How a dyslexia reads

Let me say here, dyslexia’s don’t like to read. The sound of fingernails on a chalk board is to you what reading is to a dyslexia person.  It is to be avoided at all costs.  Put a new piece of equipment in my hands, along with the owner’s manual, and the manual will seldom be opened.  I will use the ‘seek and ye shall find’ method.  Perhaps if I found someone who knew how to use it, I would find some time to talk to that person and learn more.

When computers became popular and affordable, we got one, but I knew I was underusing the computer HUGELY.   To me, it was a big, glorified typewriter.  (Some people may have to look up what a typewriter was!)  Even today, I feel that I under use what is available out there, but not nearly as much. And new things keep coming out!  (I am in the process of learning how to blog, as I am sure it is evident to most.)  The best picture I can paint of how I felt on a computer would be like a person in the cockpit of a 747 jet airplane, and driving it down a freeway, on the ground, doing the best to avoid things that would break off the wings.  I knew there was power in the computer, but didn’t know how to use it, and reading the manuals were of very little help to me.

Most people are aware of the reversed words when they think of dyslexia.  Spot is seen as tops, dog is seen as god.  Not only does that happen, but letters inside of words can be inverted, switch places, or not seen the first time when looking at the word, making them a totally different word.  This just happens on its own.

Now add in words that sound the same but are spelled differently, such as their and there, or to, too and two.  A sign that one has dyslexia is that they are poor spellers.  I can’t live without spell check on my computer!  So which their do I need to write out? Do I write she went over their two?

And thanks to our language, words that are spelled the same, but are pronounced differently are challenging. Did he read the book, or he has read the book?  Are you getting the lead out of your foot, or did you lead a group of people to there destination? (Note, spelling has been purposefully changed here, so you can get a feel of having to go back and try to understand what is going on.) When reading, ‘Please go wind up the toy for your brother’, one is wondering what in the world does the breeze have to do with the toy.  If one is to read ‘He sings bass in the choir’, one would think something fishy was going on. Or ‘did you sow the seeds?’, one is pondering did I pig the seeds?  What in the world is that!!  Enough said?  It sounds funny now, but trust me, it is very real to us who have dyslexia.

   

If a person has to read a sentence over a few times to understand it, this is a good clue he/she is comprehending things differently than you are.

Dyslexia’s put a picture to every word they read.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, what does one with dyslexia see after reading one simple sentence, putting a picture to each word?  It can be grand and glorious, or way out in left field.

Let me give you another example of how one with dyslexia reads.  A simple sentence as ‘The brown horse jumped over a stone wall and ran through the pasture’, brings a nice picture to you, but will drive us crazy as we work through this challenge.  You must understand that we are very visual people, and with every word we read, we put a picture to it.  You could almost say it is like a movie, word for word there is a picture.  But what happens when you come across words that you can’t draw, or ‘picture’?  Can you draw ‘a’?  How about ‘the’?  Perhaps you can draw ‘and’ with a plus sign, but when one starts out to read, they don’t know what it means.  So this ‘movie’ all of a sudden has blank spots in it.  When a dyslexia person comes across a word they don’t know or can picture, it becomes a blank to them, and they start to stress out.  The more words in there they can’t picture, the more stress, and with more stress, the less one can focus, or stay oriented. 

There are 4 words in this sentence one can’t draw, ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘and’ twice.  So right off the bat, one would stress out.  I will replace the words one can’t draw or visualize, and replace it with (stress).  As one under stress doesn’t see things accurately, they will see other words incorrectly.  So one could read it this way:

 (stress) brown horse jumped over (stress) wall (stress and disorientation) ran throwing (unbelievable stress) grass.  Do you see my picture?  Brown horse jumped over wall, ran throwing grass.  How does a horse throw grass, much less while running?  Did you see that picture when you read it?  And because one sees this picture, and you see another picture, you are calling those who have this challenge dumb or stupid?

Next post:  Everyone is a genius.