Dysgraphia and math? Is there any hope?

Parents Forum Learning Differences and Challenges - LD, ADHD
1

<p>My son is in HS and wants to major in math in college. He's very good in math, however, he has severe writing disabilities. At this point, he gets a lot of help, such as using the computer, having people help him with writing his homework, and so on.</p>

<p>Is there any way he can survive an advanced math curriculum? I know from my own math experience, and his older sister's, that college math prof's aren't nearly as open to help as his high school is. A good number of our math prof's were barely able to communicate in english, and relied mainly on the written work to teach.</p>

<p>Has anyone dealt with this successfully? Or even not successfully?</p>

2

<p>The usual accommodation is either use of a computer or use of a scribe.</p>

3

<p>As one of those dysgraphic kids who would rather have a cavity filled than write a paper, I've learned to love LaTeX and other software that lets me type math up. Yes, its a pain to learn sometimes, but once you learn it you can deal with it and things go a lot better. I have friends who are not LD and turn math homework in typed up. I'm currently in engineering school and having to do a lot of math, and LaTex has helped a bit, sure I have to scribble out a bit of messy junk to make sure I know how to do the problem, but then I type it up to turn in so someone else can read it with out the use of a decoder.</p>

4

<p>MS Word has an equation editor. They will have to get a scribe for sure because there is not as many things out there for math as for the humanities and whatnot.</p>

5

<p>I personally HATE Microsoft's equation editor, it takes ages to figure out how to use and even then is tempermental. and it doesnt let you copy and paste things as well as other things do.
LaTeX is more of a mark up so it lets you copy and paste things remarkably well, there is a a free 30 day trial if I remember, so its worth a shot. </p>

<p>Also the issue to consider with a scribe is that it takes away independence, which I know I would hate. But I have my stubborn side and refuse to let myself be limited by my LD in anyway shape or form.</p>

6

<p>I think LaTeX is actually free all the time, because it is open source
CHECK this out</p>

7

<p>ek4,
How does one find the actual program? I read the link and think it may help my dysgraphic son. When I did search I found other sites talking about the program, but not where to download it.</p>

8

<p>mkm56 </p>

<p><a href="http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.latex-project.org/ftp.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I think it is at the above url.</p>

<p>But, I am not going to download it for no reason to find out:)</p>

<p>However, dear...</p>

<p>here is the homepage as well</p>

<p><a href="http://www.latex-project.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.latex-project.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

9

<p>Thanks, I forwarded links to son. Like you I don't want to download to find out either:).</p>

10

<p>If you need LaTeX help, I might be able to help out. Its pretty nifty one you get it working.</p>