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Christoph Heinen's avatar

Chris! This was posted at a critical time! My 14 year old daughter is drowning in her 8th grade algebra right now. I try and try till I am red in the face with smoke coming out of my ears to go over the same. damn. thing. again and again. She just doesn't get it. And I have gotten so frustrated, it's embarrassing since, I mean, I meditate for God's sake. We recently decided to throw in the towel, to use a Rocky term. The amount of stress and misery the math thing was causing was seriously crippling our relationship. Last night she approached me and asked "is there something like dyslexia but for math? I just have no idea how to do any of this, and I feel terrible about myself". I am reading this post to her (once she gets out of bed) and I know this is the answer sent from God above. Thank you, so glad you reposted.

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Dixie's avatar

When I first read about dyscalculia a few years ago I nearly broke down in tears of relief. I'm in my 60s and I've spent my whole life since junior high school ashamed that I could only do the most basic math. I got straight As in math through elementary school but when junior high hit me with geometric equations, it's like my brain turned to mush. I tried again and again through the years to fight my way to an understanding of math, with a 100% failure rate. The funny thing is, I'm fascinated by quantum physics and. as much as any layperson can, do well at grasping many of the concepts - but those are words, ideas, not numbers. I still use tricks to work my way through the most basic everyday math. I don't need to get diagnosed to know what is going on -- my good brain just has an area outside its realm of functionality, and that's nothing I can control and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. By the way, I too have a college degree only because of the sympathy and kindness of a statistics professor. I love statistics - the concepts - but can't do the math. I had to write on part of my final exam, "i'm sorry, I can't do this." And he still gave me an A-. May he live long and prosper.

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