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Amen! Although I am a Mensa quality genius (169 IQ from the average of 3 separate tests) I cannot do any form of mental arithmetic, including multiplication tables, and never have been able to. I also cannot balance my chequebook because I cannot subtract. Calculators helped me somewhat; nevertheless I managed to give myself a near-heart-attack yesterday when I tried to balance my chequebook and “discovered” that I was $250.00 overdrawn. (That proved, thank God, to be wrong. Garbage in, garbage out.) I heard for many years at school that because I was “so smart” my difficulties with arithmetic must be caused by being “lazy and careless.” At the age of 35 I had a series of tests that showed I had a disability.

“Question:I can never remember numbers in order. Someone tells me 25.34 and I’ll remember 32.54. I was absolutely horrible in math growing up. I cannot do math in my head to save my life. In school I greatly excelled at english, creative writing, music (learning by ear), and won an achievement award for my hands on technology class (making mock radio programs, computer animation, etc) as a very young teen. Even at 6 years old I was carrying around a notebook writing poetry all the time, but I can’t do math without a calculator. It once took me a month to learn my own cell phone number. I also did a payroll assistant job, and I got fired for making a 100,000 payment error. I seriously DID not see that extra number in there.

My husband and I always joke that I’m dyslexic with numbers. Does number dyslexia actually exist?? I have ADD and I tested as right-brained... could that be a part of it?

Answers:
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought I was the only one who had to write my home phone number on the edge of my checkbook...and the only one in our entire county who believes the main highway is 214 [it’s 412]. Had the same school experience you have had...tested in the 2nd percentile in math/logic on my grad school exam [GRE] and was invited into the dean’s office because she couldn’t believe I existed...that percentile means 98% of the entire country taking the exam did better than I did. Is there numerical dyslexia? Let’s hope so...it may become the Disease of the Week someday and get its own telethon. Yo, Jerry Lewis, we neeeeeeeeed money [as long as we don’t have to count it ourselves, right?].

yes you can be dislexic with numbers my bff have a cousin and he is six and he can read but the numbers are backwards to him like he i wouldask him what is this number 9601 and he would say 0196 so yuo are not the only one

The inability to deal with numbers is called dyscalcula. It is a rarely diagnosed learning disability. There may be Special Ed specialists in your area who work with adults. Maybe the local school district has info.”