Some time ago I ask a question on Facebook and that question was: "What does the word dyslexia mean to you?" Here are some of the responses I got.
Have to say a big thanks to Sangay Glass for her help with this.
Raymond Alexander
when I see the word Dyslexia, I immediately think of dysfunction in reading, and being "disorganized"....and wonder if that isn't why we find adjectives in the wrong places in our writing at times...why we can also type words backwards perfectly without realizing it
Gloria Allendorfer Anderson
What comes to my mind is my husband's troubles with it. I don't let him in the checkbook. It appears as a learning disability in that he can't put letters in order to make words. All the letters are there, just not in the right order. I've ...lived with this for almost 47 years and it has been a struggle to handle every single piece of paperwork that has ever come through our hands, unless it's a simple form of some sort that he can handle. He's dangerous on a computer because he misinterprets what he reads. Sounds like complaints, but this is just the way it is.
Glory Lennon
I always thought it was when the brain sees letters in the wrong order. That must make it virtually impossible to function in a word-dominated world. Completely disheartening too for those who suffer from it.
Mike L Williams
For me, Dyslexia means seeing things in the wrong order or backwards. Letters could be backwards or written backwards. Letters in a word may be mixed up such as "backwrads" instead of "backwards". A person with dyslexia might write "doat" instead of "boat".
Mona Gallagher
yes, for a great many years I associated dyslexia with reading...my son had it. Now I know there's more to it.
Amanda Dcosta
when I think of dyslexia - I connect it with the character of a genius who's IQ is way above average man. While they have a learning disability when it comes to reading and studying skills, they are very creative and have a much better visual perception of things. They are prone to more nightmares because of their heightened imaginative powers, while at the same time they can also be able to see a much bigger picture because of their creativity which compensates for drawbacks.
Dyslexics are generally slower at desk jobs (there are exceptions) but are good with manual work. On the other hand, they excel at arts with much more aptitude than one who is majoring in that field. (arts). I see them as very artistic and creative people. Drawbacks on the one hand while a heightened perception of select gifts on the other.
Azteclord 21. Mar at 10:17 Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
Kiazishiru 21. Mar at 10:23
This has been called out to be fake. I can't read stuff like that, I only know what this says because this same stuff keeps popping up every now and then on the places I frequent.
For me a word does exist of letters in one combination, every time you switch a letter I will see it as a different word.
Jongoff 22. Mar at 02:35
I've done the same with different words, and it is still legible to most people who read it.
Twisted 22. Mar at 03:33
I know a couple of very bright people who are dyslexic and who struggle to cope with emails and spelling issues. It tends to push them into different areas so they avoid dealing with the written word and doing other things instead. For example, one is a manager and tends to try to speak to people directly rather than send emails, so she has a reputation as a great influencer with excellent interpersonal skills.
Personally I think there's a high perceptual element to dyslexia, in that people who are dyslexic find it harder to recognise patterns. There must be a compensation for this somewhere in the brain, in the same way that blind braille readers show more activity in MRI scans when touching something with their braille-reading finger than sighted people who cannot read braille.
This is also interesting: www.psychologytoday.com/
Rmp 22. Mar at 11:45
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe
That's just freaky that I was able to read that effortlessly...
Janie 24. Mar at 16:34
word blindness
Dlandersen 1. Apr at 23:28
Many people have overcome dyslexia and gone on to do remarkable things, both past and present. Here is a link to a list of famous individuals all purported to have dyslexia. Don't know if that helps in your research but I've always found it interesting and inspiring.
www.dyslexia.com/famous.htmFlick Yesterday at 04:57
My son was diagnosed as dyslexic at university. He'd coped until he was 16 - with help from us - as we didn't realise his problems were anything more than normal education issues. He learnt to read with no difficulty but his attention span was poor. Not all dyslexics have problems with reading. There are so many different learning difficulties lumped together as dyselxia, it's hard to give a definition. My son did the tests - where you have to repeat sequences of numbers, forward and back etc and he couldn't do it. Funnily I can't either which makes me suspect I might have some elements of the problem too. Once his teachers started to give lessons more in the form of lectures, he started to fail. He couldn't sort out the information fast enough to make notes. So when I looked at his books - they started off great and then he was doodling by the end of a paragraph. I helped him at school, by typing his notes up. (called interferring parent syndrome - oh dear) but at university I couldn't help and he wanted to leave almost immediately. But being diagnosed and told he had a recognised problem made such a difference. He was allowed to use a laptop in his exams, given more time etc and though he didn't make use of a lot of the software such as voice recognition, he did stay and finish his degree.
I'm upset that it was missed as an issue when he was younger. Signs were there and I compensated for them when I should have sought help. I did actually speak to a school psychologist at one point but he told me I was the problem not my son. Lovely. But part of it is my fault for not seeing that the problems were actual problems. i just thought he was a typical boy.
Midevil 11. Mar at 09:25
Due to a head injury, I show mild signs of dyslexia when I'm tired. I read words in the wrong order, spell them out of order, and my speech jumbles words. I also will simply stop in mid-sentence, drawing a blank, but I don't think that's anything to do with the dyslexia.
Fun4all 11. Mar at 09:50
I can't help but think of an old, politically-incorrect LOL:
Did you hear about the new group called DAM
Mothers Against Dyslexia
Seriously, I have encountered a few dyslexics who make me think of the stereotypical "absent minded professor" type. Extremely brilliant, but oddly finding a great challenge in certain activities that many of us consider extremely simple.
Also, dyslexia has long existed, but it has only recently has it become socially possible to mention that you are dyslexic without being treated like you had a mental illness or were a moron.
just a wef random thoughts
Turtlesoup 11. Mar at 09:58
dyslexia runs in my family. my brother had a lot of trouble learning to read because of it, but it's something that can be coped with. He now even enjoys reading.
It only bothers me when I'm tired or not paying attention; I'll mix up numbers or mix up my words in a sentence when I talk. Really mild in my case, so it's hardly noticeable.
I don't know how it can be called an ability. It makes clear communication difficult, so it's at least an obstacle, in some cases a disability. I'd consider it more difficult than something like stuttering, because, while stuttering gets in the way of what you're trying to say, dyslexia can get in the way of the information you take in, too.
And it can sometimes be overused as an "excuse." My brother tried to pull that when he didn't want to read something.
My favorite (non-dyslexic) mix-up story is when my husband was signing the bill for a meal and he subtracted the tip from the total instead of adding it.
That, and a little girl calling satan santa. She may or may not have been dyslexic.
Txhilljack 11. Mar at 10:17
I have been told that I in the UK would be diagnosed with mild dyslexia in addition to dyspraxia. I struggle with the inverted Peter Principal in job searching my boxing website in the words of Masters nuero diverse type displays some dyslexic in addition to dyspraxic quirks. In terms of the disability I have no clue what it would be like to have organizational skills to be easy.
In terms of dealing with a disability even in Tales of the Dead Armadillo Ace the protagonist is only dimly aware that other people do not struggle with the things he does he can not fathom the non nuero diverse world.
Birdlady 11. Mar at 14:33
In my family, there's dyslexia from one side and ADD from the other - lots of engineer/math types and artists and other right brain careers, including drunks on the ADD side.
I have an uncle who is classically dyslexic, reverses the letters (which is actually not quite what's going on, according to my ADD/dyslexic sister who studied it, more that the orientation of the letter is irrelevant, and "b" looks like "d," "p," and "q") and who has difficulty reading - he's very, very bright, but did terribly in school. I think this is what most people think of when they hear the word.
In the '80s, "dyslexia" was used as a catch-all word for all kinds of learning disabilities, including ADD. My sister says she reverses letters, but she has the focusing difficulties of ADD (and the temper) and she has a sort of "input/output" problem, it's hard for her to take in information that she hears verbally - she used to have terrible trouble with voice-overs in movies and tv programs. Her mental processing is top notch, and once she learned how to deal with these problems, she graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy league college, but she also barely graduated high school before she was diagnosed.
A classic way to find a bright dyslexic or ADD kid is when they don't perform well in a classroom, but do well on standardized exams, btw.
Kiazishiru 11. Mar at 15:00
I did very bad in standardized exams, too short of an attention span... Any test longer than 45 minutes/an hour will be of less quality then an 30 minute test.
I am mildly dyslectic in dutch but barely in English, which might or might not have to do with me learning English only at a later time when I had already had time to deal with how I learn words.
My boyfriend is severely dyslectic but mainly because he sees in images and not words, which means that he'll mess up all sorts of things, though it has been getting better from time to time.
Birdlady 11. Mar at 16:38
My sister could arrange for untimed tests once she proved she was dyslexic, but yes, she had trouble, too. It's the focusing problems with ADD.
On the good side, I'm not ADD, but I have some tendencies that way, and I invariably befriend people who are ADD or dyslexic - they are so much fun and creative.
Pennycandy 11. Mar at 17:59
My dyslexic daughter's comment. I asked her if she told her honors student boyfriend about her dyslexia. She said,"No." I asked, "Doesn't he question why you're in pull out classes for reading?" She said, "I'd rather. tell people I'm lazy." Sad
Birdlady 11. Mar at 18:10
This is back from the 80s, so I HOPE this isn't the case anymore, but a lot of people considered dyslexia a real stigma for some reason.
Or worse, when my then 20-year-old sister attended a school for dyslexics, she met another gal in her 20s who was only just diagnosed. This girl had two brothers who were dyslexic who were diagnosed as kids, but her family just thought, well, she's a girl, she's just stupid.
Mammamaia 11. Mar at 20:45
to me it means the dyslexic person does not see writing and numbers the way the rest of us do... in my daughters case, lines of math numbers 'slid' out of place, so the solution was to use graph paper for her math work... worked like a charm...
spelling and other word/writing issues seem to be harder to manage, though... and i don't know how that's dealt with...
i would definitely consider it a 'disability' and can't see how it could be considered an 'ability'...
Larkenrye 11. Mar at 22:56
My friend once told me had our teacher wrote everything on the board backward and/or upside down, she could still read it perfectly fine. She really has a great grasp of the English language, and of math.
Other languages were much harder, though. To someone who's had to work to get as good as she is at English (she was placed in a special program based on repetition and a reward/punishment system in elementary school), it makes sense that she'd have to work harder to learn even more rules of spelling and the like.
Another thing that comes to mind is the joke "Dyslexics untie."
Having dyslexia by no means that you can't have a good grasp of language in all its forms. But it did take this friend much longer to learn things than other people, at least initially (partially because she was diagnosed late). For her, I don't think it's turned out to be much of a disability—instead, she's developed much better techniques that will help her later in her school career. She knows how to study, knows how to ask questions, and gets very good grades. Even better, she knows what she needs to do to get work done. Overall, I'd say her dyslexia has made her an even more confident person than she might have been without it.
I guess the disability/ability thing also has a lot to do with a person's outlook on life.
Birdlady 12. Mar at 00:26
Just remembered about a good friend of mine who was diagnosed by a neighbor as dyslexic in elementary school, so she got help early on. She's a voracious reader now, so, once she had the right instruction on how to deal with it, it didn't slow her down. But to this day, unless she thinks about it, she will write each word perfectly backwards. I've seen her do it - she'll be talking while writing, and then she'll go "tsk" and shake her head and wave at the computer screen, and there will be this sentence, all the words in the right order, but each word typed in reverse.
I don't hold much with pc talk, but my experience with dyslexics really leads me to call it "differently abled" - if you approach it with the right teaching methods, it's fine, it just needs different methods than the standard more left-brained teaching techniques (this does depend on the severity of it, I agree). Dyslexics need more instruction on how to organize things, but they wind up being the most organized people I know - they kind of have to be. My friend above will line up her paper clips in her drawer. They are naturally unstructured people, and thus have to impose structure heavily, but that's a good survival skill a lot of us need to have. I lean this way myself; if I don't rigorously impose a structure on my time, I can daydream the whole day away.
Txhilljack 12. Mar at 13:24
One thing many learning disabled people suffer with is what I call the inverted Peter Principal....in the job market the tasks of entry level work is where their weaknesses stick out like a 747 on airport full of Cessna 172s. Their formidable strengths are underutlized.
Luke 12. Mar at 15:58
"Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He stayed up all night wondering if there really is a dog."
Inversion is what I think of. I know a guy who has it and had to work with him, so I have a basic understanding. From what little I know, it's not just about seeing things backwards or out of order, but also about flipping things around in your head.
Marysipe 13. Mar at 21:22
I'm dyslexic with a heavy auditory component. I can't understand people who mumble and I have a lot of trouble with other languages, because the sounds combined with whatever sound is nearby. If my brain doesn't already know how the sounds are supposed to be ordered, I can't distinguish between one word and the next. It shows in my typing, too. I'll be writing and find that I've typed "shaft" when I meant to type "she asked," or "hand" when I meant to type "he and," because I fix on certain sounds and the rest doesn't always get spelled out in my head before I move on to the next word.
I also tend to drop the endings off my words. I'll type "she jump," or "he was run" instead of "she jumped" or "he was running." I often confuse and reverse numbers and letters, but it's not just because of their shapes. For instance, I confuse "6" with "8" instead of "9" because both six and eight are even. That's actually more when I have to read aloud or when I'm trying to say a series of numbers or spell a word. Although sometimes I'll look at a word and if I'm not concentrating I'll fixate on one or two letters and substitute a different word with those letters. I have to focus on one thing at a time in order to get it right, and so I suck at multitasking and I get really annoyed if someone breaks my concentration.
I've had to work really hard to get where I am in regards to spelling, grammar and composition. I don't know if I'd call dyslexia a disability. I mean, it can be a challenge, absolutely. And maybe people who have it worse than I have a reason to feel like it is. I think that my dyslexia made me push even harder to get things right (Typed "write." I do that all the time.), but I hardly think it's my place to tell someone that they're not disabled when they're frustrated and having trouble learning or doing something. Coping strategies are out there and they help a lot of people, but what works for me isn't necessarily going to work for anyone else. I think it's important to take each person on a case-by-case basis. (Typed "business" because I got distracted.) Just my 2 cents.
Edited to add: I just noticed that when posting a thread in my private forum last night, I reversed two words. *facepalms* I hate when I don't catch these things.
r Kukkee
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