AddaptAbilities » long-term effects of LD

Dyscalculia and Finance: or, Hell.

Addy — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:39:22 +0000

Dyscalculics are no good with numbers. That’s pretty much the definition of dyscalculia. But in addition to having extreme difficulty with math, and all the accounting problems implied therein, we also tend to have larger troubles with the world of finance. We’re prone to “short term, not long term” financial thinking, and we “fail to see the big financial picture”.

I bring this up because my household is undergoing a bit of a financial upheaval. My partner has accepted a new job, with the standard start-up trade-off of stock options (which will hopefully be worth a lot some day) for a smaller salary. To make matters more fun, the public transit that Stuart thought he could take to the office is simply not working. That means that he’ll need to drive, which means we’ll need a new car that we hadn’t planned on buying, and …

…and, the long and short of it is that we need to save as much money as we can, and I need to earn more money. We need to rejigger the household budget, and I need a day job. Now, I’m your typical adult LD unemployed/underemployed artist. The bulk of my experience has been in the lucrative fields of retail and teaching. I don’t know how much money I have to earn at this point to cover the cost of the car, but the bigger problem is even having a conversation about budgets and finance at all when half the conversation might as well be in Chinese.

The world of finance is a pretty closed book to me. I suspect that this is because, in addition to being all about math, finance takes it one step farther into Accounting and Investment. Both of those are basically games — investment is pretty much a fancy word for fine-tuned gambling. And for whatever reason, having dyscalculia means that you also have trouble learning games. I can’t wrap my head around the rules to Go, Fish. Really.

I’m not sure how to solve this problem. Whenever we discuss finances, I feel bullied by the numbers. I can’t participate like a grown-up because the numbers swim around in my head, making buzzing noises like killer bees, and never resolve into anything with a coherent meaning.

My husband can’t really help in this area, because he’s too good at math. Seriously, he has dreams in math. Math to him is what similar to what music is to me — an elegant language with a logical syntax that is conveyed by meaningful symbols (and I say this even though my sight-reading is also tripped up by dyscalculia) so how could you possibly improve upon it? Why would you need to?

When I was just out of college, making minimum wage, I actually handled my budget in a more or less functional way. This is because I gave up on ever balancing my checkbook and just went with my intuitive picture of “how much” I could spend. For me, this proved to me far more reliable than trying to do the actual math. Now that there are two incomes, and savings accounts, and IRA’s, and a mutual fund, I’m up a creek.

Has anyone out there found a way to work around this problem? If you have, PLEASE share it. You’ll be doing a public service.

Learning Disabilities Definition

Addy — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:17:03 +0000

I spend a few hours this afternoon struggling to finish an article about learning disabilities — definitions, terminology, testing, all that fun stuff. You can check it out here.

What is it with ADD and perfectionism anyway?

Addy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:13 +0000

Yesterday at Well-Ordered Chaos I blogged about heading out the door, needing to catch a train, and realizing literally at the last minute that I needed to set out donations for a pick-up. Even though I was successful — I set everything out, taped signs to it, and even made my train — I noticed I was cursing myself for the mistake.

I’ve been reading about time management lately. One thing that keeps coming up in time management advice is to let go of perfectionism. In the literature that’s specific to ADD, it’s noted that lot of folks with ADD are perfectionists. And I just gotta ask myself, WTF?

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves? We’re at a clinically demonstrable disadvantage when it comes to getting places on time and having out sh*t together. Why do we make it worse for ourselves? Is it hyperfocus? Is it a neurological inability to let go? Is it something to do with the “right-brained” nature of ADHD? Are we predisposed to be creative divas?

Or is it a learned response to all the years of being told we’re not good enough?

Whatever the reasons, it’s crippling and I wish I could stop it.

Canada’s with me

Addy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:00:25 +0000

: Rickie Sugars is glad the study proves a link between learning disabilities and poor mental health.

I have no idea when this story ran in the Vancouver Sun, but it’s worth a look. The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada has released a study on the long-term effects of undiagnosed learning disabilities. The results? Lasting psychological harm.

I can certainly attest to this. My LD went undiagnosed until half way through my junior year of college. By that point, I was at a top-20 liberal arts college, surrounded by people who were able to do the assignments AND the reading for all of their classes, and my self esteem was not only in the toilet but flushed into the sewers. Since my disabilities are in areas that are the focus of most entry-level professional jobs (paperwork, scheduling, filing, and occasionally light bookkeeping as well) I essentially have no career to speak of.

As a result of this, I’ve been diagnosed with major depression and dysthymia, anxiety and panic disorder, stress-related asthma, and even a heart condition. It’s taken my whole adult life to come to terms with this. I have had to rebuild myself from my foundations. In short, friends, it has sucked, and it has sucked mightily.

Mad props to LDAC for taking this issue seriously, and for getting the word out.