I find learning disorders specifically intriguing.  Perhaps it’s because there is so much we don’t know about them yet, or because I myself am a dyslexic.  For most learning disorders, there is a lot of speculation about how why they exist and how to help those with them.  This information, however, is still quite new to the field of psychology and early childhood development and is always changing with each new discovery, no matter how small.

​

        There seems to be this stigma around learning disorders that makes people think that we should be ashamed of them; hid them from others for the fear of being thought dumb or incapable.  I, however, think the opposite.  I have no problem telling people I have dyslexia.  It is not something I am sensitive or embarrassed about; in fact, I quite enjoy talking with other people about dyslexia.  If someone wants with talk to me about dyslexia, I see it as an opportunity.  If a person is interested and curious and genuinely want to know more about it, I am more than happy to talk about it.  The more others know and understand about mine and others situations, the more understanding they can be and the more "normal" learning disabilities will become. 

​

        When I talk with others about dyslexia, the first question I always get is “what is it like”.  This is hard question to answer as I have never known life without it.  It is like asking the average able-bodied person to explain what it is like to walk.  I often like to respond to this question with “what do you think dyslexia is like?”.  I ask this mostly to get a better understanding of how much they have been exposed to the concept of dyslexia through media.  I always find it interesting the answers I get.  Most are the same; they picture dyslexia as letters floating off pages and moving around to reassemble into nonsense. 

​

        My first response to this is always that that every person with dyslexia will experience it differently. There are, of course, different severities and who knows how many different symptoms; not everyone will experience the same things and I am only capable of giving my personal experiences.  Everything I say here is personal and is not to be used to make assumptions about every dyslexic you meet. 

 

        The biggest thing for me, is my mind does not typically form gibberish; instead I will form other words I am familiar with such as seeing “accepting” as “accelerating”; or mixing, remove or add words: the other day someone was reading a book called “You are What You Eat”, but I read it as “What you are Eat”.  At first, I thought the title was a typo and was supposed to read “What are you eating” or “What you are eating” as if that was the start of a sentence.  Only after re-reading it about 3 times, did I finally see what it actually read.

​

        Another thing I find is the letters do not literally move around the page, but I will insert letters from elsewhere on the page into the word or sentence I am currently reading.  For example, if the word “was” is five lines below the sentence I am reading, I might see a ‘w’ in the word “sing”, turning it into the word “swing”.  This can happen with more than one letter at a time.  Sometimes I’ll rearrange letters within the word, other times the letters can come from anywhere on the page.  Another thing is mixing up similar letters such as ‘b’ and ‘d’, or even two letters side by side like ‘m’ and ‘rn’.  All of these can be worse or better depending on the font and size. 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some tips and tricks I have found helpful, many of theme I still use today:

• Using my hand or other things to cover everything around the word I am trying to read

• Using two fingers to cover the letters of a word so I can only see one letter at a time – this helps with sounding out words

•  Questioning whether a sentence makes sense – there are many times where I will need to re-read a sentence more than once to figure out what it should say, using logic to fill in the words that do not make sense

• Audio books got me through my final year of high school: listening to a reading (via someone reading aloud or an audio tape) and following along with the words helped to match the appearance with the sound, instead of my struggling through it on my own, which would have taken three times as long

• When doing presentations, I find it easier memorise my material because I know if I read it I would stumble

• Don’t be afraid to ask someone to read you a word you are stuck on– I have found that I can read a word 15 times and get it wrong each time, it is not until I am told what the word is supposed to be that suddenly I can see it

Story: When I was in grade 4 I was reading a book with my dad.  There was this one sentence I came across and I got a word wrong.  My dad told me “no, try that sentence again”, so I did, and read it the exact same way.  He had me read the sentence another 3 times, becoming more frustrated with me each time.  Then he pointed to the word I had wrong and asked me “what word is this?”.  By this point we were both quite frustrated and I responded with the same word I had been reading it as the other 5 times.  He told me “no, that is not the word” and I argued “yes, it is”.  We argued back and forth several times with my response never changing and him telling me to look at the word.  Finally, out of frustration, my dad told me what the word actually read, and instantly I could see the correct word.

• Tip for others: never ask a dyslexic to read new material aloud in front of an audience: it will do nothing but cause embarrassment and decrease the child’s self-esteem.  I used to dread reading as a class because no matter what, when it was mine turn I would butcher and stutter every other word

Story: In grade 11 English my teacher had us each read a paragraph of a story.  I was sitting beside my best friend and had counted ahead to what paragraphs we would have.  One was two lines long, the other was nine.  I asked her to switch with me, practically begged her, saying I would mess it up, but she just replied “no way, you’ll be fine”.  She did not really know of my difficulties with reading at the time so I do not blame her. My turn came and I stuttered about 15 times and re-reading the same 3 words over and over.  After that she whispered to me telling me “I’m so sorry, next time you we have to read, you get the shortest part, I promise”.  She has stuck to this promise ever since then, that was over 5 years ago.