Purpose: The purpose of this Blog is to serve as an outlet for processing and sorting out my own personal experience growing up with a learning disability (dyscalculia) and discovering how to navigate everyday life as a diagnosed adult. I hope that it is educational, vindicating and relatable. My goal is to spread awareness about learning disabilities because they are so common, yet a good majority of people don't know about them-even in the classroom or in a doctors office depending on where you are. And, if I am being honest, I need an emotional outlet to express my thoughts and feelings surrounding this topic. The more I learn the more passionate I become about the topic.
I will be mindful to share my sources and it is my intention NOT to spread misinformation-DISCLAIMER: I am not a PhD, so please keep this in mind. If there is any content that is absolutely incorrect, please reach out to me. This is a gentle reminder that I am treating this blog more like a public diary, not a research paper.
始めよう-Let's begin!
What IS dyscalculia? According to the LDAA-Learning Disabilities Association of America, Dyscalculia is described as, "affecting a persons ability to understand numbers and learn math facts." Areas that are commonly affected are impaired calculation skills, difficulty understanding numbers, and math facts. https://ldaamerica.org/disabilities/dyscalculia/
I found this to be a rather shallow description while I was doing research for an explanatory synthesis on learning disabilities with focus on dyslexia and dyscalculia (I will share my essay in a later post for those who might be interested).
It is important to note that there are many more aspects of a persons brain that can be impacted than, "just the ability to do math". Areas that are often-but don't have to be- impacted are, estimating quantity without counting, using processes to solve equations, reading music, learning choreography, telling time, time management, distance estimation (e.g. while driving), mental math, reading graphs or charts, following instructions or recipes, counting change (money), navigation skills and more. Not all areas may be equally affected in one person and other learning disabilities commonly face similar challenges which is why it is important to receive an official diagnosis from a qualified professional. Simply because mathematics may be challenging, or you struggle being on time, does not mean you have dyscalculia.
Now you may be wondering, what IS dyscalculia? A common misconception is that dyscalculia is like dyslexia with numbers. This is a false comparison. Dyslexia has been shown to affect the brain in an entirely different way, and while some people with dyscalculia can struggle with reading and writing numbers, it is more about the ability to understand numerical and related abstract concepts and the inability to remember and/or replicate them. A quick AI search will explain that the region of the brain experiencing dysfunction is the, "Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS): This region is central to numerical processing. It activates during tasks involving numbers, even simple counting exercises. In individuals with dyscalculia, the IPS shows reduced activation and less precise patterns compared to those without the condition."
What I have learned for myself and how my brain is affected, is that I experience all the stereotypical affects such as not understanding mathematics. However, what I have come to realize is that I am just incredibly slow at developing the connections in the brain (neural pathways) for memory when it comes to mathematically related concepts, and it takes a seemingly ridiculous amount of time and repetition to get anywhere or that I can sometimes reach a limit and not improve any further. As an example, I started learning Piano when I was 8/9 years old. I took lessons for about 8 years. The reason I quit was because I was not progressing and to my frustration, my teacher accused me of not practicing enough. It was only later while doing research for the explanatory synthesis that I learned that dyscalculia was possibly the determining factor in my struggle to improve on the piano.
Musical tangent aside, learning mathematic concepts with a neurodivergent approach instead of the repeated neurotypical approach/method/explanation makes a significant difference for learners with dyscalculia. An example of this, is that in elementary school I was struggling to memorize multiplication tables and I was equally terrible at timed tests. While everyone mastered these math facts in 3rd,4th,5th grade, it wasn't until 6th grade that I was finally able to perform multiplication without getting anxiety or giving up. The problem then, was that I had been unable to keep up as the curriculum continued, and the next daunting challenge of long division kicked my butt!
I want to add that writing down the steps for multiplication and division was so incredibly vital for me in order to understand what was going on in a math problem, due to an effect of dyscalculia being unable to remember all the steps in the process of solving an equation or math problem. As a kid I had no awareness of why my experience was so challenging and no one had heard of dyscalculia. By middle school I realized that I needed to take detailed notes if I wanted to survive academics (specifically math as well as Science, History and Computer classes). If I had a friendly teacher that I felt I could trust, I would find the courage to ask where a number came from when it would-from my perspective-suddenly appear in the equation. What I think many people fail to comprehend is that a number is just a physical symbol for those with dyscalculia and oftentimes we are unable to see the relationships between numbers when they are being calculated. As an oversimplified example: when I see a math problem such as 5-2=? I have to COUNT to know that the answer is 3. No thanks to math anxiety (I will dive into that in a separate post) I am constantly second guessing myself and my ability to get the right answer. The more complex a math problem is, the worse it gets. Calculators of course make a world of difference for those with dyscalculia, but research and my own personal experience show, that dyscalculics struggle just as much using a calculator to get the final product.
I was able to understand more clearly how dyscalculia affected me when I really started learning how to bake. Baking is one of the hardest things for me even though I can cook. (I am no Gordon Ramsey, I assure you). As I am sure you know, baking requires exactness, following the instructions and steps with no deviation from the recipe unless otherwise indicated. When I have help baking, the final result tends to be successful. When I bake alone, it rarely ever does. I was so mystified by this! Just this past Christmas, I found a recipe for a pumpkin spice cake that I really wanted to try. My brother helped me (minimally) by calling me out when he noticed I was doing something incorrectly and as a result the cake turned out great! During those moments where he stepped in, I realized that I was COMPLETLEY unaware that I was deviating. The cake was so yummy that a few weeks later I made it again and without any help. It was a total flop. I was so frustrated with myself. WHY? I realized it was because my brother had stepped in and corrected those small deviations from the instructions that I was completely unaware of. Perhaps with more time and practice baking the same recipe, I would be able to overcome this.
*link for the cake at the end of the post.
I want to clearly communicate to those reading this that having dyscalculia or any other learning disability does not mean you are handicapped. You are capable of achieving your goals and a learning disability or LD, does not prevent you from being successful. What it does mean is that you have the added responsibility of figuring out how your brain works and the methods needed to compensate for those challenges and learning new methods on how to overcome your neurodivergent obstacles. Even though I loved playing piano, I clearly have limitations and becoming a concert pianist probably isn't in my cards, but I can still play the songs I know and learn new ones, just probably not Beethoven or Schubert. :) I cannot bake cakes on my own but with repeated effort I have successfully learned to bake yummy pies. Testing the boundaries of your limitations and being adaptable have been key factors in helping me create better opportunities and confirming for myself that I am not handicapped, unintelligent or dysfunctional.
My desire is that anyone who reads this and also has any kind of LD will be able to find that same kind of strength and reassurance. <3
Thank you for reading!
Below you will find a list of links for reliable resources on dyscalculia as well as the cake recipe I mentioned. :) Please feel free to leave a comment! Any hateful or discriminatory comments will be removed.
https://celebratingsweets.com/pumpkin-spice-latte-cake/
https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/what-numeracy/what-dyscalculia
https://www.dyscalculia.org/home
https://researchpedia.info/difference-between-disorder-and-disability/
https://www.dyscalculia.me/dyscalculia-help-for-adults
No comments:
Post a Comment