Dyslexia - thinking outside the box!
Written by Maihri Cameron, Family Consultant
Maihri
Many dyslexic children find school a real challenge. Difficulties in perceived academic ability can influence self-esteem, confidence, social skills and leave children feeling like a round peg in a square hole. This is completely understandable when much of our school education is focused on reading, spelling, rote learning, memory and concentration, the very things that dyslexic people often struggle with.
It is also understandable that parents find it heart breaking to see their intelligent, enthusiastic, creative, inquisitive child become so frustrated and unable to learn. However, with patience and encouragement, there is a lot that we can learn from the dyslexic mind. Dyslexic people often demonstrate advanced reasoning skills, empathy, curiosity, imagination and problem solving. Many of the skills we need in our society can be found in dyslexic individuals and so harnessing these abilities can extremely beneficial. However, difficulties in identifying dyslexia frequently occur because the strengths and challenges are not the same for everyone. Many dyslexic people may struggle with reading and spelling but others will not. Some dyslexics may struggle with concentration, but others may not. What all dyslexics do have in common is that they process information differently to non-dyslexics and identifying it early can help to overcome the challenges.
My own experience of dyslexia
As a dyslexic person myself, I found school extremely difficult. I could write my name by the age of nine and I knew letters, but that was about the limit of my academic knowledge. I spent my school career wondering why everyone else seemed to understand what we were learning and why we were learning it - to this day, I believe sitting my GCSE exams was the most difficult thing I have ever done. A lack of intelligence was not my challenge (although it felt like it at the time) it was simply that I could not process the material I was supposed to learn, understand and remember.
I was officially diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 18 when I was a student at Norland College. I believe that a lot of my difficulties centred around confidence because once I had a diagnosis, I wasn’t embarrassed about my academic and processing challenges. I would ask for help if I needed it, I could recognise my strengths, I could relate to the challenges other people experienced, I knew that I wasn’t stupid and I felt that I could contribute to society. Being dyslexic certainly hasn’t made life easy, I have to work very hard just to keep up and I know how it feels to fail at things but despite this, I would say that my successes in life have not in spite of my dyslexia but rather, because of it.
I ended up completing my undergraduate degree with 1st Class honours which really gave me confidence to understand my learning potential. Since graduating I went on to complete a Masters degree in Psychology and I am currently in the writing up stages of my PhD in developmental psychology. It has been a hard journey and I still experience many day to day challenges but now that I have developed strategies that work for me, such as allowing myself much more time to complete tasks and explaining to people that I need information to be written down for me rather than verbalised, my dyslexic mind has thrived and enabled me to set my sights high!
Parenting, teaching or caring for a dyslexic child requires a lot of strength and patience - you desperately want them to be happy and to thrive and it is unbelievably frustrating when you try to help them but they just stare blankly back at you. But believe me they will get there! It might take longer, and it might need a few different approaches before the penny drops, but every dyslexic child has the potential to learn and achieve, they just think and process differently to non-dyslexics.
There are no quick fixes and it does take time, but ultimately, this different ‘out of the box’ thinking is what we need in society. We need people who are creative, innovative and hard-working. So let us celebrate our dyslexic children, nurture their strengths and value their thinking.
More information about dyslexia and some useful links can be found on the NHS website
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