Today, I continue to put a megaphone to my voice to help children with dyslexia get the support they need to succeed – from parents, teachers, and everyone with whom they come into contact.

Most dyslexic people have strong visual/spatial abilities and weak auditory skills. How does that translate to real-life and living?

One important area that has significant consequence in childhood is following directions. This requires accessing of linguistic information presented in different forms.

Because this learning and thinking difference occurs on a spectrum, the level of difficulty following directions will vary from one dyslexic to another.

Some children have poor sight-word recognition but they are able to process language adequately. They understand phonics and apply it to reading, but have memory problems that translate to, among other things, following verbal or written directions.

Others have trouble processing language but are able to recognize sight words, so they rely on sight words when they see unknown words but are unable to sound them out. These children take mental pictures of word patterns and are able to read. These are the children who say “the” for any word that has that letter combination in it, like, their, there, them, they, etc.

Then there are those children with a mixture of the two. Their difficulty is a combination of the two experiences above.

In a very short video clip, Nessy illustrates how a child may appear to be lazy when, in fact, he has forgotten a direction given. Check it out here.

Instead of slapping labels on children who have difficulty following your directions, or punishing them for “deliberately” disregarding your instructions, seek ways of making the direction as easy as possible to visualize.

How have you felt when you could not remember all the instructions given to you or were distracted by something, then forgot directions you were following?