Dyscalculia Awareness Day - Daily life with Dyscalculia

Today March the 3rs is Dyscalculia Awareness Day. What (You may ask) is Dyscalculia? As most people indeed need to ask, and therefore this day is much needed. Dyscalculia is one of the neurodiverse diagnoses which is specific to people who have difficulty identifying, reading, sequencing, and understanding numbers, values, and mathematical processes. It is akin to dyslexia but with numbers. However, unlike dyslexia, which many people at least have heard of, but may not actually fully comprehend, dyscalculia is less well known. I have even spoke to teachers who don’t understand what it is and aren’t even aware of its existence. It is a bit rarer than dyslexia, which affects 9-12% of the global population, Dyspraxia is up to 6%. However up to 40% of people with dyslexia also have dyscalculia. I am one of the 40%.

I wasn’t diagnosed with dyscalculia until aged 19, the same time I officially got diagnosed with dyslexia, however every teacher knew I had dyslexia as it was better known and understood, so individual teachers gave me extra support, and because I wasn’t officially diagnosed many of them wrote to the exam boards asking for me to get extra time, which I indeed received due to barrage of letters and evidence that each teacher individually sent them – for which I will forever be grateful. Despite this is still struggled a I was still on first readers ‘Billy Red Hat’ type book when I went up to secondary school, but at least it got recognised and I received helped.

Math on the other hand was a different matter. I couldn’t learn my times table and frustration as to why, came out in discipline from my parents and epic temper tantrums and fits of violent outbursts from me, coining me the title problem child’. Learning math was incredibly difficult as numbers didn’t move on the page (as poetic descriptions) but every time I looked down from textbook to exercise book or board to paper, the numbers were in a different order. I can tell you getting the correct answer for a sum, when the number keep changing if very difficult and frustrating. Plus, I never got any help. No one in school had any idea about dyscalculia, not the math teachers, not Learning Support, not even the educational psychologist. I just got labelled lazy which added to the frustration as I was working so hard to try and master it.



But challenges were not excusive to math, one of the biggest and still most difficult tasks is reading clocks analogue or a digital. Trying to work out the time when numbers are creating havoc is impossible. And a 24-hour digital is no better, you can’t image how many times I have turned up to an appointment at the wrong time as I have misunderstood the time. either too early or too late. This also extends to dates. In my early twenties I turned up to a job interview on the wrong day as I miss read the date. They were surprised when I arrived and quipped I was early, explained how much early and proceeded to interview me. The first question; ‘what is you attention to detail like’. I didn’t get the job.

Then there are phones, do you remember back in the 80s and 90s, when phones were attached to a wall, and you had to dial the number? Well, I do, and it is a horrific memory. I could dial the same number incorrectly serval times, resulting in an embarrassing exchange with the person I had disturbed on the other side. Resulting in epic meltdowns. As an adult the phone issue persists but know there is the technology to have all your number stored on your phone, and most numbers you can dial straight from the web on your mobile, which is much easier. But I still hate phoning people due to all the childhood trauma and avoid it where possible.

Technology may help on some ways, like the phone, but with others it is getting increasingly difficult to navigate. This is because of digitalisation and the ever-growing reliance on pin codes both pure numerical and also letter and numbers (remember dyslexic too). I often can’t use my debit cards as I can’t get the four number correct. I once had a house with a pin-lock rather than a key, I spent hours locked out waiting for my husband to come home. So I come back to the tool that helps, by phone, as I note my pin code on there.

Then there was France. A holiday with a friend and her son and mine. Which was lovely until, I had my phone stolen. Before you ask, no I don’t speak French. It was tricky enough mastering English (dyslexia). So I am stuck in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language and I can’t use my debit cards because I can’t get the number right. It was isolating, embarrassing and far from relaxing.

But by far the biggest obstacle is that people are not aware of it, or its impact, and treat you as if you are deficient on the intelligence front. This is why the protagonist in my latest novel ‘Ashley Grimes Mammoth Whisperer’ has both dyslexia and dyscalculia.

A few years ago, the BBC news ran an article about a professional dancer who has severe dyscalculia, I posted it everywhere, and many adults replied who also have it. They were all very interested to hear that I was writing a children’s book with the main protagonist that has dyscalculia. All of them wishing they could have a read a book as a child with someone like them reflected, so they knew they would have known they weren’t alone. So, I have worked really hard o make my own voice depiction as accurate authentic and positive as possible and am now embarking on submitting hoping it will find a home and maybe provide the sort of reading experience for children with dyscalculia that me and other people would have loved to have had as children. An acknowledgement and knowing they are not the only ones.

Neuro Diversity, The Preverbal Swan, and the Humble Mobile Phone

A few years ago, when I was working front of house at a museum, I attended a course on Deaf Awareness. The course was run a lovely man who was profoundly deaf. It was very illuminating, as there were so many things that caused deaf people issues that seemed so obviously but that we’d hearing people had never thought of. At one point he explained how mobile phones had revolutionised communication of the deaf community. This caused some stifled giggles from some of the older attendees, largely those that can recall the ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’, Rowan Atkinson, Deaf Telephone News Skit – (it you know you know – and like me you’re old!) Thankfully the course leader laughed too, and said he’d had the exact same response when a deaf friend advised him to get mobile phone. However, it was not the ability to make calls on the go – but the innovation of text messages that had the positive impact. And of course this was greatly improved with the advent of smart phones and video calling meaning it’s possible to have conversations in sign language that has had the positive impact.

Now I am not profoundly deaf (I am a little bit deaf) but I’d never compare myself to that or my Neuro Diverse issues with what the deaf community faces, but there are some similarities. For example how the mobile phone can help neuro diverse people navigate the modern world, and how many neuro-typical people are largely oblivious to their difficulties.

I have dyslexia and dyscalculia. Most people have some idea of what dyslexia is, but few people have heard about dyscalculia or know that it affects your ability to process and understand numbers. Living with dyslexia and dyscalculia is a challenge in a world that is increasingly reliant on password, passcodes and pins numbers. Many of which are a sequence of letters, or letters and numbers.

 

Having Dyslexia I have a dreadful short term memory. I can remember exactly three telephone numbers

• My mobile phone number – but only if I recite in a particular rhyme.

• My childhood telephone number - as it was the same for twenty years, but due to relocation is no longer belonging to anyone I know.

• My parent’s landline, which they had for over nineteen years. However they disconnected it a few weeks ago.

*I also do not know any pin number/passcodes. And if I do I can’t input them correctly.

So I rely on my digital Swiss Army Knife (to quote someone much cleverer than me), and use my mobile as a database. I save my codes and passwords on it, so I can easily find them or even copy and paste them. This is fine until something happens to your phone.

Recently I was on holiday in France, with my son, and my friend and her son – and I lost my phone. I was stuck in foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, I couldn’t contact anyone as I don’t know any telephone numbers, and I can’t get any money out or pay for anything by card if a pin is required. Essentially I couldn’t function. This didn’t make for a relaxing holiday at all.

The reason I’m writing this post is that many people didn’t grasp the impact of not having a phone had on me, and seemed to think I was overreacting. I had a lot of well-meaning comments like…

“it’s annoying but… it’s only stuff, it can be replaced.”

People don’t see. It’s not a mere inconvenience, it takes away my ability to be independent and participate in modern life. It’s like taking away someone’s glasses.

Having penned this blog on holiday. I was umming and erring about posting this blog. However earlier today another ND friend broke her phone and going through a similar ordeal. So I decided to be brave and put this post up. To highlight, that although neuro diverse people are articulate, intelligent and together people many of our struggles go unnoticed, like the preverbal swan, its invisible – nothing to see on the surface, and yet we have many many coping mechanisms set up so we can function. And so a broken or lost mobile phone may indeed be a whole lot more than an inconvenience.

Pondering the Ethics of Cloning Mammoths for this new Millennia + the Wobbles of a Neuro Diverse Writer.

Any one that knows me will tell you I like mammoths. In fact they’d probably say that is a mammoth understatement. So I am very excited about the recent mammoth news. You have probably seen the headlines that a company has donated fifteen million dollars to George Church’s Mammoth Rival Project to speed up the process of cloning a mammoth by editing the genes of modern Asian elephants. This is to create a kind of elephant-mammoth hybrid, capable of enduring Siberian winters, in an effort to curb the rate of global warming; The creatures will do this by roaming tundra breaking up the blanket of snow that insulates the ground, warming up and causing the permafrost to melt, that would release locked methane gasses into the atmosphere.

I am excited as this is the inspiration behind my current middle grade WIP. I actually came on the premise of the novel by accident whilst researching for a YA Sci-Fi Thriller about Neanderthal cloning, when reading about the science of de-extinction in Beth Shaprio’s book ‘How to Clone a Mammoth’. Of course Neanderthals are great, especially as almost everyone on the planet (except for those in the African Basin) have a percentage of Neanderthal DNA, but let’s face its mammoths are cuter, they have just more appeal, so I got distracted.

The distraction was that mammoths have a potential to help with the global warming problem and also a protentional place ready to house them in the form of the Pleistocene Park in Siberia. I thought that children of today with their concern for the planet, its non-human inhabitants and an increasing love to STEM subjects would find this interesting. The fact there are scientific solutions to the massive issue of global warming, that could work in combination with other methods , like eating less meat , changing to greener power and reducing plastic.

Of course I don’t actually think we should necessarily turn to cloning extinct creatures, after all there are other non-extinct species that can do the same thing like camels and bison, which are already being re-introduced to the tundra as part of the Project at Pleistocene Park.

 

Also there are a great many ethical issues to consider, like the welfare of the modern Asian Elephant mothers, and should we be editing the genes of an already endangered species rather than helping the breading of that host species.

However, I would hope my story may inspire children to look into cloning, as it's methods can be utilised to help endangered species. Like, Elizabeth Ann, the black-footed ferret, who was cloned from a ferret that died more than 30 years before she was born. This kind of cloning means you can inject genetic diversity into dwindling population giving them a better chance of regaining numbers and avoiding extinction. This is work that is supported by the Revive and Restore initiative.

So of course the mammoth news, is exciting but uncomfortable, both due to the big question SHOULD WE. But also on a more selfish and personal note for me. I have been writing this novel for a while, and very few people I spoke to about it, had ever heard of the Mammoth Revival Project. But now it’s big news, and with me having issues with spelling and grammar due to Dyslexia, I can take a little longer than most to get my work submission ready. So, I’m worried someone will now see this news, and work this concept up into a submit-able manuscript and pit me to the post whilst I’m still making mine conform to the English language. It may sound like I’m being ridiculously paranoid, but this has happen many times in the past, so it is rather raw injury.

So that is me, done, and off to feverously try and get my manuscript polished ready for submission. Wish me luck!

Clearing the Cotton Wool (in a vain hope to boost my creativity)

Lately I’ve been struggling to get my brain in gear and enable me to be productive. I can’t seem to stick to task, or achieve the momentum of creative flow, even decide on a course of action or remember anything. Many of you will know the feeling - the feeling that your brain is clogged up with cotton wool.

This is me presently – struggling with cotton wool brain and it is SOOOOOOO frustrating. The issue is made worse as my POTS (Postal Tachycardia Syndrome) making me tired, light headed, giving tummy issues and BRAIN FOG (which is another way of describing Cotton Wool Brain.) Add to this my dyslexia, causing me difficulties with my short term memory and concentration it all adds up to one thing, a bad case of cotton wool brain and reduced creativity.

This results in my confidence taking a hit which causes my mood to plunge which means I get anxious about not being creative enough. This then makes me doubt my ability to write and to navigate around the substantial extra hurdles my health issues and neuro diversity place on the path to publication. All of this of course makes my cotton wool brain to get worse.

So How to Clear the Cotton Wool from my Brain?

• Exercise is one of the best ways to relive POTS related symptoms including brain fog. However POTS also makes me medically exercise intolerant as my heart is already strained by just keeping me upright. Add to this my dodgy hips making most exercise impossible, and hyper flexibility which mean I can and have broken bones and dislocated joints my standing still - let alone moving or exercising. This makes exercise a challenge. Despite all the challenges my health issue present on my ability to exercise, I do walk everyday - as long as it’s on flat ground and good terrain. Of course some days it my hips are bad I can’t walk at all.

• Lists and Post-its. I have to-do lists and post-its everywhere. this is to try and focus my brain on the most important tasks and to combat my bad short term memory - to try and reduce the possibility of me forgetting anything.

• Eating better. Eating better, can help ease my POTS symptoms including the cotton wool brain. This of course takes time to plan and prepare, but the benefits are worth it. Just look at Deliciously Ella, who had really debilitating POTS which she managed through diet.

• Better Sleep. This is obvious, but when I have a bad case of cotton wool brain, it usually comes with a bad bout of POTS and hyper flexibility - which means more pain. Joints, Hips, and a bad tummy which makes sleeping difficult. Also due to my hyper flexibility I can’t take any sleeping aids, as these relax the muscles, and if I do, I can’t walk in the morning. So this is difficult, and any tip gratefully received.

• Getting Out. Sometimes the best was to clear the cotton wool is to force its out. If I change the environment, by going anywhere that isn’t home, there are fewer distractions. This means if I take a note pad and pen, and put that pen to the paper, I actually write. It may be BAD writing, but l think of it like panning for gold; you have to work through a lot of dirt to get the nougat. This forces the rain to cast aside the cotton wool enough to stick to task. Even if the output isn’t the best quality, it is a start and the next time I try and write it is easier.

All in all cotton wool brain is frustrating. Sometimes it is a massive challenge to clear it all. But then I’m a dyslexic trying to make a career in writing, so challenge is something I rise too – although slightly slowly and wobbly , I do rise.