Dyslexia part 1

 

 

October is also dyslexia awareness month, and this is also something I can talk a LOT about.  Not only am I a certified dyslexia teacher, I'm also mildly dyslexic.  Though I didn't find this out until I was already out of college and had my first classroom job as an educational assistant.  It's estimated that dyslexia makes up 10-20% of the entire world population.  It's not a sudden occurrence, it's always been here, and it's not a disability per say, it's only considered that because we are living in a text heavy world.  We never knew about it before because reading and writing is a newer invention in our human existence.  The brain that causes dyslexia variance has always been there, but initially, reading and writing was only reserved for the elite, and not the general public, so we had no way of knowing it was there until suddenly, a whole bunch of kids couldn't learn to read.  It's a normal and very real variance of the brain.

 So, I'm going to start with the common misconceptions of what dyslexia is, but actually isn't. Then, I'll talk a bit about how you can help a child with dyslexia. 

Dyslexia is NOT a vision problem.  While people with dyslexia may appear to be writing and reading the words backwards, it is not a result of faulty vision or a miscommunication between the eyes and the brain.  Often people know that a word contains certain letters, but they don't know what order they go in, or have memorized the incorrect order because they don't have phonemic awareness wired into their brains correctly. So, yes, while a child may write cat as tac, it's not because they are seeing the words incorrectly. It's because they aren't remembering which order the sounds go in, don't remember the sounds the letters make, or are reversing the way they are sounding it out, putting the last letter they hear first because that's the freshest one in their memory. 

Dyslexia is NOT an intelligence problem. Yes, the person is struggling to learn to read, but it's not because their is something wrong with their intelligence, as many, many parents are worried about.  I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard "My child isn't stupid," when told their child may be dyslexic.  I always counter with, "You're right, your child isn't stupid, in fact your child is probably more intelligent than most of us in this room."  The thing is our brains are wired differently than those without dyslexia.  It doesn't mean we're less intelligent.  It just means that our brains aren't wired the same as those who learn to read quickly.  It's a normal variance in the human brain which makes the way letters and their corresponding sounds are stored less efficient than those that who have other normal variances in the brain. 

Dyslexia is NOT a laziness problem.  In fact, it's far from it.  Yes, the child may get frustrated and give up, but their brains are working far harder to learn to read than people who aren't dyslexic.  This is because of the way their brains are wired.  I've already mentioned several times that this is a normal variance in brain function, and that it's less efficient.  This means that the brain has to work a lot harder to put letters and their corresponding sounds together.  In non dyslexic brains this process is pretty much a straight line from area to area.  In dyslexic brains, this is far from a straight line, nor is it a series of one area to the next.  It zigzags around the brain erratically from areas that aren't usually associated with reading, to other areas that aren't usually associated with reading, back to areas that are, and so forth.  There is a pattern to it, but it takes a lot more brain energy to get the letters in the word cat to the sounds they make, and then the ability to put those sounds together in a coherent way than it does for someone who isn't dyslexic.  There are tons of cool graphics on the internet that explain this process far better than I can, but here are a two that show this.  There are more areas lit up in the non dyslexic brain. but those areas light up in a coherent succession as the brain processes what it sees.  In the dyslexic brain, that succession isn't coherent, and its putting a lot more emphasis in areas that don't light up in a non dyslexic brain.  Please note that I don't like the term normal in this graphic, but this one happens to be one of the better graphics.  I would prefer lexic or non dyslexic.  This is because dyslexia as a NORMAL variance of the brain.

 

The areas that are lit up on a non dyslexic brain are key to processing the letters - IE remembering what letter you're looking at, the sounds associated with those letters, and how to blend them together to make a coherent word, and it's associated meaning(s).  The 2 most important in that process are the green and blue on the left side of the brain.  Those areas are not lit up in the dyslexic brain, so the key areas needed to remember what letter you're looking at and the sounds they make don't even come into play when a dyslexic person is learning to read. 

There is NOT a cure for dyslexia.  Again, dyslexia is a normal variance of the human brain, and it was only when everyone was required to learn to read that this became an issue.  There's nothing wrong with the person, they don't have a disease that can be remedied with supplements or colored glasses or colored paper.  But the good news is, the brain is a lot more plastic than we realized and, with time, patience, and a good multi sensory program taught by someone who knows what they are doing, can help rewire the brain, making reading more efficient for the dyslexic brain.  However, that still doesn't change that the person is dyslexic, and is still going to struggle with reading and spelling on a semi regular basis, and reading may still be very slow, but it does make it easier, and they will be able to access a lot more information than they were able to before.  And, they may actually learn to enjoy reading. A multisensory approach is a time and tested way that has been proven to help dyslexic people learn to read and write.

Dyslexia IS genetic.  It's a brain variation that is dictated by a person's genetic makeup.  If you know someone in your family who had trouble learning to read growing up, chances are, there will be more. If one child is dyslexic, there's a good chance his/her sibling will also be dyslexic, to varying degrees. I can't even begin to tell you how many parents confess that they or someone in their family had difficulty learning to read once their child is diagnosed with dyslexia.  I have quite a few relatives who were either diagnosed with dyslexia, or had difficulty learning to read. 

Dyslexia IS a continuum.  Some people are very mildly dyslexic, and may not require much intervention to help them learn to read and spell, but, they're still dyslexic.  Just as you would still consider a child who is mildly autistic still autistic and would provide supports for them.  Other kids are very severely dyslexic and while intervention will help, they're going to need a lot more supports in their day to day life than a more mildly involved dyslexic would. 

So, what can you do?  You can understand that your child is not lazy, is trying their hardest, and is probably quite intelligent.  You can also remember that reading is a fairly new invention and unlike learning to speak, our brains are not hardwired to learn to read.  We must actually be taught to read and write.  You can also find a good solid multisensory academic language instructor, preferably certified as either an academic language practitioner or therapist.  Or find a classroom teacher who knows how to teach using a multisensory approach. Someone who is trained with in a structured literacy approach can help.  You can also read to your child, offer audiobooks, and help your child with writing assignments from school.  Memorization IS the worst way to help your child learn to read.  They simply can't memorize all the patterns needed for reading and spelling.  No one can. I can't tell you how many parents say they use flashcards with their kids.  That may work for multiplication math facts that need to be memorized, but it does NOT work for reading.  Because after extensive research by tracking the eyes movement during reading, they've discovered that we read letter by letter, not word by word.  And while all this may occur quickly in non dyslexic people to make it seem like we recognize whole words, that's not the way people read, and it's certainly not the way people spell. Telling your child that English is a crazy language won't help either.  As hard as it is to believe, there is actually a set of rules that govern how things are spelled and pronounced, and that can be explicitly taught.  A dyslexic person needs to be explicitly taught those rules in order to be able to grasp the language and they can learn them.  I have taught enough dyslexic students who are now reading at or above grade level to know this for myself.  I myself am proof of this.  There's also tons of research on it aside from my first hand experience.

I hope this helps, and you can also ask questions if you would like more information.