A child from a close family is one of those children about whom we say, ‘Maths isn’t his strong point’. His father noticed, when he was about 5 years old, that he didn’t understand the concepts of ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ numbers. He somehow managed with addition, albeit by counting on his fingers, but subtraction was a real struggle, and any understanding of the ‘difference’ between two numbers was simply absent. 

At school, when they got to the multiplication table, he learnt it by heart like a poem, but without really understanding it. His parents spoke to his teacher about how he seemed to be guessing the answers rather than grasping the logic and working out the solution himself. 

After a great deal of struggle both at school and at home, his father began searching online to find out why this might be happening, and that’s how he came across the term ‘dyscalculia’. It is often referred to as ‘dyslexia for maths’, because both are neurological differences in the way the brain processes information.

A diagnosis of dyscalculia is made by psychologists and speech and language therapists based on prolonged observation of a combination of the following:

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There’s a story a lot of people tell about themselves that goes like this:

I’m just not a math person. Some people get it and some people don’t, and I’m in the “don’t” category. I’ve always been this way. It’s fine. I manage.

It’s told in a certain tone — part acceptance, part mild embarrassment, part practiced deflection to move the conversation along before anyone presses for details. The details being: how you quietly calculate tips on your phone before the check arrives. How you always “let” someone else split the bill. How you’ve never fully understood your own bank statements. How payday feels like briefly visiting a country where you speak the language and then slowly losing it again.

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A full-scale replica of one of the earliest programmable digital computers now fills a classroom space in Arizona, built almost entirely from cardboard and wood by students working under a teacher who credits his own dyscalculia (the math equivalent of dyslexia) for shaping how he engineers.

The life-size recreation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), widely regarded as the world’s first general-purpose programmable electronic computer, stretches across hundreds of square feet and mirrors the layout of the original machine that once weighed about 30 short tons.

Read the article HERE

Keeping my kids as my main focus. When things got tough, I chose to homeschool. It started with one child, then two, and eventually three of my four children. That experience taught me how to truly support them and how to teach in a way that made sense for how they learn.
My strong entrepreneurial abilities, which I attribute to my neurospiciness. I have learned to lean into how my brain works instead of trying to fit into a traditional mold, and that has been a huge advantage in building my business.

What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Build your support system intentionally. Surround yourself with people who encourage you, challenge you, and remind you of your vision when things feel hard.

Read her story HERE