What is dyslexia?
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005
What does the term “dyslexia” mean to you. How has it been explained to you (if it has) and how does that sit with your experience of yourself as a dyslexic?
Do you think there are severities of dyslexia? Mild, regular, extra strength?
I was diagnosed as dyslexic at university when tutors noticed a disparity between my apparent understanding, and my ability to get things down on paper. After university I pretty much forgot about the label and got on with getting my dream career. I am now working in my first choice career and my dyslexia has been identified by both me and work as causing me some problems at work.
Work sent me to see an adult dyslexia tutor which was helpful and she explained to me a bit about what dyslexia actually is, thought what can be covered in a one hour session (and I was a bit emotional with all the pent up stress and anxiety about it I’d been carrying around which I wish I had handled better.). In my work environment I’m in it has to be me that finds the solutions to my dyslexia to enable me to do my job. In this I cannot expect any support from colleagues – and indeed am (well) advised not to admit to colleages aside from my line manager that I am dyslexic. (After reading some of these posts though I feel lucky that I have any support at all though.)
If I could understand more about what dyslexia is, I think I’d find it easier to find strategies for the things that trip me up without needing to rely on accomodations from other people. Is all dyslexia basically the same thing? My tutor explained that the mind is like a big and a little overlapping circle which overlap. The big circle is the long term memory,the little circle the short term one. Where they overlap is the working memory, where conscious thought processes happen. Dyslexics like me have few resources in the short term memory (I scored pretty low on this when I was tested). So the mind tends to go blank when we’re trying to think.
Thats what I understood anyway. If anyone here knows about such things I’d really appreciate it if they could check and correct my understanding and give me any more information so I can try to work out things which work for me. I’m underachieving for me and want to stop but need to understand better so I can work out how to.
I have a different take on it (doesn’t mean your tutor is wrong) and mine is an amalgam of both the current research I read and the long view (I’m 52 and dyslexic myself).
Dyslexia is a difference in a particular part of the brain. It’s not a birth defect, it’s a difference (that’s important).
The part of the brain that’s different is the part that plays an important part in decoding text (and other things). Deocoding is not the same thing as understanding (comprehension) nor is it responsible for paying attention. However, this difference affects those things indirectly because it makes a process that those things rely on slower.
If you are slow to decode the word C A T (getting the C, the A, and the T sounded out to make a word) then it will be harder to semi or automatically assign meaning (4 legged animal that rubs on you, etc.) to it and then see it in the larger context of a sentence (what the cat is doing).
So, decoding is one of the building blocks if not the fundamental building block of reading.
So, slow to decode, slow to comprehend or even no comprehension. And, little or no comprehension then attention can wander.
Dyslexia also affects encoding (writing) in pretty much the same way.
Decoding is sorting out the code and turning it into meaning (reading).
Encoding is taking meaning in your head and turning it into code (writing).
The same kinds of things can happen in the encoding process and because encoding involves spelling, not just reading someone else’s spelling it presents other issues as well.
All of this said, one can improve both of these processes with lots of practice.
Are there degrees of dyslexia? It seems so and just as we all have different personalities we all have different ways that we’ve dealt with being dyslexic in the world.
I think this is an interesting enough question that I built this entire web site to discuss it and allow others to discuss it.
What you say makes sense with what my tutor was saying about dyslexia and encoding which I didn’t fully understand at the time.
I didn’t mention the paying attention but I can find it hard to keep attention on reading or writing something and tend towards a short attention span (and impatience). I’d always assumed that this was just a part of my personality. Generally trying to absorb myself into what I’m doing works.
One thing my tutor did say (it was Carol Leather, don’t know if you know her, she’s co-published a book on adult dyslexia) was that rating how dyslexic people are is not v helpful as it is more about the context someone’s in. Makes sense to me as when my line manager said he thought that I’m only mildly dyslexic as he only sees is really affecting my drafting and structuring work my reaction was that he doesn’t see the frantic paddling I’m doing under the surface to stay afloat.
Not sure whether I hate being dyslexic or hate my job.
Right, well, some jobs push more buttons in some people than others. So, not all jobs are the right fit for all people. This is true whether one is dyslexic or not.
Attention problems can be caused by lots of things:
ADD
ADHD
Boredom
Having problems with reading
Depression
All or some set of these together
I’m told I’m ADD but I have no clue. I am very easily distracted by noise so there may be some truth in it.
Your tutor is dead on about context: context is just as important as whatever limitations you bring to the fore.
Give me a quiet room and some stimulating reading and my attention problems and reading problems seem to go away (I can read most anything in that context) but distract me and I’m screwed, or, give me some really bad writing and I’m double screwed (much is, I’m sorry to say).
However, I repeat something I said earlier: practice is a remedy for some of this. Just learning by doing a lot of reading and writing will help one end run context problems somewhat.
I’ve become a much stronger reader and writer just by doing more of both. It’s simple and not hard, you just do it every day.
Don’t know if anyone has read/has thoughts on this report:
http://www.nrdc.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_166.pdf
I have some problems with the very narrow remit it draws for itself (ie excluding evidence from practitioners) and the sceptical tone. Also the description of scientific research as agenda free (I wish).
One thing I don’t really understand why the researchers chose to only deals with the literacy side of adult dyslexia. This is a problem, but many of the other things that it appears to deride as being too unspecific, are the things which can make life miserable,
A typical example for me is last week I had to make half a dozen different meetings in different places I’d never been. I did myself a clear typed up programme with addresses and phone numbers for each call and the time of call (my colleagues would just have jotted details into their diaries, I can’t do this successfullY). Despite checking it a couple of times before printing it, I got the venue of one of my calls wrong and so was in the wrong place at the wrong time, feeling (and looking) stupid.
I have not read this research in depth as don’t have time to process 180 pages of poorly set out (for online) dense text. However the less specialised bits are an interesting read even if not of much practical help to dyslexics. If it points the way for better research which will help practitioners then this will be good. Apologies if I am being a bit negative about this, an attempt to define dyslexia better, work out its causes and find solutions is valid its just the way that this has been done. I’d be interested to hear if others have any views on this.
One of the reasons that research is generally focused on the language and literacy side of dyslexia is that it’s more easily quantified than the social or other, more touchy feely stuff.
Research tends to focus on areas that can be turned into data easily. Makes sense.
You can more easily test, say, reading speed than you can self-esteem increase or spelling accuracy than level of depression.
Research is generally funded by grants. In order to write a grant one has to have a plan, much like a business plan on how the research will be carried out, and what will be done with the results, etc.
The researchers are after grants and they know that it’s easier to propose a piece of resarch that is more data-intensive than not.
This is my rather cynical take on your comment that research is focussed on literacy rather than social stuff.
Also, “solving” the literacy problem will reap bigger payoffs than solving the social problems, or so people think.
I’d say it’s the opposite personally: solve the world’s social problems, or, just those of us who have LD-related social problems and you’re gonna be a rich person fast. But, not everyone sees it that way.
Thanks for the pdf, I skimmed it and plan to look a bit more closely at it later today.
Richard – are you at all familiar with Dyslexia in young children and if you are can you please tell me how to help my seven year old son cope with this disability and are there any books I can read on the subject?
I am from personal experience.
But even though dyslexia is a particular neurological difference in brains, it’s a bit different in everyone who exhibits the difference: different set of differences and different “severity.”
The popular, although in some ways questionable advice many would give you is to get your son into individualized phonemic tutoring: Orton/Gillinham, Wilson, or some other systematic, sequential approach.
Much of this advice comes with the hysterical footnote: “brains are plastic and more open to this kind of remediation at a young age so better get on it right now or all will be lost.”
That kind of hysteria, while possibly based in neurological fact, doesn’t necessarily lead to any good. Your son also needs a balanced life with literacy in other things besides verbal language: like playground literacy and model building literacy, etc. In other words, make dealing with this part of a larger plan to give him lots of experiences in other, non-verbal areas.
One of my gurus, Mel Levine says as much in a number of his books. You should probably have a look at a few of them and at his web site: All Kinds of Minds.
Love your son, unconditionally, don’t enable him, make sure he has a broad range of experience, keep his self-image strong, and the dyslexia will be one of many facets of his life, not who he is.
Richard-I have a daughter with a learning disability and when I ask the teacher if she is dyslexic? They tell me they no longer use the word dyslexic as a sole disability, but they go on to tell me that if in fact my daughter is showing signs of the disorder which they won’t deny nor confirm they tell me that the extra help she is receiving will cover it. The teacher has told me that she has not really made the progress this year that they had anticipated and next year will hopefully be better for her. She has been recommended for a summer reading program through the school, which she has gone to since pre-k til second grade this year. It’s 5 days a week for 20 days from 8:30 til 12:30. I have to be honest with you, that at this point of the year my daughter will continue to tell me that she is tired and can’t wait for her vacation, and I don’t have the heart to tell her she has to go to this program again. Please if you have any advice or ideas I would so appreciate it, I am truly aa loss and don’t know what to do. Thankyou
Elizabeth,
This is a tough call in that in order to learn to read, you have to read, and if she’s not reading every day at home, with or without you, then she needs to be.
On the other hand, as stated above, I think summer is a time to be outside and do “summer” things and don’t let anyone tell you that those things don’t involve learning; they do.
So, make a deal (of sorts) with your daughter: no summer school but each day at some point she needs to do some reading.
And, this reading can be anything: any book or magazine she likes. But, she needs to sit down each day for some amount of time and work on it.
If her skills are such that she can’t read (she can’t decode) then someone will have to help her with this and maybe you ought to get her a tutor who she likes for an hour or two a week.
So, to sum: vacation is important but so is reading and school will be more hellish the further behind she gets with her reading. Strike a balance by doing both.
As I child, I was considered to be dyslexic. I had trouble copying from the board & spelling. My mother says I had trouble when I began to read too – but I don’t remember that. I do know that I did learn to read. Although my parents were told I would never graduate from high school I now have an MA & have gone into teaching. My mom was an early childhood specialist who’d worked in treatment settings for years & so my brother (who also had difficulty) & I were like taking her work home – she worked with us constantly. We both read. The writing problems persisted for longer for both of us. Computers have helped most of our organizational, spelling & printing issues.
I now have a daughter who has been diagnosed as having visual-spatial & grapho-motor weaknesses. The psychologists who did the testing recommended books about dyslexia as well as specific phonics programs. Her spelling is terrible. However, she also (with help from me) has learned to read. She’s two years behind with her phonetic decoding (& we’re still working on that) but she’s able to use context & a huge vocabulary to help with reading much of the time. Her comprehension & fluency are above grade level (although she makes many errors with small words & substitutes similar words when she reads aloud). Her problems now are mainly encoding – just like my brother & me. She has a lot of trouble knowing where to place things on a page.
I’m trying to find out more information about the visual-spatial problems. Some of the articles I read about LD talk about dyslexics being good artists & having great spatial skills. Others suggest that this varies a lot from person to person & many dyslexics do have visual-spatial problems with their dyslexia. Anyone else out there have any experiences with visual-spatial problems (as opposed to strengths) being part of their experience?
Liz
Liz: I’m dyslexic and dysgraphic. I can read and follow maps, I have a great sense of direction, I can take apart and put engines back together, and I’m “good with my hands.” I have an MFA in fine arts as well.
However, I can’t handwrite to save my life and certain fine motor activities are difficult for me. The solution for handwriting is easy: a keyboard and whether it’s an AlphaSmart or a computer, I write well as long as you take the handwriting component out of the equation. I’m rarely without some sort of electronic writing tool and I recommnd that you do some reading on the number of people with dyslexia and dysgraphia who have been helped by the use of keyboards and then, if needed, supportive software for the writing process.
Hi, I have a question about terminology.
I have a son who last year who was diagnosed as having LD. He doesn’t have ADD and doesn’t have other diagnozed psychological or social disorders (except that he is often immature). His primary problem is that he can’t spell to save his life and reading is an exhausting struggle. He is eight.
So, at the beginning of the year I was using the term “LD” when discussing his situation with the teachers and his counselors at his school. I didn’t think the term “LD” got such a great reception and I could tell the teachers were interpreting it as though he were somehow not as smart as the other kids. So now I use the term “dyslexia” even though it’s not in vogue.
We are looking at schools specifically for LD children for next year and this is my question: when touring these schools, how can I respectfully ask about the population of children in the school? I’ve read some of the schools’ reviews on this site, but I am not sure what the proper terminology is. My son has difficulties reading and spelling but otherwise he is a bright and social child. I am not sure he would thrive with a school population of children that had a lot of behavioral problems or psychological issues. But LD is such a general term that encompasses a lot of behaviors, I am not sure how to go about getting this information.
A mom I know whose daughter had attended the same school as my son said that when she was touring the schools there was no way to tell what the children were like simply by observing the class. Her daughter is in high school now at an LD school and is not particularly happy with her social situation there.
Do you think it is acceptable for a parent to ask about the school population and the kinds issues they have? And how exactly would you phrase it?
Sorry for the rambling and incoherent question. And thanks for the site–it is a great resource.
Jennifer: this is a great question and an important one.
My opinion is that it’s of vital importance for parents to be clear about the entire landscape: terminology and labeling and how it’s used in different states and schools, what types of students schools are aiming to serve best and what types of students are actually attending those schools, and, most importantly, parents need to be clear about their own children and what types of schools would best suit their learning styles and issues.
I think bad fits come both from schools not being clear about the types of students they have enrolled and parents not being clear and honest with schools about the type of student their child might be.
In the years that I was doing a lot of traveling, visiting hundreds of public and private schools a year, I noticed that there was little consistency in the use of terminology. Some of this has to do with each state defining “LD” differently and some of it has to do with the changing landscape that is the world of LD.
In the old days, LD was another word for dyslexia but then along came ADD and ADHD and the autistic spectrum and other cognitive and social/emotional issues (non verbal LD) and the term or terms for these things became messy. There really is no over-arching term for all of these students and maybe that’s for the best because one teaching style does not fit all of them.
So, I think it’s totally acceptable to talk about all of these issues frankly with any school you are interested in but before you do, educate yourself fully on the entire landscape you’re dealing with, including your own child’s particular learning issues.
Good luck Jennifer and if you remember, please come back here and share your experiences, we’re always interested in first hand experience with these types of issues.
Thanks for your reply and for validating my perception that the terminology IS vague and confusing.
There are a number of LD schools in my area and many of their websites and recruiting materials sound the same to me, even though I’ve heard (from doctors and other professionals) there are differences in the student population. I have tried asking some of the schools, but I keep getting the same responses. (“Well, our students have diagnosed learning disabilities and benefit from the multi-sensory approach we use here.”) I am going to try to be more specific using some of the language you used above, but I am afraid the schools will be offended or will interpret this as my having “problem” with their student population.
The truth is that even with a number of schools around, there are so few spots available that I do not expect to have the luxury of picking and choosing between schools. I will be very lucky if my son gets into even one of these schools. Then I can try to figure out what will be best for him. Since many of these LD schools want him to spend time in their classrooms as part of the admisison process, I think a lot of our decision is going to depend on his experience and comfort level.
Thanks again.
Jennifer: I would think it would be difficult for both the school and you and your son to make a determination after spending a little time in a classroom. Maybe that will help but it’s tough to be in a new place with a new teacher and new kids all around. In looking at each experience he has, take into account the fact that it’s not easy going into a situation like that. Good luck with it all and do let me know how it goes.
Mild, regular, extra strength? i’d have to say yes to the question. I think we are all mildly dyslexic at times depending on our state of tiredness etc.
Of course there are people that suffer more than others but then there are many that don’t even realise they are mildly dyslexic, i for example have problems with numbers, if i am given a phone number 9 times out of 10 i will write it down wrong but thats not a big issue to me as its not a big part of my life. So i’d say severities depend on what you do for a living.
I am a 65 year old female who has been married for 45 years to a college professor. I went through all the struggles of dealing with dyslexia when it was not even recognized. I am beginning to think that dyslexia has a big impact on interpersonal relations expecially as they relate to expressing feelings and thoughts to others. I often find myself saying “can someone tell me what I am trying to say”. Does anyone else have this problem and what are the mechinisms to deal with it?
I am almost desperate,
Blanche
Blanche: I’ve never suffered from the insecurity of wanting to ask: “can someone tell me what I am trying to say” but I can relate to it, especially when I’m around people who may not know any more than me but are more articulate.
However, in my experience (I’m 57) the more I attempt to express myself, successfully or not, the easier it gets to find words and phrases that do a decent job.
Being dyslexic, before I started writing with a computer the offset between what I was thinking and what I could express in writing was so large it was a terrible slight of my self image to attempt to write, like it would be if I had to write this by hand rather than using a keyboard, but, I’ve not suffered the same issues with speaking.
Another piece that undermines a person with dyslexia’s ability to “find the words” is not having read enough to have experienced decent writers’ abilities to use words in clear ways to express ideas. As I read more (starting in my mid-20′s) my ability to use language improved markedly. I’m not sure how much or what kind of reading you do but I know in my case reading helped.
I can say, without a doubt, that I understand your comment perfectly and I’d say that means, at least in this context and in writing, you’re saying what you want to say clearly and beautifully.
I have a question and I am not sure where to go. Since I particularly like this thread I am going to post it here!
My son is in 3rd grade and definitely dyslexic. We are applying to special ed schools for him for next year. The teachers at his current school appreciates his difficulty with reading and spelling. However, my current problem is math. He’s been able to get by, and even excel at times, but memorizing the multiplication table is killing me (and him). We’re still on the 3 times table. Every week the students take a two minute timed test of about 30 problems before moving on to the next table. I’ve been working with him to memorize the three times table for about a month now and he still can’t get it. Last night I told him to write out 3×9=27 twenty times in order to get it to really stick in his head. He got another sheet of paper and wrote out 3×9=28 twenty times. I didn’t realize he had done it incorrectly until after he had gone to bed.
Half of me wants to go to the teacher and tell her that he is never going to memorize the multiplication table and this is putting too much pressure on him. My son usually feels terrible the day they take the timed test since he gets so few right. On the other hand, multiplication comes in very handy and is necessary in order to perform other math functions. I don’t want to throw in the towel too soon if he might be able to get it. He already sees a reading tutor twice a week after school and I don’t want to add a math tutor on top of it.
My husband, who is also dyslexic, remembers that memorizing the multiplication table was hard for him. He felt like his brain had nowhere to store that information. My question for this site is whether in your experience the multiplication table is something that you eventually memorized after enough effort, or whether it just never happened. Thanks!
Dear Jennifer,
I have not explored Richard’s site for years, there may even be a discussion on this elsewhere, but… Have you heard of John Mighton? He is a Canadian who has developed a highly successful math program for students (all students!). He is an ASHOKA Foundation award winner, Governor General’s Ward, a mathematician, playwright and founder of JUMP ( Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigy)
His general books are well worth a read – The Myth of Ability and End of Ignorance.
But to your multiplication question. My heart goes out to your child. Yes he can learn the multiplication tables. Mighton has now developed books for use at home. They are called JUMP math at Home and there is one for each grade. At the beginning of each book there is his strategy for How to Learn Your Times Tables in Five Days.
Re this strategy:I have a friend who is a resource teacher in an elementary school. He tried this strategy with one class his results were impressive. He went into the class every day for a week and did this, they all improved. He was very impressed and is working to have teachers use this method.
You can get the books at Chapters, Amazon etc. His web site is http://www.jumpmath.org.
Good luck! Anne
I have an 8-year-old son in second grade at a demanding private school. He has been diagnosed with a form of dyslexia and fits practically every comment here. Here’s our struggle: there are no specialized schools near us, and trying to make it up with tutors and at-home study after school is killing us all. Our son is too exhausted from a day of struggling at school, mentally and emotionally, to get much out of the after-school efforts of his parents and tutors. His parents (my wife and I) have jobs to work and his older sister to look after and all the other usual demands of life, and trying to teach him at night those things he should be learning during the day is pretty tough on us too. Any ideas?