What Is Dyslexia?

The origin of the word Dyslexia dates back to the 1880’s in Greek:

dys: “bad/none/difficult”  and lexus “word”.

Identifying signs of dyslexia can be a difficult task, but they are usually tell-tale causes of the child’s overall learning pattern. As dyslexia is mainly associated with difficulty to read, it cannot be reliably tested until the child begins with reading, usually between ages 4 and 8. (Abigail Marshall 2004: Parent’s guide to children with Dyslexia).

The Dyslexia Mechanism

• Non-Dyslexic people see the world linearly, whereas dyslexics see the world represented in complete pictures.
• Most people have a fixed perspective on the world, but most dyslexics can change their reference point for items. Because dyslexics can quickly see objects from multiple angles, these differences can be advantageous. But, when visualizing linear symbols like letters or words, it is a major disadvantage.
• A problem with focus (attention) is the key common factor in all dyslexia related learning difficulties.
• This tendency to think in pictures is also responsible for a brain which has great processing power and lately is regarded as a gift.
• Dyslexia is more than just a reading problem, as it also affects math and concentration skills.
• A learner with dyslexia appears to be very intelligent orally, but has difficulty reading or writing. In the classroom, they are labelled as lazy (you did not prepare!) or unintelligent.
• They are accused of daydreaming, whole they were actually searching their imagination for a meaningful image of a word.
• A learner with dyslexia finds it challenging to distinguish between left and right, and has little sense of time.

Most current presenters of dyslexia “treatments,” as well as the medical field, clearly lack appropriate understanding of what dyslexia is and is not. For example, there may have already been pressure to give prescription medication to help with reading and paying attention, and sooth emotional and behaviour reactions like high anxiety and depression, which do not solve the dyslexia dilemma. No medication has ever taught a dyslexic reader to read with comprehension.   In the meantime these kids learn that they can’t succeed without pills.

Verbal thinkers vs visual thinkers

Verbal learners mainly think with the sounds of words, their thoughts are linear in time and follows the structure of language, with a sort of internal dialogue.

Most dyslexics are nonverbal thinkers – they mainly think in 3-dimensional multi-sensory pictures. When a sentence is read, a picture of what the sentence is “saying” is formed – not of the words, but of its meaning.

Sight words: However this talent can cause problems and confusions when reading words which are not attached to an image of the meaning of the word. Table, horse, mountain, most nouns, have images, but words like but, when, almost, for, from, is, if, the,  and about 245 such sight or abstract words in English and about 185 in Afrikaans, with no meaningful picture attached, are at the root of reading difficulties for a picture-thinker. The text quickly loses meaning – causing confusion, frustration, and fatigue and eventually total debilitating disorientation.

When confused, the dyslexic’s automatic response is to find a solution to grasp the meaning of a sentence.  He/she may try and use previous solutions that may or may not have helped to lessen the confusion (not only by reading), and may make use of his/her extraordinary talent to examine the source of the confusion and problem-solve, create, invent, engineer, and escape the reading project.

But this talent does not work well with 2-dimensional words (words on paper). The result of disorientation while reading is a distorted perception of the words – their appearance and meaning causing frustration, mistakes, loss of comprehension, and fatigue.

When reading, the dyslexic’s brain might blank out all words with no picture/image attached, and a sentence might look like this:

— injured hunter looked — — — — — wounded lion — — — jump —- — —.

This is what is available to try and make sense of:

— injured hunter looked — — — — — wounded lion — — — jump —- — —.

This is the original text:

The injured hunter looked over his shoulder and saw that the wounded lion was about to jump right unto him.

The table is set for confusions and ready to cause major disabling disorientations, leading to severe learning difficulties in reading, writing, spelling, comprehension, memory, and Math.

So then, let’s apply this theory to Sarah’s predicament of knowing the facts almost 100% when doing an oral test, but only 27% when she has to write the same test:

The Story of Sarah:

So then, let’s apply this theory to Sarah’s predicament of knowing and able to call up the facts in most subjects almost 100% when doing an oral test, but gets only 27% when she has to write the same test: What happened to the 100 % knowledge?

Sarah is dyslexic!   What does it mean?

1. Sarah is likely a right-brain picture-creative thinker with excellent IQ and good memory. Listening, understanding, and recalling are her strengths
2. Her issue arises when writing tests, as she must read the questions. Sarah sees many picture-less words in the questions. This may appear as blanks, stripes, and dots, she skips to the next word, which may be a noun for which she can call up meaningful image, but she is already confused. Almost all question sentences start with a picture-less word, like what? who? when? where? define?  The other non-picture words in the above sentence have been striked-out.
3. The confusions cause disorientation, leading to incorrect impressions and inaccuracies without awareness
4. At some point, the teacher, peers, or parent may point out her mistakes, causing negative emotional reactions. Nobody enjoys making errors.
5. However, in a test environment, Sarah have no choice but to continue and now resorts to solutions that have worked in the past. There are several, but guessing, replacing, omitting, or changing letters is easy but seldom assists to find meaning in the text.

6. This happens repeatedly day after day, since the moment she has been introduced to reading.

7. Her resulting uncontrolled dyslexia is nearing total learning disability! Added are levels of anxiety, frustrations and low self-esteem

Fortunately, Sarah has now been shown how to prevent confusion caused by picture-less words.  Sarah is now able to find accurate visual meanings for the non-picture words. Sarah’s dyslexia has been corrected.

Traits of Dyslexia

Here are identified visible traits and behaviours of the dyslexics.

Most dyslexics will exhibit about halve or more of the following traits and behaviours. These characteristics can vary from day to day or minute-to-minute.

General

• Appears bright, and highly intelligent but unable to read, write, spell
• Labelled lazy. Isn’t “behind enough” to get attention. High IQ, tests well orally, not written
• Feels Dumb; poor self-esteem.
• Zone out/daydream often and Learns best via hands-on, visual aids.

Vision, reading, spelling:

• Dizziness, headaches while reading.  Confused by letters, numbers, and words.
• Reading and writing shows repetitions and omissions.  Reads and re-reads with little comprehension.  Spells phonetically and inconsistently and having difficulty putting thoughts into words, speaks halted, incomplete sentences.
• Writing and Motor Skills:
• Trouble with writing or copying, pencil grip, bad handwriting
• Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball sports
• Can be ambidextrous, confused L-R
• Math and Time Management:
• Difficulty telling or managing time, sequential info or orders
• Math- dependence on finger counting. Ok with arithmetic, but fails words problems/algebra or higher Math
• Memory and cognition
• Excellent long term memory, but Poor memory for sequences
• Thinks mainly with images and feeling.

Behaviours, Health Development and Personality:

• Extremely disorderly, or compulsive orderly.
• Extra light of a deep sleeper.
• Strong sense of justice, emotionally sensitive.
• Mistakes and symptoms increase with confusion, time pressure, emotional stress or poor health.