What It's Like Having Dyscalculia

In elementary school, when we started learning our times tables is about when we started to notice that math was going to be an issue for me. I could not remember any of my times tables. I sat there and looked at the flashcards for HOURS, and still, I retained none of it. My parents were frustrated, it was the mid 1990s, and I was a girl with undiagnosed autism. There was NO WAY I was getting the help I needed then, because a lot wasn't known about dyscalculia, and it's an extremely rare thing. Dyslexia is far more common. Sometimes I wonder why I couldn't have just gotten a little dyslexia instead, you know? But I know people with that too, and I wouldn't want to struggle that way either. Anyway, one of the most horrifying and traumatic experiences I can tell you about me and math is that first hurdle I had to jump through, with times tables.

I was still counting on my fingers and my teacher knew it, I couldn't help it. I was put over in the corner with 3-4 boys who were also still counting on their fingers. To describe why I did it for so long, well, it was like a habit, but it was also a way to visualize numbers for me. Everyone else was taught to "do the math in your head", and we were shamed for using our damn fingers. Me and those boys in the back of the room always felt different and shamed and stupid. We were just trying to understand and do things our way. Not one girl was over there with me, I guess they all somehow knew how to just visualize a number and math in their head. The funny thing is, I am a visual learner, I have the most crazy wild imagination, and I was and still am always able to visualize LOTs of things in my head instantly...just not numbers. Maybe my tiny brain in middle school got caught up on the fact that numbers are intangible. I guess I'll never really know. Anyway, this isn't the main story, that's just the lead up to it.

Well, multiplication and division came along, and here we were, learning our times tables, and I was struggling. Everyone else has no problem memorizing these things. I felt pressured because I was confused about people doing math in their head for times tables, but also just that if we memorized the answers we would get everything correct, which for whatever reason never seemed right to me...I almost felt like that was cheating. I was doing so badly with math at this point that I had to go to the library every lunch and after school to practice multiplication tables with a 5th grade mentor student...yeah. The best thing she taught me was to notice that some of the answers "rhyme"--- 6X8=48. Okay, yeah eight and eight rhyme...kind of silly, but we made it into a little jingle in my head that I sang over and over, and it stuck.

When division came along, oh I was ready to give up. I was confused about a lot of things there. Anyway, I think I was close to being held back when I got to 5th grade, only because of math. I got honor roll in ALL my other subjects, that's the way it has always been. So, when my parents had finally lost their nerve with my inability to memorize math and stuff, my mom woke me up one evening (when I was in elementary school)...at midnight. She kept quizzing me on the flashcards and I just could NOT focus. I was too tired, I was nervous, and she just kept flipping the cards at me agressively. My mom and dad blamed me and said I was purposely being bad at math to piss them off, but I wasn't....I DIDN'T GET IT.

My mom yelled at me and screamed until 3am that night, and then she threw all of the flashcards up in the air and onto the floor and said "I give up". She stomped up the stairs and went back to sleep. I sat there for about 30 minutes crying and looking at the mess of flashcards my mother threw on the floor. I wondered why I had to be such an idiot. I went back to bed.

That's the first time I realized that my parents would never support me fully. They always had this judgmental way of not taking anything I did seriously after that, even the things I was skilled at, like reading and writing. In front of others, wow, they bragged about what a gifted writer I was. At home, they didn't give a shit. That only further sealed my fate as someone who grew to HATE math for almost her whole life, just because no one believed in me.

No one even tried to give me encouragement. It was just "you are bad". In middle school, I almost got held back in 8th grade for almost flunking algebra. When they started adding letters and equations...I could NOT get past the fact that letters are not numbers...I remember asking the teachers about it and they rolled their eyes at me as if I was being purposely disruptive...I was asking a genuine question out of confusion...

Then, in high school, I got better at math, but still was pretty much a C-D math student. My parents would get so pissed when I failed any of my math quizzes or tests. They grounded me for getting failing grades in math. I would cry and say "I don't know what happened I understood it in class and then on the quiz it's like I forgot everything again". That wasn't a good enough reason to not punish me though. The misunderstanding of how my brain works is "just an excuse". No matter how many times I made that clear to my parents, they never listened.

When I was grounded for doing bad in math class, I wasn't allowed to leave my room, and I had to sit there and do more math practice. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, call my friends. The only thing I could do was: cry about it for about an hour on my bed and call myself stupid, do the math practice at my desk with fresh wet tears in my eyes, dripping down onto the looseleaf paper and onto my homework. I bet my math teachers never knew those were not drink stains or something...they were my tears, because of my parents and how they made me feel about my struggles with math. So, I've always felt like a huge disappointment because of that, and always put myself down.

I never took myself seriously, and I accepted the fact that I was dumb...until I got recommended for HONORS Geometry in 11th grade...which my parents laugh and scoffed at. "Yeah right, no...you're not taking that"...well I ended up taking it. I got a C as my final grade, but it challenged me. I remember the teacher would always start class with these seemingly unsolvable warm-ups to get our wheels turning. Most of the class would easily figure it out within 10 mins. For me, it took half the class, and my friend in the class to finish the warm-up.

My brain just takes longer to process things a lot of times. Even so, the teacher I had was always nice, helpful, and he didn't mind that I could NOT move on from the warm-up until I figured it out for myself (or with a little help from my friend in class). ---and that was just the extra enrichment activities, not the regular things we were learning. Anyway, after that, I went back to regular math.

In college, I took statistics and had this zany professor who spent the whole class period writing equations and problems out on the board and talking to himself while we watched. I would hear him thinking out loud. I would hear the way he reasoned things out loud, and it made sense to me. I did very well in that class, and I'm grateful that at least the last math class I took would be something positive. I mentioned vaguely to my parents how well I was doing in statistics, but they just kind of gave that "mhmm, sure" reply over the phone that told me that they didn't believe me, for one, and that they didn't care.

So, the point of the story is, dyscalculia sucks. I've lived with it my whole life, and I still struggle with math. My parents did not help the situation because they shamed me, yelled at me, grounded me, and punished me every time I failed in math. They made me feel less important, stupid, for not doing well in ONE subject. Funny thing is, my mom is TERRIBLE at math and she knows it, and my dad is okay at math. Isn't that a bit of hypocrisy? No. Not according to them.

I wish we could speak more openly about this. Those of us that struggle with it. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the world (around 3-5%) of people have it. When I was an English teacher, I remember always telling my girls in my classes to never give up in math class. To always keep trying. It made me feel good to be able to encourage them, even though I couldn't do what they were doing.

I remember a few times actually that I had to substitute teach for high school math. It's not hard when the teacher gives you the lesson plan and you just let the kids get involved, I had them go up to the overhead and do the problems. They loved that and I really didn't have to do much. I told them I wasn't a math person, and they were nice and respectful to me anyway, which always meant a lot to me. I even learned from THEM that day, which I always thought was cool.

You know what all of that has taught me, though? That a large majority of the REASON my dyscalculia impacted my entire life was not just because of that specifically, but to the way I was treated by my parents, and the fear and pressure they instilled in me from a very young age. They taught me to be AFRAID of math. They taught me to HATE it. I didn't want to, and when I was in elementary school, I was very interested in learning more math and science. It was short lived. I was overlooked. I never got the support I needed.

My message to any other women or girls in school now who struggle with math is: "No, you don't. You're not bad at math. You are going to kick that equation's ass and you are going to get an A, because you're a bad b." ---(I just felt like that was the right thing to say.) Anyway, what I mean is, no matter what ANYONE tells you, YOU'VE GOT THIS.