Why Dyscalculia awareness is so important

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. 4x6? 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)