’d love to know what makes these keyboard warriors tick. Is it the same chemical which allows me the sideshow of a businessman and a grandad squaring off over a round white ball on a handkerchief of green grass, as my husband blows his whistle with cool authority and parts the fray? It can’t be the ball because that did nothing offensive, so it must be the testosterone laden males trying and failing to control its trajectory towards the sticking up posty things.

It feels as though the world has forgotten what consequences are. 

Remember consequences? They represent the results of the stuff you do.

You say something mean and someone gets hurt. That’s how this thing works, whether spoken or written. What astounds me is that these people wouldn’t say it to your face, no matter what they claim. But they’ll sit behind a keyboard and destroy your reputation and make threats out of the written word, cause ill feeling, destroy hours of someone's life or make another human being feel inferior for thinking differently.

More and more I’m seeing Facebook and email conversations admissible as evidence in court cases. Why not? It’s written and it’s date stamped. It’s fantastic. Sadly some of these hurtful people slinging their muck in our kind of arena won’t find themselves in court, but we need to show them it’s not ok to behave that way.

But who’s going to be brave enough to start it?

You are. You're going to be brave enough.

Next time you see someone making a spiteful comment for the sake of it, taking someone’s words and stringing them up, twisting meanings or just plain bullying, YOU need to intervene.

Just type the word #enough to show you don’t appreciate their behaviour. Do it where everyone can see and pass the word around. Unfriend them, block them and delete them from groups to show them it’s not acceptable.

It’s what I’ll be doing from now on. Because I’ve really had enough.

So how about you? Will you do it?

#enough