Lovely to hear Melanie, thank you so much! And yes, totally - Say: "bad at math" and all it does is that it brings about a mental image high school math class. And dyscalculia is so much more. I'm happy that the mind map helps to articulate dyscalculia better!
One aspect of my neurodivergence is deep mental processing which is often called slow cognitive processing. Yet, it's almost as though I have a bit of dyscalculia on top it. With more verbal and textually based abilities, I can be very quick on my feet, in terms of using it in many situations. However, it's the more mathematical based abilities where I really have to think about what I'm doing and can be very inefficient and error prone.
I found the employment figures on dyscalculia to be very telling. Thanks for sharing this article -- very well written and informative.
Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing, Allan! Yes indeed, the employment statistics related to dyscalculia and numeracy challenges are quite revealing. A stark message.
Regarding textually based skills - many dyscalculic individuals are talented in areas like writing / verbal expression /etc. The challenge here is, that because they are often considered so talented, the support needs easily go unnoticed. And the support would be necessary.
And one more thing came to mind about the verbal/talent, (that I feel important to acknowledge always when mentioning the characteristics of dyscalculic skillset): research suggests that dyscalculic people aren't inherently more creative or verbally gifted — rather, these verbal and textual strengths are often compensatory, developed over time because they’ve been essential for coping and navigating a world that demands numeracy skills.
I don't know where this fits, but when I first pick up a knife and fork I don't automatically know which hand they go in... and if I have a tap running I don't always know which way to turn it off.
Hi Amanda! And thanks for your question & sharing!
I'm not a neuroscientist, but :D - feeling pretty confident saying that these two would go under spatial awareness. Spatial awareness is basically your sense of where your body is in relation to everything around you. It also helps you figure out things like left and right. Difficulty with left&right is a very typical indicator of dyscalculia. (But again, I'm sure some dyscalculics don't experience "this corner" of the impacts at all. The variation is huge.)
If your spatial awareness is not working quite as it should, it might also be difficult to use maps and finding your way, and to tie your shoelaces, or pick up dance moves.
This mind map is so validating for us because we have struggled with Math, telling time, directions, counting money, and times tables and have been called countless ableist slurs that we sometimes call ourselves and are having to unlearn. This is just naming what we already knew but didn’t have an answer in childhood! Thank you! 🥹🥹🥹
I'm so disabled by this. Thank you for the wonderfully comprehensive graphic.
Thank you for your message, Brian!
This mind map is a great resource. I often have trouble articulating what dyscalculia is for me beyond “bad at math” and that never felt quite right
Lovely to hear Melanie, thank you so much! And yes, totally - Say: "bad at math" and all it does is that it brings about a mental image high school math class. And dyscalculia is so much more. I'm happy that the mind map helps to articulate dyscalculia better!
One aspect of my neurodivergence is deep mental processing which is often called slow cognitive processing. Yet, it's almost as though I have a bit of dyscalculia on top it. With more verbal and textually based abilities, I can be very quick on my feet, in terms of using it in many situations. However, it's the more mathematical based abilities where I really have to think about what I'm doing and can be very inefficient and error prone.
I found the employment figures on dyscalculia to be very telling. Thanks for sharing this article -- very well written and informative.
Thank you for your thoughts and for sharing, Allan! Yes indeed, the employment statistics related to dyscalculia and numeracy challenges are quite revealing. A stark message.
Regarding textually based skills - many dyscalculic individuals are talented in areas like writing / verbal expression /etc. The challenge here is, that because they are often considered so talented, the support needs easily go unnoticed. And the support would be necessary.
And one more thing came to mind about the verbal/talent, (that I feel important to acknowledge always when mentioning the characteristics of dyscalculic skillset): research suggests that dyscalculic people aren't inherently more creative or verbally gifted — rather, these verbal and textual strengths are often compensatory, developed over time because they’ve been essential for coping and navigating a world that demands numeracy skills.
That all very much makes sense about how verbal abilities in dyscalculic people develop over time.
I don't know where this fits, but when I first pick up a knife and fork I don't automatically know which hand they go in... and if I have a tap running I don't always know which way to turn it off.
Hi Amanda! And thanks for your question & sharing!
I'm not a neuroscientist, but :D - feeling pretty confident saying that these two would go under spatial awareness. Spatial awareness is basically your sense of where your body is in relation to everything around you. It also helps you figure out things like left and right. Difficulty with left&right is a very typical indicator of dyscalculia. (But again, I'm sure some dyscalculics don't experience "this corner" of the impacts at all. The variation is huge.)
If your spatial awareness is not working quite as it should, it might also be difficult to use maps and finding your way, and to tie your shoelaces, or pick up dance moves.
This mind map is so validating for us because we have struggled with Math, telling time, directions, counting money, and times tables and have been called countless ableist slurs that we sometimes call ourselves and are having to unlearn. This is just naming what we already knew but didn’t have an answer in childhood! Thank you! 🥹🥹🥹