One of the most difficult things about having a child with dyslexia is that they are likely to lie. They will lie about everything from how long it took them to get home from school, to whether or not they did their homework! Yesterday, I talked about some reasons these children tell lies.
Dyslexia is a learning difference that causes difficulties with reading, writing, and spelling. It’s also been shown to cause issues with attention span, comprehension skills, and memory.
What do you get when you mix a child who is struggling to read, with the daily stress of school?
Dyslexia and anxiety – two words that don’t always go together in the same sentence. However, when you think about it, they may be more closely related than you realize.
What it takes some people 80 years to accomplish, Kobe Bryant achieved in forty-one. He exemplified the power of intention and focused attention.
“I didn’t feel good about myself if I wasn’t doing everything I could to be the best version of myself.” ~ Koby Bryant
He started playing basketball at three years. When he was six, his father retired from the NBA and moved their family to Italy to be able to continue playing at a lower level. While there, Koby began to play basketball on a serious level and his grandfather kept him supplied with videos of NBA games for him to study.
At the age of 13, his parents returned to the United States for good. Koby recalls his days of being an insecure little boy, with no friends. On top of that, he said,
“I couldn’t spell, so the teacher told my mother that I was probably dyslexic, it was like somebody took me and dropped me in a bucket … in a tub of ice-cold water, because it shocked me.”
His mother made sure he got the help he needed.
It was then that he decided to channel his anger from the challenges and frustrations of dyslexia into sports and went on to become one of the NBA’s all-time exceptional players.
He made a deal with himself to stay focused on his goal and not be distracted by anything. He resolved to work hard every day, so that he could retire with no regrets, when that time came.
Kobe had an excellent work ethic and pushed himself to live the best way he knew how. Because he was super-focused on his craft, the world became his library. He looked at everything with this question in his mind, “How can this help me to become a better basketballer?”
He believed in playing with structure… with discipline. He believed in self-competition… always asking himself, “Is this the best I can do?”
Another concept he held was that you can learn more from your failures than your successes. He said that, “True strength comes from your vulnerability.”
He would review previous games with one of his coaches, then while playing, he was able to slow the game down in his mind and position players for optimal results. (a dyslexic strength) When a weakness emerges, the answer is there if you look at it.
With all his successes, he took time to be kind to those who would never be able to reciprocate. Did you know that he made over 200 Make A Wish kids’ dreams come true?
Here are 10 of his rules for success, gleaned from his various speeches:
He had an insatiable desire to learn more.
Listen to his final motivational speech here.
Which rule would you choose to motivate a struggling child in your life?
Most dyslexic children do not want to get out of bed on a school day. The younger ones may still be tired after a long night completing home work. In addition to that, the older ones have social issues – being called dumb or lazy, being stared at or whispered about behind their backs.
Follow Henry through one day at school.
Has your child ever pretended to be sick to avoid going to school?
What did you do?
The most common struggle dyslexics experience is an inability to read. They have extreme difficulty identifying letters, converting those letters into sounds and putting them together to make words.
During the times of the apprenticeship era, there was not the great need to read as there is today. People learned by observing and doing. Kinesthetic learning was the norm.
With the dawn of the industrial revolution, however, there arose the need to educate the masses to work in the resulting businesses.
The invention of the printing press merged perfectly with this need for mass education. This made it possible to put knowledge into a system that could be spread out on a national level. Hence, the proliferation of textbooks. Only then did those with dyslexic minds begin to have problems.
According to Dean Bragonier, founder and executive dyslexic of NoticeAbility, the dyslexic mind is able to “look at a situation, identify seemingly disparate pieces of information and blend those into a narrative or tapestry that makes sense” to them. Most people are unable to perceive the situation in the same way.
This ability translates into levels of exceptional success needed in some vocational paths, for example, entrepreneurship, engineering, architecture and the arts.
In spite of that, they are at a great disadvantage during their years in school.
There are three ways of accessing information: eye reading (print books), ear reading (recorded or audiobooks), and finger reading (braille). While information is commonly made available in braille for blind children, dyslexic children are mandated to eye read print books, and when they have trouble doing so, are labeled as lazy, stupid or unmotivated to learn.
Ear reading is not new. As early as 1931, the American Foundation for the Blind and the Library of Congress Book for the Blind Project established the Talking Book Program. Here is an abridged history of audiobooks:
1934: The first recordings are made for the Talking Book Program and include parts of The Bible, The Declaration of Independence, and Shakespeare’s plays.
1948: The Recording for the Blind program is founded (in 1995 renamed Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and in 2011 renamed Learning Ally).
1952: Caedmon Records is formed in New York and is a pioneer in the audiobook industry.
1955: Listening Library is founded and is the first to distribute audiobooks to libraries and schools.
1970s: Libraries start carrying audiobooks.
1985: Publishers Weekly identifies 21 audiobook publishers including Caedmon, Recorded Books, Books on Tape, Harper and Row, and Random House.
1980s: Bookstores start to display audiobooks on bookshelves instead of in separate displays.
1986: The Audio Publishers Association is created.
1997: Audible debuts the first digital audio player.
2011: Audiobook self-publishing becomes possible with the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).
2012: Audiobook annual publication increases 125% from 7,200 to 16,309.
(Source: The Audio Publishers Association)
Dyslexic clinical psychologist, Dr Michael Ryan, gives some recommendations when using audiobooks:
With this longstanding history, I wonder why aren’t schools more accepting of ear reading as a method for testing the knowledge of those children who are dyslexic, and audiobooks for textbooks?
What has been your experience with audiobooks?
Have you used recorded textbooks for your children?
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?
In 1967, Johnson and Myklebust stated that “a child who cannot read cannot write.” That makes sense, since some researchers, in their 2010 and 2011 studies, found that “reading and writing rely of related underlying processes.”
Just as they do with reading, most children with dyslexia have trouble with writing. This is demonstrated in a number of ways, for example, poor spelling, illegible penmanship, narrow vocabulary, weak idea development, and a lack of organization of thoughts.
You may hear a dyslexic child say, “I know what I want to say, but I just can’t write it down.”
Marianne Mullally, an Australian educator, explains it simply:
Just like their reading can be improved with time and various strategies, the writing of dyslexics can get better with explicit instructional strategies.
Keep in mind that reading must be worked on first. Michael Clark gives parents some tips and tricks to help their dyslexic children with their writing skills:
Now, here’s a fun activity. If you are non-dyslexic, do this exercise to experience what it is like for a dyslexic to take notes:
How did you do? Please share your thoughts with us.
Parents usually assume that their children are seeing normally. That’s not always the case.
According to the American Optometric Association, up to 80% of a child’s learning in school is through vision! This makes you child’s visual health extremely important.
Did you know that 1 in 10 children has a vision problem that’s significant enough to impact their learning? In the United States, that translates to over 5 million children.
Three vision skills necessary for optimal learning are:
Visual Acuity
When you take your child to the pediatrician, he gets a typical vision screening. Have you ever wondered if those screenings are foolproof? The National Center for Biotechnology Information says that at least 50% of vision problems are missed by typical screenings.
In addition to that, being assured that your child has 20/20 vision only tells you he can see at a distance. It does not dismiss the possibility of visual focusing, coordinating or tracking problems – all related to learning.
Convergence
Both eyes must work together, effortlessly and without hurting. That’s convergence. When they don’t quite work together, most likely, the child will sees words on a page bounce around. The child may then tell you that the words are blurry or swimming.
Most children under seven years will assume that everyone sees like they do and say nothing.
When this eye-jumping happens in a classroom, the child may complain of feeling tired, headaches (across the forehead, above the eye brows), and/or aching eyes. Some children tilt over to one side to read, thus creating a way to read with only one eye. For these children, reading is linked with distress and comprehension of what is read is low.
Convergence problems can also cause writing problems, because of poor hand-eye coordination.
Visuospatial Attention
Skilled readers are able to focus on individual words within a cluttered page of text, and after a word has been identified, they must rapidly shift their gaze to fixate on the next word in the line. These changes in visuospatial attention must occur rapidly and accurately to enable fluent reading of a page of text.
When the eyes do not move smoothly along together, the child skips words and phrases, or entire lines while reading.
A 2007 study showed that dyslexics have visuospatial attention deficits that parallel their deficits in some linguistic measures, like verbal short-term memory.
Does your child
It may be dyslexia, or it may be learning-related vision problems.
Be observant!
If you suspect your child is having vision problems, contact the College of Optometrists in Vision Development to locate a developmental optometrist in your area.
Have you ever had to take your child for vision testing because of learning difficulties?