anyone else discover they're ret*d ?

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Realizes I can't even learn 7th grade math at 26 years old.Realized u have no education due to my autism.

I realize just how bad my social retardation is and I just want to die now.

Please stop it, Samy. You're not ret*d. I used to know very smart people who sucked at math.

Take a deep breath, sir.

You're not ret*d. I'm 21 and never learned math past basic subtraction, division, multiplication, adding, and subtracting, because I was never put into a public school due to my differences. I'm just now going back to seventh grade math and working through it, step by step, on khan academy's website. Your struggles with math probably have nothing to do with your intelligence and more to do with you simply not having an interest in it, and that's okay. Think of it this way; you're not blind, you just see things from a different angle.

Who cares if you can't solve quadratic equations? Who cares if you can't get your head around matrix math? I can't do any complex math myself. Hell, I can't even keep my checking account balanced most of the time. (That's why I bought a computer, and I still can't keep it straight )

Being bad at math is NOT retardation! It´s probably dyscalculia, which have nothing to do with being ret*d.
I´ll say like Kraftiekortie....Take a deep breath.
You are NOT ret*d.

I also can't do middle school math or high school math. I also can't do college. I tried it once and it was just too hard. But at least I took a fun class and I saw how difficult it is so I would say high school is easier because it's more concrete and they at least prepare you for assignments and let you know what to expect and college has none of that. They don't tell you about tests or what to study and stuff so I got Cs in Spanish than straight A's. But high school was still difficult but some classes were easy and some assignments and I had my work modified because it was too abstract and it was out of my learning style.

This also makes me feel like I am slow and not very smart. My husband feels the same way.


Everyone has their own way of learning and have their own abilities. That does not make you ret*d.

I know how you feel. I recently referred to myself as a "ret*d cripple" in a PM because of my cognitive problems and motor dysfunction. I seriously doubt that I will ever get past elementary math. I can't even really do fractions. As for social I'm severely withdrawn and basically nonverbal. But there is stuff that I am good at. It's not much, but it's mine.

I work as a caseworker for people with intellectual disabilities, so I would say "ret*d" is the wrong term (it's considered more of a slur now) and that you might be looking at it the wrong way. As others have said, don't be too hard on yourself. Even if you did have an intellectual disability, that doesn't define you or make you inferior. I consider many of the people I work with to be intelligent because they find ways to achieve their goals in spite of whatever limitations they may have (and we all have some limitations). To me, it's the "normal" people who are lazy with their minds that I consider to be unintelligent. Also, any IQ score is part of a spectrum, anyway. We assign the label "intellectual disability" for certain IQ levels, but it's not always so black and white. Some of the people on my caseload may never tell time well, but they have a great memory, or are far more compassionate than so-called "normal" people.

....it's just math.

I cant even do simple division without a calculator. Or on paper. Never could. Never will. Multiplication is hard enough.

Yet I'm still considered very smart, and I still do programming nonetheless (which involves LOTS of numbers), among other things. Teachers back in my school days always LOVED to say that all of this math gibberish was going to be absolutely necessary. I have so far found that they are wrong.

Heck, I finished a programming contract recently for a game developer; this was about as successful as conceivably possible for me, as the devs were quite impressed by the whole thing. It's programming, which involves all these complicated algorithms and blah blah blah.... yet I cant do simple division. It's a computer though: *it* does the solving, I just use pure logic (no actual math done by me) to figure out where to stick relevant numbers. It then can do the bits where it smashes the numbers together using some sort of mystical ritual or however math is solved to get the needed answers for the program to work.

All of that, and I never even learned simple algebra. Oh, they tried to teach it to me. I'm oddly pleased to say that they failed.

Well I discovered that this was how others saw me. I discovered that this was the reason why they basically gave up on bothering to provide me with an education after ninth grade.

Like you I'm guessing, math was my worst subject. Although my academic record had multiple issues preventing me from going to college. But that couldn't keep me out of community college, and I picked a program of study that guaranteed me admission to state university upon graduating from the community college as long as I maintained a certain GPA, which I worked my ass off and did.

When I got to the university, I ended up majoring in math. I did this for a number of reasons but a huge one was, I will admit, proving incontrovertibly that I was not only not ret*d but vastly superior to those who had thus dismissed me.

When life hands you lemons, manipulate the lemon's genetic sequence to create a plague capable of eradicating all life on the planet. (That's what they call thinking outside the box.)

Your ability at math doesn't show your intelligence. You probably have other strengths. Math has always been hard for me to learn because it's so damn hard to visualise. And lately I seem to have forgotten a lot of it, which is frustrating. I always learnt it a different way and it took longer. If one method of learning isn't working it could just be it doesn't work for your brain. It doesn't make you "ret*d".

Honestly half the crap you learn in school doesn't matter at all in real life unless you are going to be an engineer of some kind. As long as you know the basics you are good as far as math goes, but your not dumb I mean I am 22 and although I like math and tend to be good at it there are parts I suck horribly at like fractions for example. They are pretty basic for the most part, but they really stump me sometimes. I tend to miss basic things when I do the advanced math which really screws with the results and makes me feel dumb when I catch my mistakes. Don't count yourself out just because of the math thing.

When I was a young child I was diagnosed as being ret*d... (although I believe that was only because so little was known about Asperger's back then)

I scored in the mildly ret*d range as a child so it was assumed I was not very smart. Then it was discovered I actually had a profound language delay and they were holding me back and I could have a education like normal students so I was finally able to be in mainstream.

Apparently, I "grew out" of it... Being told some of the stories about my childhood, I can understand I was not "usual", but ret*d? My dad was on the roof when I was 2, so I climbed the ladder and pulled myself up on the roof. I used to climb everything and Jump / Fall off... I could never throw a ball, I didn't really want to hang around with other kids. Dad still makes jokes to this day that I was diagnosed as ret*d and look how I turned out! I think he is only proud of me because I am 31 and already make more money than he did when he retired...

I'm ret*d in many ways.

Nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't mean I'm any less of a person; it just means I have difficulty with certain things that other people don't have.