History of severe feature of Dyscalculia and history of quitting learning math

[Oz67]

I have severe feature of Dyscalculia and some tendencies of Dyslexia.

I failed math most of the school years, but I kept relearning the same early mathematics, but still don't get it. At some point I quit doing math for some time, and felt like, it's pointless, but then I started learning math again, but with some trial and errors, but I passed at the end.

I feel bad for quitting math, because it can seem like I refuse to learn math and making up excuses, but failing early math for most school years is not normal at all, and I am way behind compared to most of my peers.

I started to try to learn math again from scratch, although I am not sure if I will be able to do complex math in the future, but I can try to do complex math in the future.

 

[330]

 

[Slime_Punk]

My thoughts on the issue might be dead-wrong, but sometimes I think that even if we're disadvantaged (as long as it's not a very severe intellectual disability, which would probably involve no need or desire to learn math concepts anyway), we can still learn basically anything we want.

The caveat, at least in my brain, is that learning will be slow and you'll obviously have to put way more into it than your 'average' peers; they'll skate on by compared to you, but some will also flake out, drop out, and convince themselves that they can't handle it, because some of that is seemingly embedded in human nature.

But even if it takes you 10 years to master what it took them in a year, are you any less disadvantaged, or are you simply more disciplined, more focused, or dare I say better off due to your disadvantage regardless, because you broke through the walls that most people would've given up on? At that point, I'd argue that you're actually a secret master, because you overcame every obstacle in your path and nothing can really stop you anymore.

Just some food for thought, because I've been there. In fact, I am there, and I'm keeping the focus strong because I can overcome anything, even if it takes me 20 years to do what non-ASD, non-ADHD people can do in 5 minutes.

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Picture this plot twist: in 5 years, some average person who wants to get into math and become as good as you asks you how you got started and then blurts out, "Wow, I could never do that; I have dyscalculia".

 

[Wolfnox]

Repetition helps.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I had trouble learning math myself. It just confuses me and for years everyone thought that I was being stubborn and lazy and refusing to learn it because my mind would shut down from all of the confusion and stress building up inside my head and I’d freeze and needed to stop just so my mind could start up again. Turns out this was just part of my undiagnosed Asperger’s and that I was being taught math in ways that my mind couldn’t comprehend. The only math I was ever good at doing and could learn normally was geometry because I used to do a lot of origami. I can still remember some of the geometric formulas to find surface space and volume. Physics was the only lab science that I could handle as well because of its connection to geometry. I’m not an expert at geometry but at least I am able to handle it better than I could with Algebra.