One of the signs and symptoms often listed for having dyslexia/dyscalculia/ dysgraphia is when a child has a hard time learning a clock, or remembering his calendaring skills. Money knowledge is another skill that comes slowly. The good news is that this is also a trait of a right-brained, creative learner. Why?
From Chapter Nine in my book, The Right Side of Normal:
My study of the right-brained learner shed light on the reason my right-brained children didn’t notice time in their early childhoods. Further, my own observations validate the idea that the lack of focus on time revolves primarily around the creative outlets. To achieve optimal creative genius, a person needs to enter “the zone,” or what athletes call “flow.” Flow is a state of timelessness when a person is totally immersed in the present state of being. In the case of a right-brained, creative person, flow occurs with the process of creation. I think most of us can understand this process when we think about a project in which we were particularly engaged. Writing this book was my example. I needed to put all other needs, tasks, responsibilities, or time constraints aside in order to fully engage in writing. Time was of no consequence. In fact, on the days I could work all day, I’d discover I hadn’t eaten or used the restroom, and it was already dinner time!
The saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” captures the essence of timeless engagement. To develop a creative outlet, a right-brained learner needs to spend enormous amounts of time immersed in its acquisition. When my artist son was young, he’d spend hours and hours drawing every day. When my builder son was young, he’d spend hours and hours a day building with LEGO®. When my theater son was young, he’d spend hours and hours a day pretending and creating costumes. As each discovered an interest in a career path, the number of hours only increased. My computer son researched and programmed hours and hours a day to create his own computer game. My fantasy writer daughter researched and wrote for hours and hours a day to create a novel. My artist son researched and drew for hours and hours a day to create a visual atlas. It’s said that it takes 10,000 hours dedicated to a skill to become a master in it; utilizing timelessness to reach flow has its benefits in reaching that goal.
Think about it, to be confined inside the knowledge of an hour, or a day, or a month interferes with creativity and imagination that has no bounds. Or to be constrained with the understanding that money has to be collected and used to purchase things limits the power of the imagination and creative prowess. These things are really man-created limits. It’s quantifiable. It’s sequential. It very much aligns with left-brained attributes!
Only my son most affected with autism was taught and learned his calendaring skills at a young age. He was also my youngest reader at 4 years old. This is because he used predictable patterns to make sense of the world that was very confusing to him otherwise. His “perseverative interest” also happened to be letters and numbers. But for all the rest of my highly right-brained children, I had to “set the date” to learn time and money at their appropriate developmental learning stage for these skills.
An excerpt from Chapter Eighteen from my book, The Right Side of Normal
Right-brained children often need a compelling reason to them before competency can be developed. Most of my children had no desire to earn and spend money for items at the store. Thus, money knowledge and handling didn’t occur until much later, usually in the 11 to 13 year time frame. As mentioned in Chapter Nine, most of my children were also uninterested in days, weeks, or months. Each of my children definitely aligned with the knowledge that right-brained people are more space-based than time-centered. Once they reached the 11 to 13 year time frame, I told them they would learn to read an analog clock, know their months and holidays related to those months, birthdays, and manipulating money. Even though the compelling reason wasn’t there, each child picked up the skills because maturity was in place to capitalize on; both sides of the brain were working more effectively together.
In the unschooling world, you often hear experienced parents claim that children will learn certain things incidentally. For instance, if church is always on Sunday, they’ll learn that, or if dinner time is at 6:00 p.m., they’ll learn that. Mine did know some of this just a little bit, but not to any significant level. They certainly weren’t aware holistically that today is Monday and church is in 6 days. When I told them it was time for church, they would assume it’s Sunday! So traditional incidental teaching didn’t come through for my right-brained children (from two different gene pools). Instead, right-brained children are developing their foundational gifts in the early years of pictorial thinking and imagination. That’s why telling time, calendaring, money and the such come later for them.
Which leads me to an intriguing resource discovery that may help some right-brained children learn calendaring incidentally earlier in their learning lives (I would recommend 8 to 10 years old). I found a recommendation of Calendar Connections, created by Carisa over at 1+1+1=1, from the blog, Cleveland Homeschooler. Created for 3rd to 6th graders (she must have right-brained children…perfect age for this!), Carisa created themes around the calendar months along with trivia facts to go along with an interesting visual 
picture. Now here’s something up the alley of a right-brained learner to potentially spark incidental learning! Connecting interests with fun activities or tidbits of knowledge. Better yet, it’s free! I’m going to try it with my 11 and 13 year olds. Of course, they’re at the stage of learning it because I said so, but maybe it’ll spark some fun and excitement.
Question: Have you noticed your right-brained children are less interested in learning time or calendaring? At what age and what types of activities have you noticed interested them in learning?
My daughter had no interest in telling time until around age 11. Then strangely, her time-tellling converged with learning addition and multiplication facts and I got to listen to this for about 6 months: 2:35 — 2+3=5! 8:53 — 8 minus 5 is 3! 2:48 — 2 times 4 is 8! Then there were the doubles: 2:22! 3:33! It about drove me insane. But it was a pivotal brain jump for her. For calendaring, she finally learned how to do it when she got into a computer game called Pony Island. She wanted to breed ponies to be born on certain dates, so she asked for a calendar to mark which days she needed to breed in order to have births on certain days. Eventually she added in other life events too.
Robyn, I love the compelling, creative reason your daughter found to learn calendaring! Real life application inside a fantasy world…haha! And her connection she made between math and time is priceless! One never knows what associative connections our right-brained children will make.
My daughter was interested in time, money, and clocks early on, but unable to make much headway despite her precocity in other areas.
We had a big wipe-able calendar on the wall at kid height for an number of years, with plastic stick-on numbers and colorful markers. Each month we did “calendar math,” where she peeled off the numbers as I gave her questions like “Find all the odd numbered days after the middle of the month,” or “Find ten minus two,” or “Take off all the Tuesday dates.” We drew pictures of, and later wrote, appointments, classes, days daddy would be traveling (airplane pictures), birthdays, etc. Dd adored this, would sit each morning brushing her teeth in front of the calendar taking in what was up for the day or week. Over the months and years this added up to effortless calendar mastery.
Money clicked at age six for her. We were spending a summer in northern Germany where mu husband was working, and dd became fascinated by the way people paid/tipped in public toilets. She set up a “pay toilet” in our apartment, charging us ten cents a pee, and at the end of the day she’d count her money and use it toward ice creams or trampolining at the center for kids. Back home, though, she had a terrible time distinguishing coins from one another and didn’t really grasp them until around age eleven or so.
Clocks were the hardest of all. She desperately wanted to tell time, was asking me the time a hundred times a day and peering at the clock. Eventually it turned out that she had trouble distinguishing the longer from the shorter hand, and remember which way round the hands went; numbers for her went both forwards and backwards, were written forwards and backwards as well as counted that way, so she just couldn’t get the system “fixed” in her mind. It took years. She was probably around thirteen when she finally got it. She’d still ask me what time it was, because it was still work for her to figure it out. I’d say, “Five thirty,” and she’d correct me, “No, it’s five twenty-seven.” That’s how I knew she had finally figured it out.
I think you’re absolutely onto something, Karen, as it pertains to creating a useful calendaring tool that’s used as your every day scheduling option. Instead of necessarily seeing it as a teaching tool, it’s a used tool over time until something clicks. I also love how you brought in thinking tasks involved with the calendaring. With their creative and associative mind, it could be the way to help them holistically know the calendar very well from all angles.
Gotta love the pay toilet real life application…haha! And, yes, it’s always fascinating to discover a sticking point for our right-brained children such as not being able to know which is the long hand or which direction the clock moves (good ole three-dimensionality at work there). And, you know, it kind of makes sense to me that our right-brained children need to be told the overall understanding of a clock (each of those 60 minutes, with 5 minute increments) because they are whole-to-part people, and the way we traditionally teach it (o’clock, thirty, fives, then minutes) is almost encouraging memorization of a “formula.” Thanks for sharing some of your daughter’s learning process!
Cindy, you might also find this of interest. We ordered this for several years. It’s good for an older elementary-aged student, probably good for middle school as well.
http://www.learningcalendar.com
Did your daughter find it helpful in calendaring? I’m kinda liking the Calendar Connections because it’s interest-centered for the month versus a fact for that day in history…although I could see a kind of right-brained child liking to know that “this date this happened.” Maybe my oldest would’ve liked it. I also like how Calendar Connections you take the fact out and put it back…I guess I like the “surprise” of “picking” it and reading it kinda thing. Some have a type of activity to it, like the Christmas theme for December has you learning the different ways to say Merry Christmas in different languages and you write in on a paper and stick it on a map…more hands-on stuff. It could spark an idea for making your own and being as interactive as you think your child might like. These were the attributes that stuck out to me with Calendar Connections versus facts on a calendar.
It did spark a memory for me! I used to get the National Geographic calendars for my older children every Christmas. Wow, that was a while ago! I think it was my attempt at interesting them in calendaring since they always liked animals. I think it was in the 8-10 year range, and I think it had animal facts on each day…Wow, blast from my past!
Here’s what I used to get them that they loved from National Geographic Kids: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/books/calendars-and-stationery/national-geographic-kids-awesome-animals-2013-wall-calendar
My son was interested in money around age 8. He is a consumer to the highest degree and always had a new toy or game that he wanted. It became necessary for him to understand money so he could figure out when he had enough cash for that next purchase.
Time and calendars are a different story. DS is now 11 and he is much more interested in knowing when things will happen, how long until the next big holiday, how much longer until he can play on the computer, etc. Because he is interested in time/dates and needs the knowledge for his everyday life he is learning it. Analog clocks are still like a foreign language to him but I see him progressing.
Isn’t it actually fascinating to realize how common the 11-13 year time frame is for learning time, calendaring, etc.? As my developmental time frame post talks about, this is the stage that the left side is fully integrated, so all those opposite skills come in more easily. Thus, the sequential skill of time, calendaring, etc. Very interesting!
My son who just turned 12 has been interested in recording important dates on the calendar for about a year. If he accomplishes something or has an unusually good day – he draws a tri-force symbol on that day. He also will reference the calendar if there is a holiday, party, etc. planned. Other than that he is still murky on the months of the year, seasons and time, although I see some improvement generally.
I guess it all follows with a general weakness with executive function, being able to manage his time, etc. I am reluctant to impose too many limitations though because I love how creative and productive he is when completely immersed in an activity.
Cindy, I recognized the 3-D/rotational difficulties involved in reading the clock, but I never thought of it as also having to do with whole to parts and I think you’re absolutely right. Dd didn’t go through the stages of recognizing the hour, half-hour, etc. When she finally got it, it was to the minute or even second. This was accompanied by her heightened interest in timing intervals — how long is a minute? Five minutes? How long does it take me to read this many pages? She used to say she was “bad” at telling elapsed time (vs. time on a clock), but these two things seemed to come together at about the same age.
Ah, I forgot to mention the elapsed time component that goes with the time aspect. Yes, time and time again (haha!), people will say that when they ask their creative child to be ready in 15 minutes or whatever, it ends up a puddle of frustration because the child can’t gauge 15 minutes, especially when he’s in flow. It makes sense that both would come in at the same time developmentally…usually later.
Your blog has helped me so much and I’ve stayed up way too late reading! I’ve done RB-accommodating things for my son (now 7) all his life, without really understanding what I was doing, but knowing it was a very effective way to communicate with him. After reading your blog, EVERYTHING clicks and I can be an even better parent! This post made me think of one small success we recently had. My son was thinking about holidays, but couldn’t figure out how they all fit into all the months on the calendar. We made a poem together with family-relevant rhymes for each month (“Jan. is month number one when skiing is our favorite fun”), and then he illustrated the rhymes. He came up with the idea of a squirrel who, in each month’s picture, had various misadventures, like rocketing out of a firework factory in July, He remembers the order of all the months so well now, and after reading your blog, I totally understand why. Thank you!
Isn’t it exciting when you discover that your instincts with following your child’s path is validated!? I’m so glad you found my information at an important stage with your son so that you can more confidently continue your journey of a strengths-based learning environment.
Your example of what your son did reminded me of a good post I could write about how much more picture based a creative child needs to be in the 5 to 7 year range as he learns things than he will in the 8 to 10 year range because of how the right-brained preference best responds to pictorial images in their foundational years. Poetry is visual and the fact that he chose to draw pictures to illustrate shows how he needed to cement that information at that stage. Very cool! Thanks for sharing that. I would love to use your comment/story in a post about this stage if it’s alright? He was very creative
Certainly! I find what you just wrote so fascinating and right on. When he draws in conjunction with his learning, he’s like a hungry lion finally getting a piece of meat. There’s a funny line in a blues song my husband quotes, “You gotta let that boy boogie-woogie, because it’s in ‘im, and it’s got ta come out.” I too am glad I’ve found your information at this stage, and not a second later. He’s always been a really interesting person, and around age 4 well-wishers frequently offered me their diagnoses of his “quirks.” Nothing ever fit, and it only served to make me anxious for the last few years and sometimes even forget to love! Homeschooling has offered me the chance to renew my faith in my child, but your blog just took all the last remaining dust off my lens. Next stop… your e-book. Thank you so much.