DYSLEXIA - LEARNING DISABILITY

An active child who has always been ahead of the growing up milestones…. Turned over before he was three months old, walked before he was a year old and talked before he was a year and a quarter… wow... this child is going to excel in academics too…

When this child who has always been ahead of his age in his tender years fails to cope up with school and academics, parents normally tend to blame laziness, carelessness and other factors to his nonperformance….

One factor which many of us don’t consider is that the child may not understand or follow what is being taught in school

Dyslexia – is one reason for the non-performance of an otherwise active and intelligent child with very high IQs…
The word dyslexia comes from the Greek words δυσ- dys- ("impaired") and λέξις lexis ("word"). People with dyslexia are called dyslexic or dyslectic
Dyslexia is a learning disability that manifests primarily as a difficulty with written language, particularly with reading and spelling.

Evidence suggests that dyslexia results from differences in how the brain processes written and/or spoken language.
For people with dyslexia, intelligence is not the problem. The problem is language.
An unexpected gap exists between their potential for learning and their school achievement. Dyslexic children are not dumb… they just learn differently and it is up to parents and teachers to teach them in the methods that they understand to make them successful individuals
Although dyslexia is the result of a neurological condition, it is not an intellectual disability. Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence; sub-average, average, above average, and highly gifted.
5-10% of the world's population regardless of nationality, income level, sex, race or IQ has dyslexia. Dyslexic people are visual thinkers, so it's hard for them to understand letters, numbers, symbols or written words, which leads to problems with reading, writing, math and attention focus.
Why do the dyslexic children and adults have difficulty in reading and writing?
Our brain is divided into two hemispheres… the left and the right side… the left side of the brain is programmed to do the things you need for reading: to match a letter with its sound, or to handle information that comes into your brain in strings, like the sounds in a word - one after the other. It separates a word into individual sounds and so helps understand grammar and syntax.
The right hemisphere is different. It deals in areas and space and patterns. It doesn't understand parts of speech, or keep track of letter order in spelling. It "reads" a word as a drawing that it has been taught has a meaning (as a sketch, not a line up of sounds). So if it sees the shape "HOUSE," it knows that it's a place where somebody lives. But the person is just as apt to speak out home or residence (or igloo or tepee) instead of house. You can see that if the left side leaves the reading to the right side, the result can be a totally different sound.
The corpus collosum is a bridge of nerve cells which passes the information from the left side to the right side for correct processing, and in dyslexic children this bridge is weak.
How do we identify Dyslexic children …
I have distributed handouts which give out more details on identification… but to name a few:
May confuse small words - at - to, said - and, does - goes
Makes consistent reading and spelling errors including:
Inversions - m and w, u and n
Substitutions - house and home
Letter reversals - d for b as in, dog for bog
Word reversals - top for pot
Transpositions - felt and left
One word of caution… many children pick up their language skills at their own phase and that does not mean that they are dyslexic…
Dyslexia is more common than you think
There are many famous people all over the world who were dyslexic.
Among them are artists like Michaelangelo and Rodin,
scientists like Einstein and Edison,
great orators like President Roosevelt and General Patton,
and even entertainers like Tom Cruise and Cher and our own Abhishek Bachan are supposed to be dyslexic.
As you may have noticed, they all excel in areas that do not involve the "written word" to a great extent. They were all able to make the best of their skills and overcome their dyslexic problems to excel in their chosen fields.
Does this mean that the dyslexic children have a hidden potential or genius to excel otherwise??? Not necessarily… but it is up to the parents to find out where the real interest of the child lies and nurture the same to make him/her a successful individual
FINALLY SUGGESTIONS TO PARENTS
Children who learn differently have difficulty in doing homework and schoolwork.
assist your child in a positive way with homework
reward your child's progress
use lots of praise
display your child's work
acknowledge your child's difficulties
help provide your child with other activities that focus on his or her strengths and gifts
provide structure at home
help your child become a self-advocate with teachers

For further information on dyslexia and related disorders, feel free to be in touch with me.