From One Dyslexic to Another

As a dyslexic, a mother, and a teacher,  I want to reach out to fellow dyslexics and their parents.

I recently watched a presentation by a number of parents and students grappling with dyslexia.  It brought back all the pain and insecurity I felt when I was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade.  I used to cry when I came home from school and tell my parents “I know I am as smart as the other kids, but why can’t I prove it to my teacher?”  A useful quote from a former professor was, ”It takes a fine mind to be able to spell the same word three different ways on one page.”  Visual memory of the accurate letter order in which words appear is weak in dyslexics.  Dyslexics often struggle with letter/sound correspondence as well. That is why “united and untied” look so much alike for dyslexics. Since I was a child, our society has made great progress identifying and combating dyslexia.  Sally Shaywitz, M.D. wrote a fabulous book, Overcoming Dyslexia, with helpful neurological research on how to diagnose dyslexia and tools for helping students overcome its challenges.  I have used her techniques with great success with my own students.  Other helpful resources include The International Dyslexia Association, Barton, Orton-Gillingham, as well as many pediatricians are becoming increasingly aware.

What do you do when your child appears to struggle with reading and writing compared to his/her peers?  Developmental delays can happen in many aspects of life from fine motor abilities, sports activities, to academically in reading and math skills.  First and foremost, start asking questions and investigate possibilities! Realize that many aspects of childhood come in bands of time and not on a fully predictable schedule.  Children grow and lose teeth during bands of time, learn to crawl and walk during bands of time, and they begin to recognize letters and numbers and make sense of them during bands of time as well.  However, this does not mean that the problem should be ignored.  If your child is struggling in school, start asking questions of your child and his or her teacher.  Find out what frustrates your child and how he/she copes with those difficulties.

If the problem persists even with support, encouragement, and help from you and other caring adults, it may be time to reach out to experts for advice.  One possibility is dyslexia.  The United States Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 15% of the U.S. population has dyslexia.  Your child is more likely to have dyslexia, trouble with reading and writing, if other family members have also been diagnosed with dyslexia.

According to the International Dyslexia Association: “Dyslexia is a neurological condition caused by a different wiring of the brain. There is no cure for dyslexia and individuals with this condition must learn coping strategies. Research indicates that dyslexia has no relationship to intelligence. Individuals with dyslexia are neither more nor less intelligent than the general population.”

There are varying degrees of dyslexia.  Some dyslexics have difficulty recognizing the common patterns in spelling and reading while others have more extreme difficulty with the direction and placement of letters in a sequence creating a word. The directional challenges of dyslexia cause many people to use b and d, or p, g, and q interchangeably. When segmenting words, dyslexics often mix up the sequence and therefore need help learning all phonic rules.  Dyslexics often need to kinesthetically manipulate physical blocks that represent individual sounds to work out the order of the individual sounds.  They must use all three modalities of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning to help rewire their brains to create new efficient pathways.

Common early signs of dyslexia can be seen as early as preschool.  Difficulty with phonological awareness, rapid, automated naming of letters and items, verbal working memory, are all precursors of dyslexia in children as young as three (Puolakanaho et al., 2007). Intensive interventions are most effective in the early years of elementary school such as kindergarten and first grade.  As time goes on, children become more resistant to reading and show an increased incidence of anxious and depressive behavior (Mugnaini, Lassi, La Malfa, and Albertini, 2007).  Issues with self-esteem can be very challenging for children with dyslexia. Both parent and child want to break that devastating cycle as early as possible.

As a dyslexic and a teacher, I want to reach out to parents. Your child can absolutely develop strategies to cope with and overcome dyslexia.  However, do not assume that this is a simple fix that can be accomplished over the summer, by using a single computer program, a brief period of tutoring, or quickly with a few instructional changes. Essentially, rewiring the brain and developing coping strategies takes a lot of practice and repetition. It will require hard work and dedication from your child and support from you. The sooner you address dyslexia, after confirming with experts that it is indeed the problem, the less emotional damage or feelings of inadequacy when compared with other students, your child will experience.  The quicker your child learns and develops coping strategies for reading and writing, the more her/his self esteem as a student remains intact. Lifelong learning should be a wonderful exploration in life.  By supporting your child early in his/her academic career, you can preserve that sense of wonder and enjoyment instead of making academic growth a struggle, source of frustration, and possibly damaging to your child’s self esteem.

If you suspect your child is struggling with dyslexia, go and observe your child or volunteer in your child’s classroom to see how his/her work compares with the work of his or her peers.  Ask the teacher what she/he observes are your child’s strengths and weaknesses compared with his/her classmates. Usually, if you approach the teacher from a position that we are working together in partnership to help your child, the teacher will be motivated to assist you in every way possible. 

There is no need for shame and embarrassment at not identifying the problem earlier!  Parents often feel guilty for not recognizing their child’s struggles with dyslexia earlier.  It is a process and no one wants to prematurely jump to conclusions.  If you wonder if your child suffers from dyslexia, seek the guidance of teachers (who are not allowed to diagnose), your pediatrician, and local experts, often found in universities and medical centers.

  

For children, I would advise that dyslexia be explained the same way you would explain any other challenge in life.  Tell your child that everyone has areas of strength and areas of weakness in life where they have to work very hard to overcome challenges.  Some people are natural athletes while others struggle with coordination.  Other people intuitively understand math while others have to work hard to grasp the concepts.  Dyslexics have to work hard and develop strategies that help them decode and remember the sequence of letters in a word to read and write efficiently.

Identifying dyslexia early will help your child learn strategies to overcome challenges in reading and writing.  Those strategies along with support and encouragement will help your child to be more successful in school and life preserving his or her optimism and self esteem.