What did you find difficult to learn as a child?

[wanderings]

For myself:
Tying shoelaces - I was in Velcro until age 10.
Swimming - I couldn't do it until I was 23.
Skipping with a rope - still can't do it!
Catching a ball - I love netball now, but I was hopeless with sports at school.
Reading stories - I found it difficult to take in new characters.
Knowing when to ignore rules - I was very rigid about them, I'd make myself unpopular trying to enforce other people observing rules, I'd tell my parents off for crossing at the red man.

Tying laces, doing my hair.

Nothing. Everything came to me easily as a child. Now that I’m old I find it hard to learn new stuff.

It took me the best part of a year to believe my maths teacher that multiplying two negatives made a positive. Makes algebra somewhat tricky. In the end I told him "I'll pretend that it does so that I get the questions right, but it still doesn't make sense!"

wanderings You sound like my DD who has dyspraxia.

Long division- I was excellent at maths but just skipped this part.

Directions, still hopeless

Getting the holes on the right side of the paper was apparently really important to teachers

Maths

Telling the time on an analogue clock. Big hand and little hand to reate time to others for years. Seems it a common difficulty which is not helped by the invention of digital clocks as people can now get by without ever learning to read an analogue clock.
I couldnt ride a bike or swim as I wasnt given the time or opportunity to learn properly. Thought it was my fault for not just knowing how.
Cant hula hoop .

Tying laces and riding a bike. I never learned to ride a bike and I'm 32. I just can't do it.

I was lucky at school and found the academic side easy. Catching a ball however, impossible. I just couldn’t do it, even in secondary school. Loved netball but there was no way I’d ever have got on the team. Even when I first met DH about 15 years ago I remember us laughing about how hopeless I was at catching. It suddenly occurred to me the other day however, that I can do it! And I’m actually now quite good! No idea when I acquired the skill.

Spelling. I read well before school but my spelling was still unusually bad in high school.

I also understand my son who can absorb any amount of knowledge from a book, but aurally is confused by and can’t retain the most basic of concepts. No issues with algebra at 7, but more than one step instructions cause panic.

@TeenPlusTwenties Perhaps I do have dyspraxia - at primary school I was in a remedial group for gross co-ordination, but I didn't know that's what it was for: I thought it was a fun lunchtime group where we did things like climbing, throwing bean bags, hopping, forward rolls.

@SockQueen Multiplying negative numbers: here is how one book explained it.
3 x 2: being given three lots of £2.
3 x -2: being given three lots of £2 bills.
-3 x 2: having three lots of £2 taken away.
-3 x -2: having three lots of £2 bills taken away: in other words, refunded.
It's harder to explain dividing, though.

Telling the time.
I got an "easy" question wrong when we were learning this at primary school, everyone laughed and I felt really humiliated. It really knocked my confidence and I still double-check my watch now.

Percentages , up until then I’d found everything pretty easy . I can’t remember learning to read i just did it .

I really struggled to read. The first book I read by myself and all the way through was when I was 14. I am know an avid reader. Just a bit slow 😂

Spelling, left and right, neat handwriting, art, music. (dyslexic)

I wasn't very good at sport, not terrible, but I was always a bit clumsy and uncoordinated. I was hopeless at roller skating and could never blow bubble gum bubbles or use a hoola hoop for more than 2 seconds.

I was good at maths, but for some reason I've never been able to do long division. It's like I must have been away the day they explained it or something. Total mental block.

Likewise the periodic table.

I never really learned my time tables (started school in 1959 btw) despite school and parents trying to think of new ways to do it, setting them to music etc. Later on I did learn quick ways of doing the calculations, though, eg 8 x 8 - I'd do 8 x , double it, double it again, I can do this really quickly but am rubbish at learning by rote.

I really struggled with my times tables. I can remember writing them out in long form - eg 7 x 7 x 7 - and staring at them in the hope they would magically take up residence in my brain. Got there eventually - probably due to the threat of having 2 rulers slapped onto the palm of my hand. 1970s schools were fun! I never did excel at maths. My DC are both very good, especially DS2.

Swimming - our parents had to collect our school bags before we went to the pool and my mum said she could hear me wailing from outside the school gates. My hair fell out through stress, but I was made to persevere and once my mum spoke to the swimming teacher and explained how terrified I was, she was great. Shame it took my mum to say something. There's no way she could have missed how scared I was.

Nothing.

Nothing at all, except perhaps making friends, but that was more because I didn't actually want any. I was quite content in my own company and that of my brothers. I could make them when I wanted to, but I didn't naturally make them iyswim.

Oh I just remembered, I struggled with times tables too, and the alphabet! Even now I have to go through the whole alphabet if I want to remember where each letter is in the sequence.

Took me a while to learn how to tie laces, ride a bike, swim and I could never skip or do gymnastics such as hand stands. I still can’t do the latter to this date. I was never a girly girl though so it didn’t matter to me. The girls often did a game called cats cradle involving string and I could never do that either.

I was good at maths until secondary school then I just didn’t understand. Algebra never sunk in for example and I almost flunked my maths GCSE.

Maths in all forms. simple sums i can do but anything else i use a calculator.
Directions. no sense of direction at all. Cannot find my way anywhere. Once couldnt direct a taxi driver to where i live (this is before satnav)