I can’t do back flips, I suck at singing, and you absolutely don’t want to watch me dance. I’m totally incapable of doing that “live long and prosper” thing with my fingers.
Big deal, right? Very few people are going to see me as less of a person because I lack talent in those areas. Almost nobody will carelessly and judgmentally conclude that I must just not be a very hard worker because I can’t do those things.
Along with three to seven percent of the population, I have severe dyscalculia — a learning difference that messes with the ability to process numbers. Some call it “mathematical dyslexia”, and if that helps you make sense of what dyscalculia is, that’s OK. Though research suggests it’s just as common as dyslexia, dyscalculia is much less understood, much less studied, and much less well-known.
My inability to process numbers — or, for that matter, read an analogue clock, a map, or music, all of which are connected — doesn’t bother me, today. My dyscalculia doesn’t negatively impact my life any more than not being able to do back flips does.
Sure, everyone’s life is invaded by numbers. When I need help, I ask for it and generally get it. I’m lucky. The life I’ve carved out is a walking embodiment of the “social model of disability”. That is, roughly, people’s limitations don’t disable them — the way society treats them and refuses to make accommodations does, but we can collectively fix that to enable them. With the right help, my learning difference is no longer also a learning disability.
It wasn’t always like that for me, and it’s not like that for everyone. Because peer-reviewed research on the topic of dyscalculia and its lived experience is limited, I can only invite people who are curious how dyscalculia can impact lives to head over to the r/dyscalculia subreddit.
There, it’s not uncommon to come across people who desperately wonder how to pass math classes so they can graduate. Or people lamenting that minimum-wage jobs usually require handling money, or people who lost entry-level jobs because of math mistakes even though they're pretty talented in other areas. It’s not uncommon for people to complain that dyscalculia literally ruined their lives, and even, occasionally, for someone to report that they’re considering suicide because of the way this condition and society’s reactions to it impact them.
1. We wish you knew dyscalculia existed
Research on dyscalculia is meager, as I said, so it’s hard to offer credible insights into how many people know dyscalculia is even a thing. I did manage to dig one study up in which researchers picked the brains of 62 elementary-school teachers to find out how much they knew about dyscalculia.
I’m not sure whether this study is an accurate representation of teacher knowledge of dyscalculia in general, but I suspect not. I’ve come across far too many teachers who are either unfamiliar with dyscaculia or refuse to believe it exists, and far too many dyscalculics who have had the same experiences, to be able to believe that more than half of teachers have even a passing idea of the nature of dyscalculia.
Of the minority of teachers who’d encountered students they suspected might have dyscalculia (something that would clearly require knowing at least a little about it in the first place), most shared that they referred the student to a colleague or other specialist for further evaluation. There were also those, however, who admitted they’d tried to change the student’s “behavior” or “attitude”.
2. We wish you knew we’re not doing it on purpose
Trying to change a student’s “behavior” or “attitude” toward math makes about as much sense as trying to change an wheelchair user’s behavior or attitude toward walking. Many teachers and tutors dismiss us as “lazy”, “defiant”, “not trying hard enough”, or “not practicing enough”.
We want you to know that we often try much harder, and for much longer, to master the same concepts that apparently come so naturally to everyone else, and we still just don’t get it. If we were able to do it, don’t you think we would?
3. We wish you knew dyscalculia is a neurological difference
As in, a differently-wired brain. MRI-based research investigating what actually happens in the brains of people with dyscalculia as they struggle to process numbers has shown that folks with dyscalculia have limitations in their “parietal, temporal and frontal regions”, along with “hyper-connectivity in visual brain regions”.
That makes telling a dyscalculic that they’re lazy because they can’t get passing grades in math as bad as telling a wheelchair user they’re just not trying hard enough if they can’t run a marathon, no?
4. We wish you knew that sucking at math doesn’t make us stupid across the board
Dyscalculia impacts our ability to process numbers and engage in mathematical tasks, often specifically arithmetic. It doesn’t have any impact on our overall intelligence. With help in the math department, we’re capable of being great workers and excelling at school.
5. We wish you knew that math anxiety isn’t the same thing as dyscalculia
Yes. The countless remedial classes we’re often exposed to if our dyscalculia is correctly identified, or even if it isn’t, means we’re probably going to go half-crazy doing our darndest to learn something our brains simply aren’t capable of. So we’ll probably develop math anxiety — a fear of math — alongside our dyscalculia.
Seventy-seven percent of students who suffer from math anxiety are either average at math or excel at it, however. Dyscalculics with co-existing math phobias wouldn't "be able to succeed if only they were liberated from their anxiety", since that would not change their underlying neurology.
6. If we’re children, we wish you knew we depend on you for help
As children, people with dyscalculia don't have a clue why we can't seem to make sense of those endless pages of gibberish that don't seem to be a problem for our peers. We don't benefit from being yelled at, being told to work harder, or having the same concept explained in the same (undecipherable) way over and over again.
My greatest wish, as a child, was to acquire a magic pen that would simply do the math for me. Few noticed that I was truly struggling, and those who did had no idea to help.
Even though dyscalculia was first described in the early 20th century, nearly nobody around me had heard of the disorder when I was in primary school. I was incredibly lucky to be diagnosed in high school, because my school psychologist had come across dyscalculia before.
Even if they don’t, and they have severe forms of dyscalculia like I do, they’ll know they’re not simply stupid. They may identify as disabled. With the right help, they may end up identifying as differently-abled instead. Either way, they will find comfort in knowing that there are others just like them.
But to get there, they need you. If a child doesn’t seem to “get” math no matter what you do, start with a dyscalculia evaluation and take it from there.
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