Math. For many, just the word brings cringes and shudders. Either you were really good at it or you struggled with it at least some time in your education. For a few of us the term brings stronger emotions; fear, embarrassment, failure, a sense that no matter how hard you tried it was never good enough, and confusion. Confusion because everything else came so MUCH easier than math ever did.
I wasn’t diagnosed with a math disability until college. When I sat down with my college Algebra Professor and tried to describe why I was so afraid of her class, why I was afraid that this ONE class was going to derail my entire college success. With some questions and coaxing, and explanation of the ways I handle math in the real world, she made a preliminary diagnosis and arranged tests. Once I began research myself and found a list of symptoms I couldn’t believe that no one had ever put two and two together in the past.
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The list of symptoms (paraphrased from dyscalculia.org) read as follows:
Normal or accelerated language acquisition. I read at a college level in fifth grade. I’d been writing short stories since then as well. I loved doing research papers and reports. I wrote poetry.
Difficulty with time and direction. I always set an alarm to return from breaks at work on time, otherwise I’d be late because I’ve never had a functional ‘sense of time’ that other people seemed to take for granted. I navigate by landmarks, not direction or even road names. And the major highway that runs north/south through my town but is labeled east/west confused me for YEARS. (Those of you in Central Florida know of what I speak.)
Difficulty with name/face placement. Oh how many times has someone been familiar but I can’t place the face? How many times have I said “You know, that actor who played Solo in Star Wars” or something similar because the actor’s name was completely gone from my memory (odd that often I can remember the character name better than the actor’s maybe it’s repetition/exposure). I often call my kids by each other’s names, or the dog’s, or the cat’s….
Inconsistencies in math facts. One day I can add, or multiply, and the next.. poof. Gone. I have my tricks to figure it out, especially with multiplication. And I do all math problems at least three times to make sure I get it right. Timed tests are always a fail.
Number transposals, reversals, or omissions when writing or reading numbers. Switching numbers is a plague. I hand people my cell phone and have them enter their number. Losing a cell phone is a cause for panic because I can’t call anyone, even home, reliably without it. Cell phones were a huge relief to me, because with phone books I had to enter the number, and sometimes it took me four or five tries to call someone successfully. My Algebra II teacher, one of two math teachers that actually recognized a problem rather than saying I was ‘lazy’, used to spell out in words numbers he knew I would switch on tests and in homework (graphing gave me nightmares before this). When he was teaching he would say “fifteen twenty seven” instead of 1527 when writing numbers on the board. He explained to me that was easier even than him saying one thousand five hundred and twenty seven when it came to my brain transcribing the number properly. I wish I could thank him every single day. He taught me techniques I still use to navigate daily finances.
Inability to grasp and/or remember math concepts, formulas etc. I can’t ever remember how to add, multiply, divide fractions for example. Every time I have to do that I have to go look it up. My so n is doing fractions, decimals, and percentages right now in pre-algebra. My roommate helps him. There are many other math concepts I have issues with, but that’s the one I run into most often; fractions.
May be able to do book work but fails tests and quizzes. I think this goes back to the inability to remember the concepts, formulas, etc. When you’re doing book work you can look them up. You can’t when you’re taking a test.
Difficulty picturing mechanical processes. I can envision a face of a clock, but always had trouble with geography when I had to say what went where. I could recognize the shape of a state, and give you a name, for example, I could even tell you what part of the country it was in, but I couldn’t tell you its exact location on a map.
Poor sense of direction and loses things often. Self explanatory and I definitely have this. I remember one time when I was about 7, I went to a friend’s house several blocks away to play and got completely LOST coming home. My parents thought I was lying, they couldn’t understand how I could get lost that close to home and from a place I’d gone at least a dozen times before. But I can remember the fear of being lost, crying, having no clue where I was for what seemed like hours. And I can remember knowing that I should know where I was and how to get home, and the sheer frustration that I could not. I often use the Dora the Explorer method of navigation. I also tell people when I put things that are important somewhere. My other half, my roommate, my son, my daughter, they’ve all been responsible for helping me remember where things are.
Difficulty with music concepts and playing an instrument. This is one I’ve NEVER had a problem with. I can read standard music and tablature. I can play drums, recorder, keyboard, guitar and bass guitar as well as a little banjo, mandolin, violin and autoharp, I also sang before my lungs gave out. I love music and I love playing music. I taught myself the recorder in kindergarten. Everyone else in the class didn’t start learning it until first grade in music class. I did a more advanced book on my own while they were learning the basics.
Poor athletic disability. I’m a klutz. I’ve always dreaded PE almost as much as math. I’ve always been a nerd, not a jock. However you want to say it, sports were never my thing. I’m the one tripping over things, falling over my feet, and I can’t walk in a straight line (I used to run my best friend into lockers when we went down the hall in high school).
Difficulty keeping score during games. It took me years to understand how to score bowling for example. The rules wouldn’t stay straight in my head. Spares and strikes scoring confounded me and had to be explained sometimes several times during the game. Yay for automatic scoring technology!!
These are the symptoms of Dyscalculia. I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. Likely I’m told some of it is genetic (as my kids display a milder version) and some has to do with the two times I cracked my skull in falls between two years old and four years old. I have an extra flat spot still on my skull, and I get headaches in that area if I spend too much time doing math. The diagnosis was a HUGE relief to me. I had always worked three times as hard as my peers at math and always still barely passed. Everything else came so easy. History (except for dates) was a breeze and I loved it. Literature, reading, spelling, science, yes I had to do homework and study, but I’d spend maybe an hour on all of those combined and then six hours on math. Which made it all the more frustrating when in parent/teacher conferences I heard over and over again how I just “wasn’t applying myself” in math. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I was falling asleep on the kitchen table at midnight, every day over math, but I wasn’t trying hard enough? How much harder did I need to try? And of course because they were teachers and I was a kid, my parents believed them over what they should have seen for themselves, and I’d be grounded… again.
I had two teachers, one in fifth grade and my Algebra II teacher in ninth who realized something was wrong, not what was wrong but that something was. Those two teachers are responsible for my being able to function as an adult with math. My fifth grade teacher taught me ‘tricks’ for figuring out multiplication problems and waived the timed tests in multiplication that we had to pass to go to sixth grade. I could pass the multiplication tests once she taught me the tricks, but not in the amount of time we were allowed. She also taught me to triple check my answer every time, that way I knew if my brain was tricking me, and to use logic and estimation to check my answer. Because of this I was able to run a register at McDonalds without constantly coming up short.
Say there’s an order for $5.25, and they give you a $20. You’re looking at the screen and it tells you to give $17.45 in change. Now if you weren’t used to using logic and estimation you’ve just shorted your drawer. But because of Mrs. Shade, my fifth grade teacher, I don’t. $5 is a quarter of $20, so the change should be just under $15; estimation and logic . Therefore, my brain is playing tricks on me again. The change for $1 minus .25 is .75, therefore, I give the customer $14.75. I check this by doing the subtraction in my head. And then give out the change. I do this every day, EVERY TIME I handle money. I’ve learned to do it relatively quickly. You should see how long it takes me to do my budget every month!
This whole process is why I refused to work register at Ross. My logic circuit I can trust for smaller numbers, but when I’m dealing with hundreds of dollars I get nervous. Plus sometimes you have to enter credit card numbers by hand. Ross tried many times to insist I ‘cross train’ to register. I just didn’t want to get fired for my drawer being very very short. I didn’t want the headaches I knew I would go home with every day from trying, or the pressure to ‘speed up my line’. They knew I was in college and that I was doing very well in college. Obviously I’m smart, so I was just ‘being lazy’ and not wanting to deal with the customers on register. Sometimes you can’t get away from the stigma I suppose. I ended up getting a letter from my math professor explaining my disability and giving it to my supervisor. I probably shouldn’t have had to, but it made my life easier. They stopped trying to pressure me to work register between that and the threat of legal action.
I still struggle with my dyscalculia on a daily basis. It’s still a very misunderstood disorder, and one that the general populous hasn’t heard of. So here is my request to all of you. If there is a person in your life, especially a child, who sounds like me; a child who gets straight A’s except in math (and probably PE), a child who is struggling and striving to understand math and sometimes seems to, only to not get it again the next day, a child who is frustrated, who the standard answer is ‘they’re not trying hard enough’, look over those symptoms again. Ask yourself if this is the cause. And if it is, teach them how to compensate enough to get by in life, get a diagnosis so the school has to give them the accommodations they need to succeed. And by all means, if you have any questions as to what those accommodations may be, and what those compensations may be, feel free to ask me. Dyscalculia is an under diagnosed disability, because it’s too often seen as a failure to try, even in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
6:36 PM PT: Quick update: I've had a very long day today with a follow up appointment from my ER visit Saturday, I.E. been up on buses since 5am until just before 5pm when I got home. And so, I'm calling it a night a bit early, I'll check comments in the morning and respond, so feel free to keep coming with questions and such. Doctor was not happy with my lungs and how they're sounding, so on antibiotics, have another follow up next Friday,etc.