What is Dyslexia | General Symptoms & Famous People with Dyslexia

When I was 3 years old and I was put to kindergarten, my teacher complained my mother daily that I failed every time to take dictation words of letters and numbers. When she would say write S I used to write L. Even I used to have confusion every time whether to write from left to wrote or right to left. Paragraph used to be a really difficult task. The numbers were like a puzzle to me to interpret.

Here are some of the examples of ‘typical me.’

What is Dyslexia | General Symptoms & Famous People with Dyslexia

It was so embarrassing for me when I used to find my mother always being told to stay back as there would be a list of complaints about me daily. All other parents used to make fun not realizing how hurtful it was to me to feel that way. It was not that I had less knowledge or intelligence. It was a difficulty which I faced and I had no support to understand that it was something I had no control over it. I was actually trying and I am not bird-brained.

This was my childhood experience when I had no knowledge of what I was experiencing and knew nothing how to deal with it. Therefore today I wish to write this article on Dyslexia with a simple intention to create awareness amongst parents and teachers to help children with reading and learning difficulties.

What is Dyslexia?

What is Dyslexia | General Symptoms & Famous People with Dyslexia

Dyslexia can be defined as a learning and reading difficulty of an individual to interpret letters, words, and numbers. That’s it. Is that a big deal? No. It has never been for me at least. I was borderline.

Now, before we go deep into what are the attributes and symptoms of dyslexia let me first tell you what not dyslexia is by replacing the common myths with facts. 

The facts are: 

1. Dyslexia is not a disease. 
2. It is not a mental disorder. 
3. It has nothing to do with being less intelligent. 
4. Dyslexia people can be a real success in their professional and personal life. 
5. The difficulties in reading for dyslexic children do not vanish with age but could be adjusted well if proper help is rendered.

General Dyslexia Symptoms:

What is Dyslexia | General Symptoms & Famous People with Dyslexia

Some of the general problems faced by children with reading and learning difficulties are as follows: 

1. Difficulty to follow general instructions or dictations. Generally confused between left and right directions. 
2. The very short span of attention and gets easily distracted by thoughts. 
3. Finds it difficult to focus on a particular thought is present in a logical manner. 
4. Needs full instructions to be followed. 
5. Can recall more information and remember well by reading it loud than silent reading. 
6. Oral instructions are difficult to be grasped for children with dyslexia.

These are some general examples of challenges faced by children with dyslexia.

Specific areas of concerns for children with Dyslexia

Reading: Children with dyslexia tendency face the following challenges: 

1. Requires more time to read and understand that his fellow classmates. 
2. Often misreads or misinterprets words. 
3. Problems in decoding words in comprehensions. 
4. The omission of words as well as repetition of words often in reading or writing. 
5. Finds it difficult to read similar looking words like was and saw or lots and lost etc. 
6. Sometimes find it difficult to recall information just read.

Going back to my real life experience. My pre-primary and primary was awful as I used to be bullied by my friends often while I used to read sentences in class. I remember one instance when my mother told me to read the alphabets properly in order and I cut off the difficult alphabets that I was not able to read. My mother freaked out when she found my alphabet book in pieces.

However, since I was mild dyslexia I could get away with things without being noticed quite well. I never had problems remembering things if I knew the meaning of things and understood well. What I used to do is to read every word slowly and loudly at home. I tried to look at the words for a long time and constantly tried to read it in order. If I failed I tried not to fail again on the same word at least. For numbers, I tried my best to write in the correct order as I used to write mirror images in my early childhood days. Writing my daily diary helped me a lot to start writing my thoughts articulating my feelings in the right order. I had no external help as during my childhood days very little about dyslexia was known. Truly speaking my parents knew nothing about dyslexia.

Now let us find out some more specific challenges of Dyslexia.

Spellings: Spellings are again one big challenge. Letters get mixed up and jumbled up like “four as fore” or even “rat as tar” or slimming and swimming. Some more challenges are failing to recognize the same word twice on the same page and writing the words phonetically like could for could and mite for might.

Writing: There is a clear difference in oral and written language ability of the child. Such children find it more difficult to write than to answer questions orally. Writing notes and taking instructions becomes a hard task. Apart from that punctuations and copying notes from the board also is a difficult task for certain children with dyslexia depending on their level. Bad handwriting and messy notes are also some traits of dyslexic children.

Some of the typical writing forms which I could think of personally when I used to write are as follows: 

1. Mixing of upper and lower cases in same word or sentence. 
2. Writing reverse called mirror images. 
3. Writing the same word differently like board and board.

Mathematical Concepts: Some of the typical signs for children with difficulty in mathematical concepts and understandings are as follows:

Difficulty in interpreting numbers inconsistently Example I used to write 41 as 14, 9 as 6 and when the teacher taught us to place value and face value I was like Alice in Wonderland lost in my own world of thoughts. Often signs of addition (+), subtraction (-), multiplication (x) and divisions (-) were really confusing.

Having discussed some of the clear traits of dyslexia I would like to conclude that dyslexia is not a problem. It is neither a disease that you need to accept and learn to deal with it. I had cleared my TOEFL with flying colors with 97% and completed my Master degree in social science and earned a diploma in Public Relations. Blogging and writing my thoughts is my hobby and I am passionate about it. I still have issues while I read numbers or writing words but I have mastered the art of using it in a positive way. I don’t care if words come in jumbled forms to me sometimes. It does not matter. I know how to deal with it and I have mastered the art with positivity, hard work and never to give up attitude. It is a blessing when you can have random thoughts and you can think of so many things all together at the same time. It is okay if they don’t fall in order. Above all really great ideas never come in clear forms. When you take a step in executing your thoughts to action, slowly things become clear. I may not follow logical orders all the time and interpret things clearly in one go. What I do is start working on in walking my way out clears the fog and illusion of hazy images become clear. I get more focused.

That’s it for today. I hope I am able to reach out to parents and all my readers to explain what actually dyslexia is so that you can be well accomplished with the right techniques to deal with it. It is best advisable to reach out to the right people like special educators who are well trained and knowledgeable to provide proper support to help those ‘brainy minds’ to remain focused and oriented. Above all, some of the great Oscar winners like Robert Benton, John Irving, and Roger Ross Williams were people with dyslexia.

Cheers

Happy Parenting!