I’d like to take a second to list all the people I wish had known more about dyscalculia growing up:
My first grade teacher, who noticed when on a verbal counting test that I went from 99 to 100 to 200 and told my parents I just needed a little practice
My third grade teacher, who couldn’t understand why I would turn in a timed multiplication table test with absolutely nothing written on it, or burst into tears when asked to bring it home and have it signed by my parents
My school corporation, who placed me in advanced mathematics for two excruciating years based on aptitude tests, apparently unaware that aptitude and ability are not one and the same
My fifth grade teacher, who privately admonished me for “laziness” because I couldn’t stop making “silly mistakes”—like switching multiplication and addition, or flipping numbers like three and eight, or failing to follow every step of a math problem
My sixth grade math teacher, who publicly called me out for writing the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem on my hand, claiming I didn’t study, though I had spent five hours the night before preparing
My parents, who grounded me every time my report card came out, trying their best to discipline what they thought was laziness
My family doctor, who, once told about my math troubles, prescribed me ADD medication without any running any kind of diagnostic
My Algebra teacher senior year after I was diagnosed, who claimed that giving me extra time on my test would be “unfair to the other students”
Every teacher who ever laughed and pointed at the clock when I asked them what time it was
The boy in my band class that said I was the “stupidest smart person he’d ever met”
My former boss, who when I told I had dyscalculia told me “I probably have it too, I am always mixing things up!” (she was an accounting major and ran the accounting portion of that place of business)
But you know who would have really benefited from knowing about dyscalculia? Me. I wish I had known. I wish I could go back and tell my ten year old self that it wasn’t my fault, that I am extraordinary in the best way. I wish someone, somewhere along the way could have seen what was really going on.
That’s why dyscalculia awareness is so important.
oh my god.
I. had no idea this was a thing. looked up the symptoms and
‘inability to tell, at a glance, how many objects are in a small group’
THIS. THIS IS A THING? THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE?
‘struggles with directions, anxious about moving from one location to another’
I memorized the route to all my classes in high school and yet if I didn’t have COMPLETE AND UTTER FOCUS I would STILL GET LOST it was so unbelievably stressful
‘is constantly late because struggles with understanding the passage of time’
‘struggles to read analog clocks’
‘moves too fast or too slow’
‘struggles with basic math/memorizing math facts like times tables and formulas’
GOD. I spent MONTHS on those times table tests; long after everyone else had gotten theirs done, I was still taking and retaking those awful, awful tests.
And I still have to turn everything into addition to get it to make sense. 10-7? count up from 7 to 10, on my fingers. do it again to make sure I’ve done it right. 4×6? that’s 6+6+6+6. keep track of it on my fingers. do it again to be sure. 18/3? start adding threes together, keeping track of how many it takes, on my fingers. do it again to be sure. STILL SOMETIMES GET IT WRONG because even addition is hard.
just.
dyscalculia.
is a thing.
thank you for this post.
I see people trash-talk Tumblr all the time but I’ve lost track of how many people have said something JUST LIKE THIS about their mental or physical health, their gender or sexual identity, and their understanding of social issues or world politics during the less-than-18-month I’ve been here than at any other website or classroom I’ve ever had a presence in.
I literally didn’t learn that I might have dyscalculia until I was studying to be a teacher and had to learn what the hell that was. And oh hey, look, I have practically every symptom but I’m about to graduate and there’s really no point in me putting forth the money to diagnose anything. Seeing kids FINALLY get something in math after working really hard at it, only to forget by the next day, JUST like I used to do, but knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop that. All I can do is teach them the little tricks I learned to remember and figure stuff out and get around the fact that I knew only about half the times tables.
HOLY MOTHER OF PIE.
@taraljc, look at this IT IS US.
(Most of my symptoms have been mitigated or alleviated by technology and I would like to tell my third grade teacher: fuck you, I have a calculator with me at all times and I do not need to know my times tables FFFFFFFFF and I am not stupid or lazy for not being able to learn them)
My chemistry teacher used to write me really nasty messages on my chemistry work about how I’d get the problems right if I stopped doodling in my notebook and actually tried harder. I asked him for help and he refused to help me because I couldn’t point to one single thing I was struggling to understand. I could do the experiments but I couldn’t do the math. The only reason why I didn’t fail chemistry was because we started working on organic chemistry at the end of the year, and ochem is all about shapes and drawing the molecules. At the end of the year he gave me some kind of barely passing slacker award. I took it with a smile and didn’t cry until I got home. I’m still hurt by it and I still hate that man.
In college, I nonstop struggled with math, I still failed chemistry a couple of times before finally savaging my way through, actually got kicked out of school but begged for them to keep me in… and when I was a second year senior, begging the math counselors to let me into trig so I could just meet my biology requirements, they took a look at my ACT scores and said “Huh, your math score is way lower than your other scores. Have you been tested for a learning disability?” But because I’d already been diagnosed with depression I’d have to go to an outside agency to get tested and it was going to cost me $300.
Now as an adult I’m late all the time, I miss deadlines, and people just think I’m a total unreliable flake. I think my boss hates me. But I managed to graduate college with a degree in Wildlife Management, become a wildlife biologist, and now an Astronomy teacher, and I still multiply by counting up on my fingers. But whenever English teachers say shit like “Oh but you’re a science teacher, math and science go together, I can’t do that!” I want to punch them. I can’t do it either, but I stuck my fist up the ass of the system anyway and had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am now. Now I’m just afraid of trying to get certified as a high school science generalist and/or get my Master’s degree when I was never officially diagnosed and have never had any kind of support.
since i published this post so long ago i’ve watched it circulate tumblr and heard stories of all kinds. some people were abused by horrible parents and teachers, others had it recognized early and got the help they needed. many people are just hearing about it and suspecting they may have it themselves, which hopefully means they will get the help they need. some people even send me their stories about obstinate school staff, ableism in their homes and work, and sarcastic teachers who think we’re lazy or “slow” (god, the way they treat cognitively disabled kids… holy fuck.) i don’t always reply to all these stories because it can be taxing, but believe me when i say i read every single one. the story above gave me pause because it is one i identify with. i too had a similar struggle with my chemistry teacher.
what all these stories have made clear to me is that a) we need more awareness and testing for learning disabilities in schools and b) we need a complete overhaul of how we treat children with all kinds of learning disabilities and cognitive impairments. when i look back on the way that the “special education” kids were walled off, vilified, ridiculed, and generally ignored by the staff at the public school i attended, i realize that, in my case, no one recognizing my disability was a blessing. if someone had, i would have been treated the same way the other disabled kids were treated in my school district at that time. just like this post says, i still wish i had known, but knowing is only half the battle. we need enormous changes to our public school systems to accommodate and address learning disabilities. we need more access to testing at a lower cost. we need awareness and cooperation from teachers and parents. we need to address ableism in schools. we need to change the way teachers, parents, and students think and act. and we need to make resources for testing and therapy available to adults too, because learning disabilities don’t go away when school ends either.
when i read these stories, i feel a fire in me growing.
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