On November 1, Disney will release the second season of their animated children’s show, Firebuds, which follows a group of friends and their first responder vehicles as they help others in their community, and even themselves. Notably, the Season 2 episode Wrong Way Rescue highlights a learning disability not commonly known called dyscalculia.
Dyscalculia is a learning disability that affects an individual’s ability to process numbers and math-based thinking, with an estimated 2-8% of the population having it. Wrong Way Rescue focuses on the character Axl, an anthropomorphic ambulance, who appears to have difficulty remembering the right address when an emergency call comes in. Axl initially struggles with counting in order, and then reverses the address number, taking her first responder friends up and down the street. Throughout the episode, Axl navigates feelings of embarrassment and confusion until she encounters another character who explains her disability with a catchy song.
As a late-diagnosed person with dyscalculia myself, I was overjoyed to see an animated show choose to highlight the disability, especially the ways it manifests in everyday environments. Dyscalculia often is misconstrued and diluted to simply mean “being bad at math” when that isn’t the case.
Axl, Violet, and Rivet in a scene from Firebuds. Credit: Disney
Eventually, Axl learns to accept and even celebrate her disability, realizing that she is a visual learner and can recall from almost perfect memory her surroundings. Watching Axl realize her own learning style made me reflect on my own – I’ve always been able to remember locations and directions incredibly well, but never house numbers and zip codes, and I hope that children with dyscalculia watching this show will see themselves represented and recognized too.
The ”Wrong Way Rescue” episode premieres November 1 on Disney+ and begins airing on Disney Channel and Disney Junior November 3 at 12:00 p.m. ET/PT.
