Hello, everyone may have already seen this study http://cohenkados....ox.ac.uk/
or this article on the BBC. http://www.bbc.co...h-11692799
I have just read about dyscalculia ( ha, even the word comes up as misspelt on the spell checker, but if you type dyslexia incorrectly the spell check picks it up) Someone once told me i was a dyscalculaic, i presumed it must be dyslexia but instead of letters, i had difficulty with numbers. I then forgot forgot about it for 10 years. Then i read more, i read about clocks (1/4 to, 45 minutes to, 15 minutes to, 3/4 to .. Oh god! Why did they do that and then add Roman numerals too!) I digress, what i hadn't realised was how much more there was to dyscalculia. I had a little sob to myself, because i've sat for years thinking i was rather thick or a bit weird, especially when i got lost for the millionth time driving around my small home town! Or the giving change thing, the counting on fingers,trying to reverse park, loving science and then being told i couldn't study it, slaps across the face from my maths teacher, when i was a grade A student in all other subjects. The things i've done to hide, what i thought was my stupidity. I never knew my inability to tell left from right without a good think, or the time, or finding my way around was all linked. However, i've faced all the above and come through, i've forced and coerced myself into coping very well, but thank god for GPS. Lastly, when i was young and my father screamed at me because it was 3am and i still couldn't recite one of those times tables ( apart from 10 the following day he brought me an abacus, and after years of being unable to grasp maths it suddenly all became clear. Abacus's seemed to do the trick for me.
Location: Texas USA Posts: 6101 Joined: 2008-05-25
11/7/10
Dear Pips,
Yes,... so many of us have had that experience. Even the part about 'someone having told you', and then forgetting about it for 10 years. I'd been telling my dear, kindly math teacher [this was a grandmotherly teacher, not the male teacher who was a bit difficult, and who I may have mentioned here somewhere on the forum] what a hard time I was having, and had always had, in trying to learn algebra, when a woman, another 'older student' overheard me and paused to tell me to go to the Disability office and ask to be tested for (whatever she called it that day) dyscalculia. I said, Oh, okay, yes, I'll do that,... and thought later, now what was that that she said to do? and what was I supposed to tell them? I then proceeded to fail Elementary Algebra that semester and for the following two semesters before another person 'told me about dyscalculia'. I was certainly 'listening better' that last time, got tested, diagnosed, took Logic instead of College Algebra, and now have my AAS Paralegal degree. I might have saved myself so much time and expense if I'd taken a few more minutes with that 'older student' who tried to 'tell me'.
Pips, I read the dyslexia forums, and I think that I may 'know' you already from what I read this morning? If so, I'm so glad that you've come over here to visit us, because there's a lot more to dyscalculia than just problems with 'numbers', as I'm sure you've noticed while your were 'checking out' the forum. Welcome. - jus'
Edited by justfoundout on November 07 2010 09:41 PM
the following day he brought me an abacus, and after years of being unable to grasp maths it suddenly all became clear. Abacus's seemed to do the trick for me.