Dyslexia
Dyslexia for short, but actually a developmental reading disorder, which results from an individual’s inability to process graphic symbols, is often mistaken for illiteracy or even worse; individuals with dyslexia are often submitted to ridicule and shame. The sad thing is that not always is dyslexia recognized the way it should be, especially not with schools striving for success and not admitting to failure. This failure may or may not be the fault of individual teachers, but more the fault of a messed up school system in its entirety. I personally have had students that have suffered from dyslexia and it is not so much the students that do not want the help of a diagnosis and “treatment”, but the failure of their parents to acknowledge that their children might suffer from dyslexia and that there is a treatment. I would believe that any parent would want their child helped, but this is sadly not the case. The admitting of a ‘flaw’ of their child would inevitably mean a flaw that exists possibly within them. Such ignorance just wants to make me scream, because the child suffers through a terrible injustice committed upon him/her from all sides; parents, teachers, society itself will treat an individual as an outcast as soon as ‘problems’ surface. This is a sad analysis of our system, but a quite true and common fact.
I never knew about dyslexia until years ago, I was watching the Bill Cosby Show. Leave it up to Mr. Cosby, he did try to include many topics that Americans face daily (one of the reasons I loved the show) and after this particular show, I thought it would be beneficial if I learned a bit more about dyslexia. I have children and thought it odd that my second born son was not as interested in reading as my oldest born or myself. It turned out that he didn’t have dyslexia, he was just too lazy to read (thank goodness that has changed!). I did find out that most dyslexic individuals visualize things differently, because they are visual, multi-dimensional thinkers, and are highly creative and intuitive. Now dyslexia has nothing to do with a visual impairment of any kind, but is because of the problems the brain has to recognize and process symbols. Children with dyslexia often have problems learning rhymes and separating the sounds in spoken words, which is fundamental in learning basic reading. These children often have average or even above average intelligence, yet the inability to read fluently hinders them on advancing.
There are many ways to recognize if your child might possibly be suffering from dyslexia. First off, if your child does seem to have more problems than others in school, you might want to have a neurological and physical examination completed on your child, as well as looking into your child’s school performance, and doing some research on your family history. The reason for the latter is because learning disorders tend to run in families. Somewhere along the line, someone else in your family might have possibly suffered from dyslexia (or another learning disorder). It is extremely important to take dyslexia seriously. The complications that can arise from dyslexia are problems in school, such as severe behavioral problems, which are an indirect result of being teased by peers, loss of self-esteem (thinking one is worth less than others because of the inability to do something is a problem many have), and later on in life there can be occupational problems because reading is the basic requirement for almost any and every job.
If you believe that your might be dyslexic and suffers from the following:
Symptoms
- Difficulty determining the meaning (idea content) of a simple sentence
- Difficulty learning to recognize written words
- Difficulty rhyming
- May occur in combination with writing or arithmetic learning problems
Please have your child examined! Acknowledging a learning disorder or disability is not something to be ashamed about, doing nothing to help the child definitely is.
Here are some references to this post with very important links with more information, especially in regards to diagnosis and treatments:
https://health.google.com/health/ref/Developmental+reading+disorder
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