How do we deal with our child’s learning challenges?

He was 2 years old when his speech began to decline. Fear enveloped my cousin as she realized that one of her twin boys was not developing as planned. A parent places their hopes and dreams into their children and when their child struggles, it hurts. One doesn’t want their child to struggle but to be happy, successful and content in life. Being able to accept the fact that one’s child is struggling academically or socially is very difficult and will often take a long time. It is okay to feel discouraged, or to cry, but there is hope.

Every child deserves hope for the future - overcome dyslexia and learning disorders at Therapeutic Literacy CenterAccepting and acknowledging that one’s child is struggling is the first step towards understanding and seeking help. The goal is not to diagnose one’s child, but to see the multifaceted issues that may be affecting your child’s self-esteem and confidence. Behaviors are often seen as an issue with a child’s motivation or how hard they try when these behaviors are more likely attributed to a learning challenge. People like to succeed. Have you ever met anyone that loved to fail? It is the same with our kids. No kid truly wants to fail at something, but when they do fail and can’t seem to get it no matter how hard they try, they may give up. The challenges they face are more than just motivation or bad behavior, they stem from actual learning deficits.

We have to accept that our children are not perfect, that sometimes they have real learning difficulties, and that there are resources and interventions that can help. From here we can tackle whatever challenges may come. A child knows when they are falling behind in class. They often wonder why it is taking them so much longer to complete assignments in class. “Why does everyone else get it and I don’t?” “It is too difficult. I am trying hard but it just isn’t working. I know that I am in the group that is not ‘smart.’” Confronting this head on and getting to the root of these feelings and learning challenges is so important. It is not about providing a label but rather figuring out the root of the problems. Labels can help to provide a child with an understanding of the challenges that they face. With that, it is very important that the negative stigmas attached to labels are eliminated.

Breaking through the stigmas that are attached to labels can be very beneficial for parents and children. Letting a child know that the reasons that they are struggling in class is due to a specific learning challenge that they have allows the child to move forward. It is more the way in which we deal and view the labels that matters. Diagnosing a child with dyslexia does not mean that they are incapable or unable to do everything that everyone else does. While giving your child a diagnosis of dyslexia seems scary, it can be helpful and beneficial. They can begin to understand their challenges more and learn about others who have overcome their difficulties. In fact, children and adults with dyslexia are very creative and have amazing talents. When a child is able to own the term and understand that they are amazing and so talented because they are dyslexic, and not the other way around, change happens.

When we acknowledge and identify the child’s challenge and we create a plan we create hope. A hope that your child will no longer view himself/herself negatively, they will embrace their differences and they will pursue their dreams!Your child deserves hope for the future - overcome dyslexia and learning disorders at Therapeutic Literacy Center

What is Dyslexia?

So What Is Dyslexia Anyway?  – Two “Classic” Symptoms Explored

We often wonder: Is my child dyslexic? or, Am I? and, What is Dyslexia exactly? However, in our experience, and in that of most people working in the field, not everyone who has difficulty with language or reading has “dyslexia.”

When you hear the word “cheese,” what comes to mind?
Some people picture a slice of yellow American cheese in its own individual wrapper. Others see a “wedge” of white cheese just cut from a “wheel.” Still others picture Swiss or blue cheese.
What about products with cheese – cheeseburgers, cheese danish, cheese pizza, cheese puffs. How about cheese concepts – “How Cheesy” or smile and say ‘Cheese!’”
They all contain cheese, but what exactly is cheese?

The same can be said of “dyslexia.”
Everyone has different ideas about what dyslexia means. The word “dyslexia” is actually a medical term meaning “difficulty with words.” That’s a pretty broad concept.
Let’s narrow this down just a bit.

There is current brain research indicating that people with dyslexia probably have physiological differences in the brain structure and how it processes, or thinks about, information.
At the Learning Center, we look at dyslexia from an educational standpoint. In other words, what can we do to overcome any limitations dyslexia might place on students’ ability to learn. We have worked with students with reading disabilities for over 13 years, and in that time we have come to recognize a couple of major symptoms that we would call “classic dyslexic symptoms.” These are: A significant phonemic awareness deficit, and a strong visual spatial thinking style.

What Is Phonemic Awareness and How Does It Affect Reading?
Phonemic awareness is a person’s ability to think about the number, order, and identity of individual sounds within words. It is the underlying thinking process that allows a person to make sense out of phonics, the sound system of our language.

The basic reading process is made up of three parts: Auditory (phonics), Visual (sight word recognition), and Language (the ability to use context clues and learn and apply new vocabulary).
In order to be an automatic, comfortable reader, all three of these processes need to be working efficiently together. If they are not, reading can be a frustrating struggle.
Current research and our clinical experience strongly indicate that weaknesses in the auditory part of the basic reading process, or inability to easily understand and use the phonetic code of the language, is a key factor in reading and spelling disorders.

A phonemic awareness deficit almost always keeps a person from being an efficient reader and speller. It usually causes individuals to be “disabled readers” in spite of the best efforts of parents and teachers.

For the second grader, it can mean being diagnosed as “developmentally delayed.” For the bright and creative seventh grader, it can mean spending countless frustrating hours doing homework and still failing. For the adult professional, it can mean making a “career” out of hiding the inability to read and write on the job.
Individuals with a phonemic awareness deficit find it terribly difficult to use phonics for reading and spelling. It has been said that these people simply cannot ever learn phonics. However, ongoing research in the field of auditory processing has shown us that this is not true. These individuals can be trained to develop their phonemic awareness and become effective readers.People with phonemic awareness deficit may experience the following:

  • Not accurate beyond their memorized vocabulary
  • Low level of sight vocabulary
  • Virtually no ability to sound out and/or blend words
  • Many times bright and motivated
  • Having to work “too hard” to read, spell, etc.
  • Poor grades
  • Written work is inaccurate
  • Confuse words in reading that look similar (such as quietly and quality)
  • Confuse words that sound similar (such as consonant and continent)

The Visual Spatial Thinking Style
The second “classic dyslexic symptom” is a strong visual spatial thinking style. People who have an auditory conceptualization deficit may or may not have the visual spatial thinking style.
Generally, these people tend to be bright, creative, “right-brained” thinkers, who think in concepts and pictures. They have the unique ability to see “in dimension,” or mentally “see” objects from all sideswithout actually moving their eyes or the objects . This talent lends itself to drawing, building, putting things together, and recalling concrete or visual information.

Many times, when “right-brained” children try to learn with the traditional “left-brain modes,” they are labeled as “attention deficit” because they mentally “leave” the classroom and create highly entertaining “movies” in their heads that are far more fulfilling and less disorienting than the symbolic ABCs and 123s.  Many times these individuals suffer from episodes that have come to be labeled simply “disorientation.” It is the uncontrolled loss of focus triggered by confusion, and it almost always occurs when working with symbols or when listening.

When the person experiences confusion about symbols (such as numbers and letters) his or her brain tries to understand. However, these individuals will usually go to their most comfortable thinking style, which is “seeing” in dimension. This can cause them to perceive the letter or word from different angles, recording different images of the word or letter in their mind. This makes it very hard to retrieve the symbols and often results in number and letter reversals or words “moving” on the page.

Small pieces of the language such as punctuation marks and small non-conceptual sight words such as the, of , and if may also be difficult for the visual-spatial thinker to pay attention to because it is hard to attach a concept or mental image to them. Disorientation may occur when the individual is overwhelmed with too much information, particularly with language.  When disoriented, the person often loses track of what’s going on around him as well as losing track of time.

We don’t ever want to take away a person’s thinking style. It is a wonderful creative style that was and is shared by important individuals in our society such as Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Bruce Jenner, Greg Louganis and many more.

Our goal is to help students develop other learning styles in addition to their own so they don’t have to suffer from confusion with language. “Dyslexic” symptoms, triggered by confusion about flat, linear symbols and small pieces of the language do not have to become a way of life.

There is help!
At the Therapeutic Literacy Center we help clients to develop control over their thinking processes to make sense out of reading, spelling, written language and math.  Through carefully researched and consistently effective methods, both of these most common and classic dyslexic symptoms can be overcome so that children and adults with average or above intellectual ability can become efficient learners.  Dyslexia and other learning disabilities are not diseases. They are simply differences in thinking or processing information that can be changed permanently . For some learners, the traditional methods of reading have not been successful. These individuals must be taught in a different way.

*Note: There are many other centers. Lindamood Bell and Banyan Tree are some of them in our area. Yet, once you enter our office, you will FEEL the difference. Our clinicians are all college graduates with degrees in psychology. They aren’t part time people working a “job” while they look for something else. They are all full-time clinicians dedicated to all of our clients. Working full-time allows us to go deeper in training and expertise in your child. We promise that there will never be “only two eyes” on your child. The level of collaboration and team work in studying your child along their growth accelerates their progress. That is our commitment to you.

Dyslexia diagnosis

Term “Dyslexia” Not Used In Schools Per Federal Guideline Adopted by Florida

Nov 05, 2013

Panama City- Dyslexia makes it very difficult for children to read, write, and spell. According to the National Institutes of Health, it’s the most common learning disability in our country, so it might surprise you to learn that Florida Public Schools don’t use the term at all.

Just a few months ago 8-year-old Jakob Nelson couldn’t identify letters or numbers. “His problem was so huge he could not take pictures and keep them in his head of letters and numbers,” said Paula Nelson, Jakob’s mom. Now he’s reading. But the journey to get here hasn’t been easy.Why won't schools use the term dyslexia?

“After his Pre-K experience 13 people were ready to put him on a different track rather than regular ed. We stopped it and said not yet, we have much more to offer him and research before that happens. We found someone to test him and identify his major problem being dyslexia with a normal IQ,” said Paula.

The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook that healthcare professionals use to diagnose patients, dropped the term dyslexia when they published a revised edition in May. Now it includes the same title school districts use, “Specific Learning Disorder with Reading Impairment.” Dyslexia is noted as an alternative term, but does not have it’s own heading. “We never use that word in the school system,” said Bay District School Psychologist Dr. Mimi Bozarth. “Dyslexia is a medical term, a medical diagnosis. In the school system we use educational categories. The child has the same problem, we call it something different,” she explained.

The state says the terms are interchangeable. The Nelson family disagrees. Failing to recognize or regard a dyslexia diagnosis has dire consequences for the child’s future.  “Specific testing and intervention therefore is not complete and not individualized at times for those students,” said Paula. “C’s are the goal standard. If the child is making at least C’s then the teacher, and we have excellent teachers in the district, we’d most likely accommodate that child’s needs but that child would not qualify for an individualized education plan,” said Dr. Bozarth.

The Nelson’s would like to see the district use different curriculum to address a dyslexia diagnosis specifically and are trying to rally other parents for change. “It’s just like the parents of kids with autism. That is how they made a breakthrough and had a difference made for specialized intervention for their children,” said Paula.

In the meantime, they’ve hired a retired teacher to teach Jakob at home. They hope to one day return him to a normal classroom.

If you think your child might be dyslexic there are many resources on the web to help identify symptoms and how to address them, we’ve created a list for you.

And if you think your child might have a learning disability, you can request they be evaluated by the district. After they complete the response to intervention process, if the child is eligible, an individual educational plan will be developed.

http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/Living-with-Dylexia-230720031.html

 

Accessibility Apps Help Students With Dyslexia

We need to remind ourselves that ‘Accessibility’ needn’t be a term reserved just for physically disabled. Those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities face real challenges navigating the world of printed words. It’s largely inaccessible to them because it’s often incomprehensible. However, new accessibility apps from Apple and others, are beginning to give these people the access that most of the rest of us tend to take for granted. While they may not have been the targeted market or driving force behind the design, it’s clear these apps benefit those with dyslexia and related disabilities.

Accessibility Apps help students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities overcome their learning problemsFor someone with Dyslexia, reading a simple paragraph or even a couple lines of instructions is a tedious and frustrating process. This makes everyday activities difficult and learning from textbooks or other dense, voluminous material is nearly impossible. Spelling and written expression can also be very difficult.

 Dyslexia does not impact intellectual ability but it will prevent these bright people from acquiring information as others do in the typical learning environment.

 So what do people who have dyslexia do when they encounter printed text? Sadly enough, some simply avoid it or give up. Others find or create methods to help them succeed.

Thanks to accessibility technologies built into Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac, more and more people with dyslexia and other disabilities are finding they can readily access the information in books, newspapers, websites, email, and more. Using devices to help people adapt the world to their needs is not a new paradigm, but having inexpensive, easy to use, readily available tools (these apps!) is what success is all about these days. Below I’ll highlight a few of my favorite apps for use on Apple devices. Visit iMore to find out about these and others from Apple. Of course there are plenty of more universally applicable educational tools and resources out there that have been around for years. I’ll mention some of them as well because of their proven positive impact.

Speak Selection
Speak Selection reads aloud any text highlighted on the iPhone or iPad. Having the words spoken really improves understanding of students. The app can even be set to highlight words as they’re read to help the reader follow along. We also use it to highlight text so the highlighted part can be read back again to the reader to aid in comprehension.

Dictation
The Dictation feature allows students to get their ideas out so they can freely and fully express themselves; returning later to work on fine-tuning the written script. Writing can be painfully frustrating for students with dyslexia since they often end up forgetting their overarching thought or stream of consciousness as they struggle with the task of spelling and writing individual words.

QuickType
iOS 8 brings with it the option to activate this feature — a predictive keyboard that gets smarter as you use it. It helps with poor spelling by suggesting words based on the first few characters.
With these types of integrated technologies and apps, people with disabilities can have access so they can readily use their creative and intellectual abilities rather than being held back by their disabilities.

Apple device users can also enjoy services offered by third-party apps developed with the Apple devices as the foundation.

One of these services, Bookshare, offers over 280,000 books that can be downloaded directly and read with text-to-speech. The combination of text-to-speech and highlighting greatly improves readability and comprehension for qualifying students. Thanks to a grant from the United States Department of Education Bookshare is free to U.S. students.

Voice Dream Reader is a super-cool text-to-speech app for iOS. It allows students to input text from a variety of sources (Bookshare, web, clipboard, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Project Gutenberg, etc.) Once the text is loaded, it can even be read with a number of different text-to-speech voices (albeit at additional cost). The app includes highlighting, note taking features, and students can customize the look of their text as well. This app is a great pairing with Bookshare for reading books on the go.

Another service, called Learning Ally provides human-narrated audio books that can also be downloaded to a wide variety of devices such as Android, not just Apple. Learning Ally is a national nonprofit with resources designed to support students with learning disabilities and their families. Of note, the highlighting of feature of this service is not word by word as in Bookshare and Kurzweil (see below), but rather is paragraph by paragraph.

Prizmo is an especially powerful app that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize and read back text in a matter of seconds from a picture of a text document. So if a student is having a tough time reading through something, they can take a picture and have Prizmo read it back to them. Though not the strongest OCR engine in the industry, it is ideal for use with mobile devices.

Individuals with dyslexia and other learning disabilities have already given these apps and services positive reviews – explaining that these apps level the playing field for them, and encouraging developers to come up with even more life-enabling tools. Hopefully, the increased focus on accessibility from sites such as iMore will help push innovation even further.

All the above are apps and services oriented to mobile users and more specifically Apple devices. With the school year already in swing, I’ll mention a number of other powerful applications and sites that are available for the home, office, and school and can be accessed and used across just about any platform, Mac or PC.

Kurzweil 3000
Kurzweil 3000 is a reading and writing program for scanned and digital documents so students can benefit from high quality text-to-speech and synchronized highlighting. Mrs. Kurzweil was actually the name of my sweet and wonderful teacher in first grade so I’m more than just partial to this one. Students can annotate documents with text notes, audio notes, highlighting and circle functions. Even test taking is simplified since students can fill in the blanks on documents – answering directly on the digital document. This powerful tool has additional writing help such as mapping and word prediction features mentioned above.

Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a fantastic free service providing video tutorials for students in just about any subject. Enthusiastic scientists and teachers walk students through difficult concepts step-by-step in a way that is easy to understand and follow. The video tutorials cover an enormous range of content ranging from algebra to zoology and is helpful for learning new subjects as well as reinforcing material that may not have been fully grasped in the classroom. And at the end of many lessons students can even take a short quiz to reassure themselves that they have understood the content. Visit Khan Academy at khanacademy.org.

The last items I want to share are devices that once again, help level the playing field for those with learning or hearing disorders.

Phones and tablets are convenient tools for recording classes and lectures but unless the speaker is consistently close to the device, the built-in microphone may do a poor job of isolating the speaker from surrounding noise. The resulting recording may be filled with background noice making it difficult to hear and virtually useless for those with hearing disorders. MightyMic from Ampridge is a discreet, compact microphone that plugs into the headphone jack on any portable device and then angled toward the part of the room that has the most important sounds to be captured. When recording in a classroom or lecture hall environment, it has the effect of reducing the nearby background noise resulting in capture of ideal recordings of the speaker.

The Sky Wifi Smartpen from Livescribe is a computerized pen for note taking. The way it works is that students take notes on special notebook paper their written notes are synchronized with an audio recorded from class. Revisiting this synchronized audio and written material helps students review and fill in gaps of information they may have missed. Many students within the spectrum of learning disabilities find it’s frustratingly easy to miss important content while trying to focus on writing everything down. Amazingly, the Sky Smartpen can also wirelessly synchronize notes to Evernote or even to other students who need audio and digital notes provided.

It bears repeating that while these tools and apps may not have been created specifically for those with dyslexia and related disabilities, the benefits for them are clear. What’s your experience? We hope you’ll share with us any discoveries you’ve made about technologies or resources that you’ve found helpful (or not!) for students facing learning challenges due to dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, or any other learning disability.

Assistive Listening Devices in Classrooms for Children with Dyslexia

Two reports from the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Northwestern University show that Bluetooth-style listening devices in the classroom can treat dyslexia.  Sounds suspicious I know, but if nothing else, trust the source enough to read on and you’ll be suitably impressed and hopefully inspired. Their research also uncovers a biological explanation which could lead to earlier diagnosis for this language disorder. The studies were published in Journal of Neuroscience and in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (links provided below).   These important findings further support an already large body of research pointing to a neural explanation for auditory processing in children with language learning problems, including dyslexia.

Assistive Listening Devices in Classrooms for Children with Dyslexia
Dyslexia is the most prevalent learning disability among children. Contrary to widespread public teaching, it is not only an affliction of the visual system; merely causing the eyes to rearrange written words.  Dyslexia stems from problems with auditory processing, a skill necessary to accurately interpret speech. Dyslexics typically have poor “phonological awareness”.  This means they struggle assigning the right sounds to the right letters. For example, they might confuse the words “bean” and “dean” because they cannot clearly distinguish the “b” and “d” sounds. Moreover, many children with poor phonological awareness suffer distractions from background noise, making it even harder to pay attention and focus on what a teacher is saying.

In the J. Neuroscience report, the authors show that poor readers have less stable auditory nervous system function than do good readers.  In the children with inconsistency in response to sound the data point to a biological mechanism and it may contribute to their reading impairment.  The authors proposed that assistive listening devices (classroom FM systems) may enhance acoustic clarity and thus reduce the auditory processing variability so elegantly described in the J.Neuroscience paper.

In the PNAS classroom study, they assessed the impact of classroom FM system use for 1 year on auditory neurophysiology and reading skills in children with dyslexia.  The results were clear and dramatic. Children with dyslexia who used classroom assistive listening devices (FM systems) had more consistent auditory brainstem responses to speech after 1 year.  This improvement was linked to increases in reading and phonological awareness. These changes were not seen for children in the same classrooms who did not use the assistive listening devices. The thinking here is that the enhanced signal-to-noise ratio provided by the FM system improved auditory brainstem function by providing the nervous system with a clearer acoustic signal. This would be particularly true for children with dyslexia who are more adversely affected by background noise than their classmates. It is important to note that the FM systems were not used during testing. The brainstem function had undergone a lasting change by enhancing signal-to-noise ratio over the course of the school year.  (Read more on Brain Plasticity)

Aside from the obvious practical implications of these findings for the home and classroom, they have provoked many questions and lines of inquiries for the research community.  Stay tuned!  Both articles are available as free full text for a closer look at the study set up and data.

J. Hornickel et al., “Assistive listening devices drive neuroplasticity in children with dyslexia,”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 32:14156-64, 2012.

J. Hornickel, N. Kraus, “Unstable representation of sound: a biological marker of dyslexia,”Journal of Neuroscience, 33:3500–04, 2013.

Embracing Dyslexia: Cornell Amerson’s Inspiring Story

Is your child struggling in school? Are you concerned about their success? A recent interview with Cornell Amerson by Educating Dyslexia has shed some light on the struggles that kids go through when they have a learning disability. He addresses his own personal struggles and sheds light on the issue. Being able to identify a child’s struggles early on can help to prevent a child from losing confidence and self-esteem. Most children with a learning difficulty will begin to perceive themselves as incapable and different from the other kids in the class. This can lead to low levels of self-esteem and behaviors that appear to be uninterested or uncooperative in the classroom.

Cornell Amerson is the author of “The Janitor’s Secret“, a fictional novel that provides insight into the struggles of having a learning disability. Many people do not understand the difficulties a child has in a classroom when they have dyslexia. Being able to understand how it affects a child’s confidence and beliefs is so important. Cornell is a great example of a man who has dyslexia and who reveals these challenges.

Amerson’s interview has two parts. The first part focuses on his difficulties in school and as an adult with dyslexia. It is a fascinating story that truly demonstrates the emotional, social and intellectual issues that arise when a child does not understand his/her challenges. He fell through the cracks and spent many years not understanding why he was unsuccessful. Identifying the challenges early on and seeking support and help is so beneficial for a child’s success.

The second part demonstrates his artistic talents. He shows work that he did when he was younger and his amazing abilities. While he failed the traditional school system, his abilities and talents reveal his true intellectual ability. His story is inspiring in that it reveals his resilience to continue to seek education even when the system failed him. The work that we do here focuses on building confidence and training kids so that they can be successful in a classroom environment.

Understanding the struggles behind dyslexia will help you to deal with the challenges that you or your child face. At TLC we strive to help you and your child overcome any challenges that you may face. It is common, and you have support!

Is Your Child Masking Their Dyslexia?

Halloween masks can be great fun, but is your child wearing a “mask” all year long?

Halloween masks can be great fun

Secretly Dyslexic

Mike was funny and gregarious. He showed his smarts in class discussions, but come time to sit down and work, he would play “class clown” and entertain his neighbors instead.

Unfinished schoolwork was sent home, and added to Mike’s pile of homework. To get through the load, his mom sat with him and sped up the process, inadvertently becoming his ‘reader’. Homework was turned in correct and led Mike’s teacher to think the problem was a lack of motivation and attention.

Mike was actually quite seriously dyslexic.

Raquel’s doctor thought ADHD was the reason that as a third grader, she was still reading at first grade level. Unfortunately, medication couldn’t solve the reading problem, because Raquel was dyslexic. She couldn’t pay attention when the class was reading, spelling, or writing. She not only had difficulty processing the sound in words (phonics made no sense to her), but when she looked at a page, she felt disoriented and “seasick”, as the words seemed to swim around on the page.

Alex was a senior in high school in Advanced Placement classes. He masked his struggles with English by doing math homework for girls, in exchange for their writing his papers. He was later diagnosed with mild dyslexia.

 

Misunderstood

Dyslexic students are often misunderstood. At school, they may be perceived as bright, verbal students who don’t always put in their best effort on assignments. Some are so animated and charming, that only their parents know how much they are struggling, and how much effort and time it takes for them to read and write.

Sometimes a student’s reading problem can be hard to identify because other skills are so strong. For Jordan, letters and words may be hard to look at, and sounds might not make sense, but he uses his powers of deduction from pictures, his own knowledge, and what he’s memorized from group readings or lectures to figure out what the page might say, and answer the questions.

This is a taxing process, and oftentimes his mind will drift away. (After all, what he can create in his mind is far more entertaining than a jumble of words and letters that don’t really make sense.) Hence, Jordan, like so many others, is wrongly pegged as ADD.

Common Characteristics of Dyslexia

It is hard to pay attention when confused or when information doesn’t make sense, as is so often the case for dyslexic students. However, attention challenges experienced by dyslexic learners, which are so evident in relation to schoolwork and homework, are not generally pervasive, as in the case with true ADD/ADHD.

While every dyslexic student is different, common characteristics include:

  • Good intelligence
  • Good comprehension
  • Strong ability to visualize pictures/real things (versus letters and words)
  • Creative thinker
  • Weak ability to retain an accurate image of words (sight words for reading and spelling)
  • Weak phonemic awareness (ability to think about the sounds in words)
  • Extremely poor decoding skills (sounding out words)
  • Visual disorientation when looking at a page (i.e. letters look 3D, wiggle, pulsate, or move around on the page)
  • Family history of dyslexia
  • Strong talents in other areas such as math, arts, mechanical, or athletic abilities

Don’t be Fooled – Like everyone else, these kids are survivors. At a conscious, or sub-conscious level, we do what we have to do to cope with the cards we’re dealt. And smart kids, coping with dyslexia and other learning challenges, can fool the important people in their lives. Here’s what these students might say…

I can fool you into thinking:

  • I don’t qualify for special services/help at school
  • I’m lazy
  • I just need to try harder
  • I’m not really that smart
  • School’s not my thing
  • I don’t care
  • I’m a bad kid
  • I have ADHD
  • I’m just a class clown
  • I’m just shy

 The truth is:

  • I’m working harder than all my friends to do the same work, but it takes me twice as long, and it’s only half as good.
  • I’m already trying so hard, I think I’ll burst if one more person tells me to try harder
  • I’m smarter than a lot of the kids in my class, but for some reason, some parts of school aren’t working for me
  • School’s NOT my thing – but not for the reason you think. I’d like it if I could be successful and my efforts paid off.
  • I do care! I hate struggling, but if I act like I don’t care, maybe people will notice my attitude more than my F’s.
  • I’d rather be known as the bad kid than the dumb one.
  • I can pay attention to things I understand, but when I just don’t get it, my mind drifts away.
  • If I can make people laugh, they forget how “lame” I am with schoolwork.
  • If I’m super quiet and ‘shy’, maybe no one will know that I’m missing half ofwhat your saying and feeling really lost.

There’s No Need to Hide…or Seek.  TLC offers a Solution!

It is commonly believed that Dyslexia cannot be corrected – that you just have to cope with it. This is simply not true. While there is no overnight solution, most learning and attention challenges can be dramatically improved or completely corrected.

At our center, we identify and develop the weak underlying learning / processing skills that provide the critical foundation for learning but are not generally taught. ADD meds will not solve dyslexic challenges, but retraining the auditory and visual systems to accurately process sounds and letters on a page WILL get the brain ready to learn, retain, and comfortably use reading & spelling skills.

 

To learn more, call 858) 481-2200 to schedule a FREE consultation with Executive Director Maria Bagby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Upside of Dyslexia?

My son is Dyslexic and I admit that I all too often fall into the mode of lamenting that he (and my family) must ‘deal’ with his condition.  I wallow and worry about how he struggles in school and at home.  Together we suffer through the standard approaches to learning and doing things, and we spend time and money for targeted therapy and remediation.  I muse to myself that it sure would be nice to spend time and money on other endeavors instead.

People are always talking about the need to find the upside of situations, of pointing out strengths instead of weaknesses, of celebrating achievements instead of noting shortcomings.  This is supposed to be the ‘new age’ of appreciating differences and lauding what the differences bring to the table, right? At the smorgasbord of humanity should we really be complaining that all the burgers don’t have the same shape and taste?  That someone is ‘doing it wrong’?  Most of us ‘get’ this but we still fall into societal expectations (limitations?) about performance and achievement.  We keep finding ourselves spending too much time lamenting the inability to measure up.

Consider the situation of the dyslexic child who is having academic difficulties in school.  You know they’re not lazy so you get help and do everything you can to help them struggle less and feel good more often.  So What’s the Upside of Dyslexia? Is there anything else besides waiting for results to celebrate?  Waiting to say “Hooray, you’re fixed.â€

In all that waiting, I forget to remind him and myself of his unusual strengths and gifts. I KNOW Dyslexics experience the world differently and I need to find a way to appreciate that – and believe it.  But I always end up immersing myself in literature and other venues to figure out how to ‘fix’ that.  I gotta step out of that kind of thinking more often.  We all do and maybe what I found can give you a boost as well.

I recently came across the work of Dr. Matthew H. Schneps, a founding member of the Science Education Department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astrophysics?  Yes. But wait, it gets better.

Schneps founded the Laboratory for Visual Learning (LVL) to carry out research on how individual differences in neurology such as those associated with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders, affect how people learn science.  His work has led to a number of spinoffs such as the development of an innovative technique for reading for people with dyslexia using mobile devices, but what I found most rewarding were the descriptions of visual advantages that dyslexics have in our world.

Dyslexics get the whole pictureFor example did you know that that many people with dyslexia have sharper peripheral vision than others?  The brain processes separately the information from the central versus the peripheral areas of the visual field.  And the brain seems to trade off on these capacities. The key to reading is being adept focusing on details located in the center of the visual field while being less proficient at recognizing features and patterns in the periphery.  As it turns out, people with dyslexia have a bias in favor of the periphery and so can quickly take in a scene as a whole; they get the “visual gist†more readily.

As an astrophysicist, Schneps and other scientists in his line of work must make sense of vast quantities of visual data and accurately detect patterns or anomalies.  He suggested that a condition of dyslexia may actually enhance the ability to carry out just such a task.  Indeed, one study he conducted showed that astrophysicists with dyslexia outperformed their non-dyslexic colleagues in assessing visual data (radiographs) to identify distinctive characteristics of black holes.  In another simple experiment, he blurred regular photographs to the extent that they resembled astronomical images.  Dyslexics easily caught on whereas typical readers failed to do so.  Still more studies demonstrate enhanced peripheral capture and whole scene capture by dyslexics as compared to non-dyslexics .

I’m only scratching the surface here and I certainly don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that we should simply ‘celebrate’ the gift of dyslexia and leave it at that.  Reading and other academic pursuits remain a real challenge for those with dyslexia and other related disabilities.  We have lifetimes of work ahead of us as we work to remediate weaknesses. But identifying the distinctive aptitudes of those with dyslexia helps us understand the condition more completely.  I plan on keeping an eye on Schneps’ work and LVL to increase my understanding and help me appreciate my son and other dyslexics for their unique abilities – not just their ability to overcome certain learning challenges.

Happy New Year!

Diagnosed with Learning Disabilities? Now What?

What do do and how to find help when your child is diagnosed with a learning disability

“Help!   My Child Has Just Been Diagnosed With Learning Disabilities.   Tell Me What That Means.   Where Can I Get Help?   What Should I Do?”

With e-mail becoming such a widespread tool, I am getting the opportunity to hear from parents all over the nation, and even, sometimes, other parts of the world. Many of the feelings and questions seem to be universal, no matter where they come from:

  • My child has a learning disability. How can I learn more about this?
  • Where can I go to get help?
  • Is there hope?

Learning disabilities and attention disorders are perplexing because they may cause very “able” individuals to be unsuccessful or “disabled” in certain situations. There has been a tremendous amount of work done in this field in the last twenty years. This is by no means an exhaustive list of references, but here are a few of my favorites that I think will give any parent or teacher some new insights into learning disabilities, or better stated, learning differences.

Learning Disabilities / Dyslexia / Language Learning Disabilities

  • Conway, David. Help!!! A Handbook on Solving Learning Problems . Gander Publications (800) 554-1819.
  • Davis, Ronald. The Gift of Dyslexia . San Juan Capistrano, CA: Ability Workshop Press, 1994.
  • Hannaford, Carla. Smart Moves . Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publications
  • LaVoie, Richard. How Difficult Can This Be? P.B.S. Video. 1994. (800) 344-3337.
  • LaVoie, Richard. Learning Disabilities and Social Skills . P.B.S. Video. 1994 (800) 344-3337
  • Smith, Joan M. Learning Victories . Sacramento, CA: Learning Time Products, Inc. 1998.
  • Directory of Facilities and Services for the Learning Disabled . Novato, CA: Academic Therapy Publications.
  • Smith, Joan M. You Don’t Have To Be Dyslexic . Sacramento, CA: Learning Time Products, Inc. 1993
  • Tallal, Paula. Fast ForWord . Reference: Scientific Learning Corporation, Berkeley, CA 1998.www.fastforword.com

To find help in your area:

  • The International Dyslexia Association (410) 296-0232 FAX – (410) 321-5069 www.interdys.org
  • Learning Disabilities Association (LDA) (412) 341-1515 www.ldanatl.org
  • CHAADD (Support Group for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder)

Attention Challengers / ADD and ADHD / Tourette’s Syndrome

  • Dornbush, Marilyn, Ph.D. and Pruitrt, Sheryl K. M.Ed. Teaching The Tiger – a Handbook for Individuals in the Education of Students with Attention Deficit Disorder, Tourette Syndrome or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder . Duarte, CA: Hope Press
  • Hughes, Susan. Ryan, A Mother’s Story of her Hyperactive/Tourette Syndrome Child . Duarte, CA: Hope Press
  • Hallowell, M.D., Ed and Ratey, M.D., John. Driven to Distraction . N.Y. Simon and Schuster, 1994
  • Silver, Larry B. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder . Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1992.
  • Hartman, Thom. Attention Deficit Disorder…A Different Perspective . Underwood Books, 1997.

Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities

  • Thompson, Sue. The Source for Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities . East Moline, IL Linguisystems, Inc. 1997.

Learning / Study Skills

  • Amen, M.D., Daniel. Secrets of Successful Students . Mind Works Press. Fairfield, CAwww.danielamen.com 
  • Archer, Anita and Gleason, Mary. Skills For School Success . Curriculum Associates, Inc. (800) 225-0248.
  • Healy, Jane. Endangered Minds . New York: A Touch Stone Book, Simon and Schuster, 1990.

To the question, “Is there hope?”… Absolutely! 

Individuals with learning disabilities generally have something different or perhaps not completely developed in the way that they process or think about information. The way that they process is not wrong, but it may not be efficient, particularly for academic tasks.

Give the future back to your child. Dyslexia isn't a terminal illness.Because they are obviously intelligent and generally do some kinds of tasks very easily, parents and teachers may, at first, see the learning disabled student as lazy or unmotivated. With very few exceptions, learners of any age want to be successful and would if they could.

While we never want to take away a student’s thinking style, the key to teach the learning disabled student is to help him or her to develop the underlying thinking processes that will allow him to take-in, remember, and use information efficiently.

Creating a solid foundation of basic skills is a critical piece of the picture, but only when the brain has been prepared to understand and hold onto those skills.

Students are often taught compensating strategies to help them cope with their learning disabilities. These are helpful and important but they are not enough! Students with learning differences need to be taught in a different way, because these students can learn.

Individuals with learning and attention challenges often have wonderful talents or abilities in other areas. These may tend to get overlooked in the confusion and frustration of poor school performance. Many of the outstanding artists, musicians, actors, athletes, and inventors of our time have had differences in thinking that caused “learning disabilities.” Yet, it was precisely those differences that were the key to their success.

As we seek to help students work through and remediate their inefficiencies in learning, it is also important to notice and encourage their areas of strength and uniqueness.

Dyslexia: What is it?

So What Is Dyslexia Anyway?

Here we explore Two “Classic” Symptoms and what they may actually mean.

We often wonder, “Is my child dyslexic?” or “Am I?” and “What exactly is dyslexia?” “Should I seek dyslexia assessment, or dyslexia therapy for my child?” However, in our experience, and in that of most people working in the field, not everyone who has difficulty with language or reading has “dyslexia.”

When you hear the word “cheese,” what comes to mind?

Some people picture a slice of yellow American cheese in its own individual wrapper. Others see a “wedge” of white cheese just cut from a “wheel.”  Still others picture Swiss or blue cheese.

What about products with cheese – cheeseburgers, cheese danish, cheese pizza, cheese puffs. How about cheese concepts – “How Cheesy” or smile and say ‘Cheese!'”

They all contain cheese, but what exactly is cheese?

The same can be said of “dyslexia.”

Everyone has different ideas about what dyslexia means. The word “dyslexia” is actually a medical term meaning “difficulty with words.” That’s a pretty broad concept.

Let’s narrow this down just a bit.

There is current brain research indicating that people with dyslexia probably have physiological differences in the brain structure and how it processes, or thinks about, information.

At the Learning Center, we look at a dyslexia diagnosis from an educational standpoint. In other words, what can we do to overcome any limitations dyslexia might place on students’ ability to learn. We have worked with students with reading disabilities for over 13 years, and in that time we have come to recognize a couple of major symptoms that we would call “classic dyslexic symptoms.” These are: A significant phonemic awareness deficit, and a strong visual spatial thinking style.

What Is Phonemic Awareness and How Does It Affect Reading?

Phonemic awareness is a person’s ability to think about the number, order, and identity of individual sounds within words. It is the underlying thinking process that allows a person to make sense out of phonics, the sound system of our language.

The basic reading process is made up of three parts: Auditory (phonics), Visual (sight word recognition), and Language (the ability to use context clues and learn and apply new vocabulary).

In order to be an automatic, comfortable reader, all three of these processes need to be working efficiently together. If they are not, reading can be a frustrating struggle.

Current research and our clinical experience strongly indicate that weaknesses in the auditory part of the basic reading process, or inability to easily understand and use the phonetic code of the language, is a key factor in reading and spelling disorders.

A phonemic awareness deficit almost always keeps a person from being an efficient reader and speller. It usually causes individuals to be “disabled readers” in spite of the best efforts of parents and teachers.

For the second grader, it can mean being diagnosed as “developmentally delayed.” For the bright and creative seventh grader, it can mean spending countless frustrating hours doing homework and still failing. For the adult professional, it can mean making a “career” out of hiding the inability to read and write on the job.

Individuals with a phonemic awareness deficit find it terribly difficult to use phonics for reading and spelling. It has been said that these people simply cannot ever learn phonics. However, ongoing research in the field of auditory processing has shown us that this is not true. These individuals can be trained to develop their phonemic awareness and become effective readers.

People with phonemic awareness deficit may experience the following:

  • Not accurate beyond their memorized vocabulary
  • Low level of sight vocabulary
  • Virtually no ability to sound out and/or blend words
  • Many times bright and motivated
  • Having to work “too hard” to read, spell, etc.
  • Poor grades
  • Written work is inaccurate
  • Confuse words in reading that look similar (such as quietly and quality)
  • Confuse words that sound similar (such as consonant and continent)

The Visual Spatial Thinking Style

The second “classic dyslexic symptom” is a strong visual spatial thinking style. People who have an auditory conceptualization deficit may or may not have the visual spatial thinking style.

Generally, these people tend to be bright, creative, “right-brained” thinkers, who think in concepts and pictures. They have the unique ability to see “in dimension,” or mentally “see” objects from all sides without actually moving their eyes or the objects. This talent lends itself to drawing, building, putting things together, and recalling concrete or visual information.

Many times, when “right-brained” children try to learn with the traditional “left-brain modes,” they are labeled as “attention deficit” because they mentally “leave” the classroom and create highly entertaining “movies” in their heads that are far more fulfilling and less disorienting than the symbolic ABCs and 123s.

Many times these individuals suffer from episodes that have come to be labeled simply “disorientation.” It is the uncontrolled loss of focus triggered by confusion, and it almost always occurs when working with symbols or when listening.

When the person experiences confusion about symbols (such as numbers and letters) his or her brain tries to understand. However, these individuals will usually go to their most comfortable thinking style, which is “seeing” in dimension. This can cause them to perceive the letter or word from different angles, recording different images of the word or letter in their mind. This makes it very hard to retrieve the symbols and often results in number and letter reversals or words “moving” on the page.

Small pieces of the language such as punctuation marks and small non-conceptual sight words such asthe, of , and if may also be difficult for the visual-spatial thinker to pay attention to because it is hard to attach a concept or mental image to them.

Disorientation may occur when the individual is overwhelmed with too much information, particularly with language.

When disoriented, the person often loses track of what’s going on around him as well as losing track of time.

We don’t ever want to take away a person’s thinking style. It is a wonderful creative style that was and is shared by important individuals in our society such as Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Bruce Jenner, Greg Louganis and many more.

Our goal is to help students develop other learning styles in addition to their own so they don’t have to suffer from confusion with language. “Dyslexic” symptoms, triggered by confusion about flat, linear symbols and small pieces of the language do not have to become a way of life.

There is help!

Thankfully, both of these most common and classic dyslexic symptoms can be overcome so that children and adults with average or above intellectual ability can become efficient learners.

Dyslexia and other learning disabilities are not diseases. They are simply differences in thinking or processing information that can be changed permanently . For some learners, the traditional methods of reading have not been successful. These individuals must be taught in a different way.

Through carefully researched and consistently effective methods, Therapeutic Literacy Center in Solana Beach helps clients to develop control over their thinking processes to make sense out of reading, spelling, written language and math.

If you have questions about dyslexia assessment, dyslexia diagnosis, or are considering dyslexia therapy, we can help.