On Learning Difficulties

Exploring problems I had and still have with learning and retaining certain kinds of information.

This is a difficult subject for me. It always has been. Being fairly articulate on the one hand, but "knowing" I'm really stupid on the other. I feel like a fake, as if I'm lying my way through life, through the various jobs I've held over my life, even through most of my friendships.

I did extraordinarily poorly in school. I barely passed most grade levels. Zeros, F's, and D's, were my common grades. I never went to high school (well I started but dropped out after the first term). I literally guessed at most of the answers on the GED I took in Navy boot camp. I passed it, barely. So I did get a high school equivalency or GED. Latter in life when I went to community college for vocational associates degrees, I skipped nearly all of the academic type classes and ended up getting jobs, but not the degree. I went for three different AA degrees at various times in my life; welding school in the '70's, printing and pre-press in the mid '80's, and then desktop publishing in the early '90's after my industrial accident.

I've always had a lot of trouble with math especially. Numbers just don't make a lot of sense to me. They seem like such abstract things for the most part that they waft in the air like so much smoke and then go away. My mom use to drill me with flash cards. These sessions always resulted in me breaking down and crying and her frustrated and angry, resorting to her religious rhetoric. I just couldn't remember much of the multiplication tables. Some made sense to me, like the 2 times whatever, and 10 times whatever, and I could do part of some others, but even then, I'd slide backward and forget whatever I learned rather easily.

To this day I can't do a lot of simple division or subtraction. Forget algebra or any advanced math. I never got what any of that was all about. Through working at jobs that demanded it, I did learn to deal somewhat with measuring things even to the point of using machinist's calipers and micrometers. I was quite familiar with drill bits and working with some common measurements such as knowing that a quarter of an inch is .25 and a half inch is .50. But much beyond that I'm lost. I memorized some of the more common decimal equivalents and what drill size goes with what tap size. I knew where to look up the ones I didn't remember.

What I never could get is the formulas and rules of things. Not only for math, but for grammar and spelling. I have learned how to spell much better in recent years and how to make pretty fair sentence structure, but I can't put rules to it. I do it mostly by feel. I learned most of that by reading and comparing what I was doing in my writing to what I saw in books and magazines. Thank God for computers and spell check. I'd have never made it if it weren't for computers.

In school, when the teacher would be talking at the chalkboard explaining something, I would sort of go away. Things would get dull and fuzzy. The sounds of the teachers voice became meaningless noise. The letters and numbers on the blackboard; a jumble of lines and dots—meaningless and chaotic. This happened at all grade levels. It even happened when I was in the navy service school system (which I also never completed). Even when I'd try my hardest to listen and learn, I would just go away. The teachers voice becoming nothing more than a dull annoying hum.

This didn't usually happen in situations like when the teacher would read stories. I remember one teacher who dedicated a period each day to "story time". She was a very good reader and story teller and I loved listening to her. She used her voice in interesting ways with a lot of emotion. I 'saw' the story unfold in my mind. The book that I remember her reading was called, My Side of the Mountain.

I couldn't answer many to most of the questions on tests so I left them blank. It was all I could do. My usual grades were zeros and F's. I already felt defeated so this sort of reinforced my self-concept. The thing is, I don't remember getting a lot of static, or help, for my problems. I don't think even my teachers wanted to deal with my mother. Report cards routinely said something to the effect that I daydreamed and doodled a lot in class. They didn't seem to understand that I couldn't pay attention.

One of my biggest fears was to be called on in class. I never raised my hand. I simply couldn't be the center of attention. The times that I was called to the blackboard to solve a problem in front of the class were horrible embarrassing affairs. My usual way of dealing with being called on was to remain silent and shake my head and wait for the teacher to call on the next child in frustration or tell me to go sit back down. They use to have music classes and they would ask various students to sing. I could not raise my voice when it was my turn. I was terrified. I could move my mouth, but nothing would come out. Again it was humiliating. I hated music class even though I loved music. Why couldn't they just leave me alone to listen and participate and learn by osmosis. But osmosis is how I live in fact—vicariously by watching from the sidelines. Never part of, but separate and distanced somehow, at least where humans are concerned.

I have a recurring nightmare of being lost in the maze of a huge school trying to find my locker. All the numbers on the lockers and halls look meaningless, the same. Everyone else seems to understand and know the system but me. I'm terrified and rushing around and there is never any resolution in the dream. I just keep searching for my locker. I don't even know if I'm on the right floor. Sometimes I'm also searching for the room I'm suppose to be in.

In reality this isn't far off the mark. I couldn't remember my locker numbers or the combination to the locks to get in them. I didn't use them for that reason. When I started high school, it was at a huge brand new high school building. I was overwhelmed with the size and scope of it. Class schedules were almost impossible to organize in my mind. I couldn't seem to figure out where I was going or when I should get there. Right off the bat I missed classes because I couldn't find them or match them with the times and days I was suppose to be there. This lead to avoiding them entirely. I had missed the very first classes and felt that I couldn't deal with going in and having to explain that to the teachers or why I missed them. Now I know that I was suffering panic attacks, but at the time I didn't know what the problem was. I just felt stupid and inadequate. I compensated by acting like I was above it all somehow. That I really didn't want to fit in or be in school, but I think I really did. I just couldn't be and do what other kids did.

I joined the navy the day I turned 17. I felt like I would be able to "make it" there. It was magical thinking. I took my problems with me of course. After boot camp I was sent to service school to learn how to be a machinist mate and I failed miserably. The very same things plagued me. I couldn't fit in. I became overwhelmed and couldn't find the right buildings or classrooms. I couldn't understand what was happening in class. I froze up and everything the instructor said was just a dull noise. The diagrams of pipes and wiring were like looking at some sort of code—nonsense. I couldn't take the tests. I started avoiding obligations, which doesn't work in the armed services too well. One can't just drop out.

Almost every year, a couple of months after my birthday, I forget how old I am. If I don't have a reason to think about it, the number simply slips away and I have to stop and figure it all out again if I need to know my own age. I often forget the numbers in my own address and phone number. I keep notes near my computer so I can look and verify the information as needed. Curiously to me, I still remember my old military ID number. This was back before they started using the Social Security number. My number had a sort of rhyme and rhythm to it. I haven't had a need for it since 1971 or '72, but I still remember it perfectly.

Not sure if this is part of learning or what but I've always felt disoriented directionally. North, south, east, and west make little sense to me while driving around the city. I could never have been a delivery or taxi driver. It wasn't until I was well into my thirties that I began to understand in any useful manner, the layout of Portland, the city I've lived in or around my whole life. I use to avoid driving in town like the plague. I still hate it and often get lost. It doesn't take long for me to totally forget the routes I use to take to get places, even places I drove daily for a long time such as to school or work. After awhile of not going there, I feel almost like I've never driven to that place before.

One of the things about the internet (email and my web site) is that it gives me a chance to respond to people where I can spend all the time I need to get my ideas organized and put into words. Most people don't know or realize it, but I can spend hours, and often do, writing a couple of paragraphs. It makes me come off as being smarter and more articulate than I might really be, but it has drawbacks too. For instance, it made running support lists at Yahoo a full time job. Every question I answered could take hours of my day. When I'd post my own messages about my own issues it could take all day or even several days to compose them. I enjoyed being able to communicate, but it could easily feel very demanding when there was more than one message to answer or there was a complex issue to discuss. This is one of the reasons that I gave up doing the DRA web site and being on the board of directors and a huge part of the reason I quit running or participating in various lists. I felt pressure. And pressure makes me feel anxiety and panic. In the same vein, it's one part of why I don't like using the phone and I refuse to do the live chat thing on the internet. I don't have time to reflect and collect my thoughts in those mediums. I don't see how people can think and respond at the speed that they do. I just go blank.

I've always had a hard time understanding card games. I never was able to understand chess. I tried, but the logic escapes me. Cards are a problem because I don't retain the rules. Not sure if this is because I'm such a hermit and don't interact with a lot of people who play cards or what. Then again, I don't seem to be able to understand many of the solitaire games available on the computer. They just don't make sense to me. Video games are the same. I don't play them because they are so confusing to me. I don't like puzzles, crosswords, or word games either. I don't believe I've ever been able to finish a crossword puzzle. It's also one of the reasons I could never play team sports. Softball was a big thing when I was a kid, but I never understood the rules. It was like "the rules" were just too big of a thing to fit entirely in my head at one time.

Music is a lot like math for me in terms of notation, sight reading, timing, rests, intervals, and the mechanics of it. I love to play guitar, but I'll never probably master it. Hard as I've tried, I've never been able to learn to sight read sheet music. I learn more intuitively but even then, if I don't play something for awhile, I totally forget how. I'll even forget the name of the song and it could be years before I happen upon it again and remember that I once knew it by heart.

I can intuitively understand that two halves make a whole, or that there are eight eighths in an inch. Take away one eighth from that inch and you got 7/8 of an inch left. I can see it in my mind on a ruler—specifically a yellow carpenters measuring tape. That's how I do math, I "see" it. I've learned a lot of compensations—roundabout ways to arrive at the right answer. For instance, if I can't remember what 8 x 8 is, in my mind I can add 8 + 8 =16, and I know that 16 x 2 = 32, and then I can double 32 to easily get 64. But 8 x 8 doesn't get me right to 64. Division is a lot harder, but sometimes I can do it by seeing it as a multiplication problem and using this same style of figuring. And of course, multiplication can generally be figured out by adding.  Addition is always doable and in a pretty conventional manner, but subtraction can be problematic with its whole carry the 9's thing. I can never remember exactly how that works. I've learned these things many times in my life, but they just don't want to stick. I was never happier than when Texas Instruments came out with those little handheld calculators in the '70's. I remember my first one, a six digit model without a floating decimal point, but it saved my ass from some extreme embarrassment on the job many times. I still can only do basic math functions on calculators as I don't understand what most of the other functions would be for, but for me, the advent of calculators was a godsend and a milestone in my life.

When I was in the eighth grade for the second time, we had a section that was an introduction to basic geometry. This was something that began to make sense to me. I could see the triangles and parallelograms. They were something concrete to me. I could move the shapes around in my mind and see how some of it worked. And, I had a wonderful teacher that took some time with me. I actually received some good grades on my homework for once. But the success was short lived. Pretty soon the formulas become more complex and the theory more obtuse.

Not sure if this matters, but no one else in my family seems to have these problems. My sister Nadine has an almost photographic memory for numbers. She regularly finishes the crossword puzzles in the daily paper. Both my sisters did pretty well in school.

I have a hard time with time, not telling time, but keeping it in perspective and keeping track of it. Events in my life run together. Things that happened years ago often feel like they happened only months ago. I know that this happens to everyone to some degree about some events, but it's a constant for me. I was this way as  kid too. Five years or a year ago, it's all hard to sort out and track.

I don't like complicated busy web sites because they take too long for me to figure out. Just too much stuff happening on them I guess so I've never taken to surfing the web just for fun. I only do purposeful things in the net like looking something up to research it. Much in the same way, I don't like paper forms. Each time Social Security or the Veterans Hospital send me forms to fill out like yearly financial or medical status reports, I freak out and get really depressed about having to deal with them. I hate that they only send one form because I usually make mistakes and have to cross things out or use white out. Same with those use a #2 pencil to fill in the little area deals like on voting forms or tests.

I can never make my check book balance. I've been using Quicken software for years because it helps a lot but I'm still always off by the end of the month. When I try and reconcile my statements I'm off by from a few cents to several dollars. I can never see where I go wrong so I have to accept what the bank says and start from there each month. I've learned to be very careful not to overdraw and I rarely do, but when I was younger, before computers, it was pretty common. Now I often go online the bank and actually check my balance a few times especially as the month end draws near and my funds get low.

I had a big problem learning to tell time. I was a teenager before I fully understood the difference between 12 am and 12 pm. I knew the difference between noon and midnight, but not when it was written as 12 am or pm. Funny thing though, I always new that 1 am was way early in the morning and 1 pm was just after lunch. The 24 hour time used in the service was a nightmare for me. I figured out that if I kept my watch in my pocket, I could casually ask other people what time it was. Other guys seemed to relish saying time in that format. Now I sort of understand the concept, but I still have to stop and add it up to find out what time it really is and I'm often uncertain about the results.

Instructions are often problematic for me. Not only the complicated ones like assembly instructions, but simple ones like when I fill a form out on the web and get an error message telling me that I forgot to fill out certain information or that it's wrong. It's like I have trouble seeing the obvious. The directions can be right there but I don't pick up on the exact meaning so I can't see the link I'm suppose to click. I can read the explanation over and over and I keep misreading it or simply skipping over certain words so as to not get the right meaning.

I have huge problems talking on the phone. Like calling for information or to deal with bureaucracies. Most people don't seem to have much patience with me because I ask them to slow down, back up, and repeat things a lot. I usually have to call back more than once, sometimes to re-ask the same question because I can't understand the notes I've jotted down, and then you get a different person each time. I find the whole experience quite stressful. The worst part is that I tend to let these things mess with my self-esteem while I'm on the phone. Then in the middle of the conversation I start feeling overwhelmed and panicky. I'll shorten things and hang up before I get all the answers. It's like my brain goes tilt and quits on me.

I don't even care for most personal phone conversations. I rarely initiate phone calls even to my closest friends or family. I have one close friend who I talk to regularly on the phone. She calls me. I rarely call her. It's easier for me to listen than to talk and this works for us. She understands how I just seem to "go away" sometimes. I even do that in person. Not sure where my mind goes. It makes it hard though because it sort of puts holes in my memory. People tell me things and they don't sink in as my attention comes and goes. I may not remember facts or issues that we discussed even a day earlier. I had thought that this was a psychological dissociation of some sort, but there doesn't seem to be a trigger for it. It feels different than the times I have dissociated during a panic attack or had psychosis years ago. This "going away" while on the phone or during conversations I barely notice. That is until I come back. I'll find myself in the middle of a conversation not knowing how it started or what's going on. I've gotten quite clever at hiding this, most of the time. But honestly, I've also learned to avoid a lot of life to bypass the problem totally. I don't call people. I don't do social things. I isolate.

As I think about all this and re-read through it, I'm taken by just how much this stuff effects my life. Both in obvious ways and in countless little subtle ways. It's really a pervasive issue—consuming might be a better word. And I'm pretty sure it's more than one issue or thing going on. I've attributed all these things, at various times, to low IQ; past drug and alcohol abuse; my psychiatric diagnosis—depression, panic disorder, PTSD, social phobia; fear; personal weakness; abuse issues; and a lack of normal socialization while growing up. I don't really know what is what, but I feel like if I could just focus consistently and do math and numbers, my life would be very different.

One of my dirty little secrets was that to compose even a simple email message can take me a very long time. Like an hour for a short paragraph. I have a problem organizing my thoughts and keeping each new thought from bumping the previous one out of my mental queue before I'm finished with it. So putting an email together is a lot like working a jigsaw puzzle. I keep shifting things around and trying different combinations till I get the ideas I have in my head down on paper (or the screen) and in a way that conveys what I'm actually trying to say.

To be continued...

Dave

A little more thinking and writing on 5/30/2006

I was reminded yesterday while watching TV about baseball cards. Back in the 50's and 60's, they were really popular with young boys. I was watching this TV show—don't even know what it was—I was just flicking through the channels and saw two little boys trading baseball cards. I wasn't immediately aware of why, but I started to cry. I often cry at weird things. Anyway, I started to remember how painful it was as a little boy to be so completely baffled by the players and positions. I never understood the deal about the statistics on the cards or why a particular player was desirable and another wasn't. None of it made sense to me. I couldn't remember the team names or who played for who when. It all seemed so natural and easy for the other little boys. I felt so left out.

Don't know why except that maybe it was because it was Memorial Day and I had been thinking much about my time in the service, but after remembering about the baseball card thing, I started feeling really sad about the fact that even when I was in the service, I never could make sense of the ranking system. It was so confusing to try to figure out who was higher in rank than the other guy, especially the officers. I mean, what the heck is a lieutenant jg as opposed to a lieutenant, and where does a captain fit, or what about master sergeants. They were usually older guys but still... I dunno. It was awfully embarrassing to ever get trapped being uncertain and having to admit I didn't know this basic military stuff even after being in the service for a year and more. I just couldn't remember this type stuff. I couldn't keep track of it all.

Various interesting links I'm exploring:

Hallowell Center - ADD site of Dr. Hallowell.

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder - Collection of info and original articles.

Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) - Sponsors of The National Resource Center on AD/HD - non-profit org.

The Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA) - non-profit org. The mission of ADDA is to provide information, resources and networking to adults with AD/HD and to the professionals who work with them.

General Adult ADD Symptom Checklist - The ADD & ADHD resource place. Information on both child and adult attention deficit disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

http://www.ldinfo.com - This site is dedicated to the advancement of practical knowledge and understanding about the often mysterious world of Learning Disabilities.

Dyscalculia.org - A lot of learning disorders info compiled by Renee Newman, M.S.

"Dyscalculia" is a lesser-known learning disability that affects mathematical calculations. It is derived from the generic name "mathematics difficulty".

What is dyscalculia? - Another dyscalculia site