;Resize=(1200,627)&impolicy=perceptual&quality=mediumHigh&hash=c356d439abb64a718572d09d39c410d593af09b8b4d55fac85cbfb3e5799ab4b "Robbie Williams admits: ‘Phone numbers make me anxious’")
Math and reading disabilities: Robbie Williams admits: “Phone numbers trigger fears in me”
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There is no genetic engineering in the plant
But don’t worry: they’re genetically modified
Pop star Robbie Williams posted a very personal message on Instagram. In it, the musician admits that he suffers from dyscalculia and dyslexia. Disorders that also affect many people in Germany. This is how they express themselves.
“I actually have dyscalculia too. Telephone numbers trigger fears in me. No joke,” singer Robbie Williams describes his complaints. If numbers are not apart, he has trouble deciphering them, the 49-year-old explains to his fans.
This is dyscalculia
People who suffer from dyscalculia lack the understanding of quantities and the counting skills necessary to learn basic arithmetic. The Federal Association for Dyslexia and Dyscalculia (BVL) explains it as follows: “Numbers are often only understood as a pure symbol, not as a quantity. As a result, the children lack important basics to internalize the learning steps in mathematics.”
World Health Organization definition
The World Health Organization (WHO) international classification scheme ICD-10 defines a dyscalculia as follows:
“This disorder denotes an impairment in numeracy skills that cannot be explained solely by general intellectual disability or inappropriate schooling.”
The main difficulty of dyscalculia is the limited command of basic arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
This is how dyscalculia manifests itself in Robbie Williams
In his Instagram message, quadruple dad Williams recalls having lunch with friends. His math disorder made it impossible for him to calculate tips correctly, as he says: “There was an option to tip 15 percent, 20 percent, or 25 percent. I couldn’t do it. I started sweating. I miscalculated the sum, crossed it out and ended up having to ask for help.” But his friends were very cool about it and he wasn’t embarrassed.
This is dyslexia
When children learn to read and write, they learn to decipher and internalize the letter code. The BVL explains: “Dyslexia makes this learning process much more difficult because the code cannot be deciphered in the usual way. Conversely, it is difficult to translate a spoken word into this ‘code’.”
This is how dyslexia manifested itself in Robbie Williams
Williams describes it similarly: “I read well. But my spelling is shocking (…) There are so many simple words that I can’t spell properly. Because of this, I have long felt intellectually/academicly subpar.”
Williams continues to write that his grammar is terrible. Where punctuation marks or commas have their place, he always gets mixed up.
World Health Organization definition
The BVL summarizes the description of the World Health Organization (WHO) of “circumscribed dyslexia” (LRS) according to the international classification scheme ICD-10. Such is the case when persistent and clear weaknesses in reading and spelling CANNOT be traced back to the following criteria:
developmental age
Below average intelligence
Missing schooling
mental illness
brain damage
What parents can do with dyscalculia and dyslexia
Both with math weaknesses and with reading and spelling weaknesses, you as parents are a central support for your children. It is important to strengthen their self-confidence – and to create understanding. It may also help that celebrities like Williams speak openly about it. At least that’s what some comments that praise him for his openness show.
“In addition to school and extracurricular support measures and the use of school law, the support of parents plays an important role in supporting children with dyslexia,” write the neurologists and psychiatrists online. The main task of the parents is to strengthen the self-esteem of the child.
The experts also advise: “Look for support for yourself, for example in a self-help group of the state associations for dyslexia and dyscalculia, which exist in every federal state.”
Robbie Williams: “What we lack has given us a superpower… Find yours!”
Taking out stress and positive perspectives are also central building blocks to deal with the disorders. Robbie Williams shares his experience with those affected: “I am surrounded by incredibly successful people and most of them are like you and me. What we lack has given us a superpower… Find yours!”
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