Tag Archives: learning differently

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Determination: The Third Letter to My Dyslexic Daughter

A child’s high school experience can be pivotal. For a dyslexic, it’s an even greater achievement, considering that 35% of dyslexics drop out of high school.

My dearest K,

I can’t believe this time has come. You never thought you would achieve this much. But our God has been faithful! You are at the end of High School, and it’s your graduation day. Well done, my child!

Some Things Remain

Testing seemed to have been the first order of high school. Those pre- and post- IOWA tests seemed to be written in a different language and the New York State Regents examinations loomed ahead and you didn’t know what to expect. Now, the bulk of schoolwork had to be done at home, since school hours were spent in discussions and experiments.

You still struggled for hours, every night, to complete your homework assignments; and your late nights made it difficult to wake up early for school, the next day. But you pushed on. It was a blessing you had the Learning Ally audio textbooks to accompany your print books.

You still weren’t very motivated to go to school, but you went, without complaining.

Do you remember how, in addition to your school, you had to work through those brain exercises and the Learning Ears program? It seemed like intervention programs would never end, but I kept pushing and encouraging you.

A New Experience

High school was different from elementary and middle school. For you, it was a good change. Here students were expected to be responsible and you were no longer dependent on teachers.

The many intervention programs began to pay off. You’re reading better and not afraid to be called to read in class. You learned tips and tricks of blending with the crowd and appearing “normal,”

You were involved in more student interaction and collaborations and were accepted into the groups without question.

Teachers

Your teachers here were empowering and less punitive.

Your 9th grade homeroom teacher set the tone and spiritual foundation for your high school experience. She was kind, supportive, friendly, yet demonstrated excellent classroom control.

Your 12th grade homeroom teacher and Digital Media teacher (whom we found out later is also dyslexic) were great cheerleaders.

You history teacher taught you much about the philosophy of living, and kept you curious about life and the world.

I don’t know what you told him, since you determined not to let anyone in your school know you were dyslexic, but it was admirable of your Bible teacher to allow you to take his scripture memorization tests verbally, rather than written.

Your science teacher, Ms. A., took the crown. She was focused on your success. She was the reason you scored so high on the Biology Regents. She taught you how to explain yourself verbally and on a written test. She moved around the class and met you and your classmates on your level. The atmosphere she created in her classroom made it easy to ask any question, and not feel ridiculed. Along with that, she seemed to put extra effort into getting you to the point of clarity, then remembered to celebrate your successes and cheer you on to the next level. All in all, she made learning fun, and your high school experience enjoyable.

Your teachers didn’t seem bent on embarrassing you, but allowed you to take responsibility for your decisions and actions.

Friends

It was easier to relate to your classmates and you acquired female friends. Even when you misspelled or verbally mixed up words and phrases, your friends just laughed, corrected you and moved on. When you didn’t understand some concepts, they chuckled and explained it. It just wasn’t a big deal!

What relief I felt that you maintained a pleasant demeanor and displayed no more evidence of daily anxiety. The communal atmosphere certainly added to what I was doing to build your self-esteem. You took your inclusion in activities and the respect shown to you as evidence of your friends’ trust.

To top it off, your peers considered you to be smart.

Successes 

Your work ethic began to pay off – you are reading better.

More importantly, you now understand the implications of your different thinking style and have discovered how to teach yourself to learn, and developed a personal manifesto:

  • Passing or failing is a decision.
  • If you wanted to pass, you needed to prepare, and it was up to you to adequately prepare for upcoming examinations.
  • It was okay for your preparation to look different from your peers.
  • You should not rely on your teachers or even me.
  • You must be deliberate and intentional when asking questions.
  • You will remain after school and ask your teachers additional questions to further your understanding of the concepts taught that day.

Finally getting a grasp of how you learned helped you prepare for and pass you exams.

Your high school experiences helped you see that, although you may learn and see the world differently from others, the foundation for success is the same.

You made a conscious decision to pass and be a success in life.

Do you remember the knot-board you created for your club assignment? It was so creatively organized – so exceptional – the club director kept it as a sample to show future members.

Your decision to be intentional about your success permeated every area of your life.

You are admired by young people and adults alike.

Today, you graduate Valedictorian of your class. Yes! VALEDICTORIAN!!!

You deserve every moment of your celebration!

Look out College. Here she comes!

Love,

Mom

How has your child overcome personal challenges to achieve success in some area of life?

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From Drug Addiction to Academy Award-Winning Actress – A Dyslexia Success Story

Only a few people have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award (EGOT). Caryn Elaine Johnson is one of them.

She was born on November 13, 1955 in Chelsea, New York and grew up in a housing project with her brother and mother, who was a nurse and later became a Head Start teacher.

In school, she was called “slow,” “dumb,” “lazy,” or “retarded.” She wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until she was an adult, so when school kept getting harder and harder, she eventually dropped out at 17. With her self-esteem low, she traveled a turbulent road in life, which included poverty, drug addiction, single motherhood, welfare, and a series of wide ranging jobs.

In his interview for the Child Mind Institute, the founder, Dr. Harold Koplewicz, called her a woman of grit and resilience.

Today, we know her as Whoopi Goldberg, actress, comedian, radio host, television personality, author and UNICEF International Goodwill Ambassador. Listen to her recall some of her challenges and her mom’s support in her interview with Quinn Bradlee:

She counsels parents to be supportive of their dyslexic children –  “Stop trying to find a reason why it happened… It’s not your fault… Pay attention to how your child is doing stuff.”  

Then, listen to her speak at the Goodwin College 2018 Commencement where she counsels the graduates, after receiving an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

How can you build your child’s self-esteem at home to combat the negative labels in school?

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Unlocking the Dyslexic Potential

When you consider the vast advancements that have been made in science and technology, and the multiple methods for accessing information, it is fair to say that schools and institutes of learning insist on using, as Dean Bragonier puts it, “the most archaic form of educational media.”

If dyslexia is considered a different way of thinking rather than a disadvantage; if the different patterns of strengths and challenges are kept in mind; if as much importance is placed on those strengths as their difficulties; then early intervention and continued support would be made a priority.

Imagine a world where the thinking skills that dyslexics excel at are used to prepare them to contribute to their communities and the world. What would be the possibilities?

You may be wondering what those skills are. Here are they:

  • Visualizing
    • 75% of dyslexics are above average.
  • Imagining
    • 84% are above average.
  • Communicating
    • 71% are above average.
  • Reasoning
    • 84% are above average.
  • Connecting
    • 80% are above average.
  • Exploring
    • 84% are above average.

After many years of struggle, usually, with very little significant support, many dyslexics gravitate to career paths that cater to their preferred way of thinking.

In my previous article, I cited some data from Dr. Gershen Kaufman. Here’s some more:

  • 35% of all entrepreneurs are dyslexic.
  • 40% of self-made millionaires are dyslexic.
  • Over 50% of NASA engineers are dyslexic.

In his autobiography, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the One Laptop per Child Association, called dyslexia the MIT disease because of how common it is among students on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

If you’re not already familiar with the world of dyslexia, it’s time to educate yourself about it and encourage every teacher and educator to do the same. After all, if one in five children are dyslexic, there is at least one child in every class who can be identified with dyslexia.

What are you willing to do to support the movement to reshape the teaching industry in the area of dyslexia?

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Dyslexia and the “Sound” of Learning

Knowledge…learning…education, fueled by literacy, are keys to success.

Traditionally, literacy is defined as the ability to read and write.

A more complete definition, however, encompasses listening, speaking, reading and writing and today, using electronic media.

The major goal of every educator and parent should be to instill in children a solid foundation of transferable skills and a life-long love of reading and learning. To stay relevant, our children must constantly update their knowledge base. Hence, the prioritizing of literacy.

Dr.Carol Flexer, professor of audiology at the University of Akron, explains the importance of literacy this way,

“Literacy is inextricably entwined with sound. Immature listening abilities and underdeveloped auditory feedback loops have a substantial impact on how children learn to read.”

Literacy is all about sound. All its components incorporate sound in some way. Children learn to speak from listening. They learn to read from speaking and to write from reading.

Although our ears are the conduits for sound, we hear with our brains. Human development studies tell us that the human auditory brain structure does not fully mature until around age 15.

When brains do not receive intact sound, it is usually due to any one or a combination of factors, which include a noisy environment, ear infection, lack of auditory experience or immature brain development. Dyslexics have trouble connecting the sounds that make up words with the letters that represent those sounds. For them, the problem is often immature brain development.

Brain development studies show that sensory stimulation can influence growth and organization of auditory brain pathways.

That is why a number of currently available programs are helping dyslexic children develop their language and literacy skills. They are able to stimulate the auditory centers of the brain with precise sound. Music listening therapy helped my daughter tremendously.

This is good news for the dyslexic community.

Does this mean that every dyslexic person who receives this type of stimulation will learn to read at the same level as his non-dyslexic peers?

No.

Just as there is a continuum in the severity of characteristics in dyslexics, there is variety in their response to various sound development programs.

As technology takes over more and more, the skills that dyslexics find challenging are on the decline, while the thinking skills needed in today’s workplace are an integral component of their strengths.

Does interpretation of sound still matter? Yes.

But let us keep things in perspective. The goal is to learn concepts and generate ideas that will serve humanity and improve society.

There’s eye-reading – print books; ear-reading – audiobooks; and finger reading – braille. Whichever method one uses to accomplish this goal, is what’s best for him.

Which method of reading do you and your children prefer?

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Decoding Dyslexia – Decoding the Mind

When most people consider dyslexia, they think it is just about struggling to read. What is often missed is that there is also a speech processing component involved.

If parents and teachers are aware of initial warning signs of dyslexia, early intervention with research-based remediation can be used to help these children.

It is easy for observers to label children who confuse letters like b and d as dyslexic while missing those who struggle to link letters with sounds.

When I worked in a public school district as a speech-language pathologist, many teachers complained that some of their students were unable to recognize, much less manipulate, the sounds in words – a process (phonological decoding) that is unconscious and automatic, but still an integral part of reading.

Knowing that I advocated for screening and helping dyslexic students, they were quick to tell me about the students who confused letters, not realizing that letter reversals are common to all students up to grade one, but although perplexed and frustrated with the students who were unable to hear and process sounds, they never linked their difficulty with dyslexia.

Whereas speaking is a natural outgrowth of listening and associating with speaking adults and older children, reading must be taught. However, it requires some prerequisite skills. The child must somehow recognize that spoken words are made up of sounds, or else the work that letters do becomes mysterious.

The reading brain network uses mechanisms from the speech and language brain network. Because of that, atypical speech in young children is a red flag for atypical reading and also dyslexia.

So, parents, when you read Dr. Seuss’s books and nursery rhymes to your children and they have trouble with the rhymes and wordplay, take that as warning signs and have your child screened for dyslexia. You can read more about the connectedness in the phenomenal human brain here.

Did you know that children who demonstrate difficulty with speech, like mispronouncing long words, or transposing phrases, words, and syllables when speaking could be dyslexic?

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3 Weaknesses of Dyslexics and How to Compensate for Them

Have you ever experienced frustrating moments while helping your dyslexic child with homework and wished there was a quick fix?

When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher would send home vocabulary and spelling words to learn. We would spend hours going through those cards until she appeared to know the words. To my horror, when she brought home the results of her end-of-week quizzes, most of those words were incorrectly spelled on her paper.

As the school year progressed, my exasperation mounted. KC would verbally spell the words correctly to me at home but write them inaccurately at school. Looking back, with the knowledge I have today, I should have asked her teacher to give her oral spelling tests.

Here are 3 weaknesses I identified in my daughter, and what I did about them.

  1. Reading – She confused words that were visually similar e.g. saw and was, most likely because she had difficulty telling left from right, and in the English language reading always goes from left to right.
    • First, we talked about the meaning of the words then used pictures to activate the visual word form area in her brain.
    • So, we looked at the picture of a saw and talk about it.
    • Since there is no picture for was, she would use modeling clay to spell the word, then create a clay sculpture to represent the definition. That way, she produced her own image, which I directed her to take a picture of with her mind’s eye.
  2. Spelling – She seemed to memorize words based on their shapes. KC was unable to hear individual alphabet sounds, then match them to the letters and combinations of letters in words.
    • I found or generated creative ways of spelling words that incorporated the meaning of the word. Jennifer’s video here helped me, as she demonstrated this visual conceptual method.
    • For multi-syllabic words, I told little stories, for example, I told her that separate has a rat in it. She never spelled it wrong after that.
    • When I discovered music listening therapy, I enrolled her, to wake up the auditory pathways in her brain.
  3. Time-keeping – KC seemed to frequently get stuck in the moment, generating one idea after another and a series of What-ifs? Needless to say, time ran away leaving her way behind in her chores or whatever activities she was supposed to engage in during a particular period of time.
    • After talking about the importance of timeliness, we sat down and agreed on a solution to her tendency.
    • We placed a check-off list for chores on the refrigerator with completion times included.
    • I taught her a 3-step strategy:
      • Write her desired goal on paper. (Meaning and intention were the objectives here, not spelling)
      • Generate an action plan
      • Make a schedule that included all the steps of her plan, and follow it.
    • She still creates and uses schedules, today.

Thinking back to the quick fix I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I’ll tell you this – quick fixes serve a purpose, but they don’t bring lasting solutions. Addressing the problem head-on and brainstorming with your child, will bring workable results.

What has been your most frustrating moments while helping your dyslexic child with homework?

Or, what stories have your friends told you about their children’s academic challenges in elementary school?

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Perspective: A Letter to My Dyslexic Daughter

Looking back…

My dearest K,

You have come to the end of the second grade, and today, we were both surprised that your teacher wants to retain you.

She said:

  • Your handwriting is poor.
  • Your spelling is terrible and you cannot sound out words.
  • You can’t read simple “sight” words and come up with distractions to get away from reading when your turn comes around.
  • You don’t know your times tables.

I say:

  • You see things in a different way from your classmates and that helps you use your imagination in special ways to figure out problems.
  • You find patterns quickly and can arrange things so they fit into any space.
  • You tell stories in such a creative way, using simple things around that, both children and adults are amazed.
  • You won the science fair because you were the only child who could explain your project in detail.

It’s almost time to go back to school. After working with Ms. Lynn this summer, we now know why you have been having trouble with some things at school.

I want you to know that you are not stupid.

You are dyslexic.

Dyslexia is not a disease.

It is not a curse.

It is your superpower.

I will help you be the best that you can be.

Oh the places you will go because of your dyslexic brain!

Love,

Mom

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Dyslexia Awareness Month

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month. Unlike what some people think, dyslexia is not a disease, therefore, it cannot be cured. The brains of dyslexic people function differently from non-dyslexics, and that difference becomes most noticeable during the years of schooling. About twenty percent of the population is estimated to be dyslexic.

This month is a time to increase knowledge and understanding about the one in five among us.

  • Time to acknowledge and affirm those brilliant boys and girls, men and women who excel in big-picture thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and resilience, yet struggle to read, spell and write, among other difficulties.
  • Time to admit that, if we believe everyone is unique, then every brain has to be different, and by extension, cookie-cutter methods of instruction are ineffective ways of teaching. After all, fish don’t climb trees.

Today, also, marks the beginning of the final quarter of the year. This is a good time for reflection on what has worked in the previous quarters, what needs tweaking, and what needs to be discarded.

If you have a child who has been identified as dyslexic, the last three quarters were, most likely, challenging. Having to be your child’s teacher in the virtual, at-home classroom forced upon us by the pandemic, didn’t make things better.

As the mother of a dyslexic daughter, I know the frustration, overwhelm, and helplessness that engulfs parents when there seems to be nothing you can do to ease your child’s struggle as he pushes through the mountain of school assignments and strives to meet expectations.

Anxious brains don’t learn. So, your first step in helping your child navigate this unusual phase of his life is to alleviate his anxiety. Set aside some time when you can forget about academic work and focus on your child’s special gifts that can turn his challenge into a blessing.

Let him know that some of the world’s greatest thinkers, entrepreneurs, and celebrities were or are dyslexic. Here’s a video to get you started. After watching it, help him create his own dyslexic success story.

Remember to take time for your personal reflection. What are some things you have done in the past three quarters that are working for you?

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Dyslexia – Asset or Disability?

Photo Credit: MaryAGrim@KatyISD.org

 

A loving, persistent parent as advocate is the dyslexic child’s best ally. He doesn’t have to end up on the scrap heap of humanity.

According to Gabrielle Coppola, “The ability to grasp the big picture, persistence, and creativity are a few of the entrepreneurial traits of many dyslexics.” They make exceptional entrepreneurs and inventors, among other accomplishments. 

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Learning and Visual Figure-Ground Discrimination

Visual Figure Ground

If your child cannot distinguish a shape or a printed character from its background, she is having trouble with visual figure-ground discrimination.

Yesterday, we looked at visual discrimination. Today, we’re going to take a brief look at this slightly different visual processing skill.

How can you tell your child is having this kind of dilemma?