Dyscalculia is a learning disability, a lot like dyslexia, but with math and numbers. Everyone knows what dyslexia is, but for some reason, dyscalculia isn’t as well known. I want people to know about this so no more kids are gonna believe uneducated adults who tells them that they’re just lazy and no more kids are going to think they’re just hopeless idiots when they try and try but just can’t understand. It happened to me, and I won’t let it happen to anyone else.
It’s surprisingly common and is often linked to ADHD. If you’ve ever had issues, look it up - you might find things fall into place for you, too.
- Difficulty reading analog clocks[14]
- Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.
- Inconsistent results in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
- Difficulty with multiplication, subtraction, addition, and division tables, mental arithmetic, etc.
- Problems with differentiating between left and right.
- A “warped” sense of spatial awareness, or an understanding of shapes, distance, or volume that seems more like guesswork than actual comprehension.
- Difficulty with time, directions, recalling schedules, sequences of events. Difficulty keeping track of time. Frequently late or early.
- Poor memory (retention & retrieval) of math concepts; may be able to perform math operations one day, but draw a blank the next. May be able to do book work but then fails tests.
- Difficulty reading musical notation. Difficulty with choreographed dance steps.
- Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 3 or 6 meters (10 or 20 feet) away).
- When writing, reading and recalling numbers, mistakes may occur in the areas such as: number additions, substitutions, transpositions, omissions, and reversals.
- Inability to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.
- Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks.
I can’t even comprehend what it might be like being a human who doesn’t have all of these characteristics. I don’t know how a brain can possibly just “remember” how to do long division or know what ten feet looks like.
I can’t even accept that a car is more than like nine feet long. Ours is fifteen feet long, and even standing next to it, my brain is POSITIVE it’s small enough to fit in a bathroom.
This is the most me thing I’ve ever read on this site. I can’t read analog clocks I can’t recall number sequences etc.
WELL THEN
I have this! It wasn’t really a “thing” when I was growing up, so I was just inexplicably “bad at math” and had “poor spatial skilled,”’etc. Sometimes I wonder what I could have accomplished if this had been a more well-known disorder.