Their biggest problem is how to prove it. Because dyslexia makes life difficult in most academic settings, the average dyslexic soon grows tired of always trying and never winning.
Giving 150% day after day and year after year just doesn’t seem worth it. Failing grades, misunderstanding teachers, ridiculing peers, and often disappointing their parents makes the dyslexic wish they lived anywhere besides planet Earth. Desperation can turn to amazement and achievement.
Are you wondering if someone you love is dyslexic?
Here are a few questions that might help...
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Did you know...?
If you are dyslexic, you can thank mom, or dad, or both, or perhaps even grandpa or grandma for passing the genes of intelligence down to you. When grandpa and grandma went to school so little was known about dyslexia that most of the time they didn’t even know they had dyslexia.
Many times grandparents or great grandparents just dropped out of school and went to work or were put to work to prove their self-worth. Often they dropped out in elementary school grades.
There is a better option available to you today. Don’t quit! Give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
When it affects hearing, many times one cannot make sense out of directions that a parent or teacher is giving. It seems impossible to do more than one thing at a time. Disobedience, rebellious or lazy are often labels put on dyslexic students whose hearing has been affected by dyslexia.
Because dyslexics seem to have good days and bad days, that further complicates the picture. Parents and teachers don’t understand why the student can function fairly well with directions one day and the next day can’t make sense out of anything.
Confusion doesn’t have to continue!
When young children begin to talk, their gibberish and often nonsensical attempts at words provide good family entertainment. Those who find it so amusing assume that as the toddler grows and matures all of the comedy in the speech department will disappear.
Preschool and kindergarten children are still allowed occasional mix-ups and adults still laugh. Peers don't even notice. However, soon words like bathrobe, kettle, offer, being have, a whole other word to matter, and a host of other reversals begin to produce looks and jibes.
Frustration sets in when parents or teachers have to continually ask the dyslexic to repeat what they've just said because it didn't make sense. At the same time, the dyslexic finds it hard to believe the other person didn't get it because the thought made perfect sense in their brain before they spoke it.
Most people only identify dyslexia when someone writes letters, numbers, or words backwards or upside down. Reversals in reading are also sure to bring a quick label.
Those are the obvious benchmarks. However, dyslexia can affect a person’s directionality through sight--left and right, up and down, in and out. Having little or no depth perception because of dyslexia can cause embarrassing moments and potentially dangerous situations. A dyslexic’s spacial awareness is often skewed. They become known as the clutz--the one who trips over their own feet, always runs into the door knob or furniture or knocks over siblings.
Those who can’t achieve in the classroom often turn to sports, excel & find success & acceptance. However, for other, connecting the bat and ball, foot with the ball, ball with the hoop, or mitt with the ball seems to happen accidentally, but seldom on purpose. Dyslexics repeatedly suffer the pain of being put on a team reluctantly because they're the only one left to be picked.
Unfortunately they often have a 0%-25% comprehension rate. Reading and re-reading consume hours for short assignments. Big disappointments come from failed test scores after spending hours diligently studying for the test—parents and students alike.
Others find reading exhausting. Students often get someone to read the assignment to them or trade off on reading pages. Still others read the beginning, drop to the middle and then finish the last few sentences, hoping they haven’t missed too much.
For others, entire words blank out, producing the effect that they left out a word while reading. Sometimes letters blank out of a word
Many dyslexics’ handwriting is unreadable. Doctor’s handwriting is stereotyped as “terrible”. That does not mean all doctors are dyslexic. Most doctors do not take the time to write neatly.
However, for a dyslexic student, no amount of taking the time to write neatly produces legible penmanship. Often it seems they don’t even know where the line is. Their words float above the line, fall off the line, and generally appear to be on a roller coaster ride. Combine the roller coaster ride with reversals, letters backwards and upside down, and a dyslexic’s writing can look more like a code than communication.
Many dyslexic students struggle with number concepts. They may have trouble learning the names of numbers. Counting in groups seems impossible at times. Counting forwards in a sequence may be hard and counting backwards is out of the question. Writing single digit numbers often produces reversals. Double digit numbers are written and read transposed. Triple digits and beyond are rarely transcribed or read accurately. A new version of the number can be produced every time it is encountered.
If a dyslexic student advances to long addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division, the nightmare really begins. Columns move and lines wave. The multiple steps required for division and multiplication become jumbled and the student gets lost in the midst -- much like they get lost in the midst of multi-step commands. Teachers often give up and announce that the student is incapable of doing math!
Some dyslexic students have no problems in any subjects other than spelling. Parents, teachers and students try every possible approach to try to learn to spell even the simplest words. At times, the battle seems won, and yet test time often brings a total defeat.
Others do manage to perform well on the weekly test, but a look at their original sentences causes one to wonder if the student has ever studied spelling. The combined problems of dysgraphia and dysorthography in one student create a scenario in which not only is the parent or teacher unable to decipher written material, but the student can’t even read what they wrote!
Many dyslexics are unable to filter peripheral auditory or visual stimuli. Others cannot perform simple academic functions regardless of how quiet and still the environment. They just cannot direct their brain’s energy into the task at hand. Parents and teachers are left scratching their heads in wonderment as to why Johnny or Susie cannot do what siblings or peers do with little or no effort.
Can you imagine the utter frustration at not being able to teach the child how to simply tie shoe strings Albert Einstein was said to have been so intelligent he couldn’t learn this task—he was also dyslexic!