Dyslexic Signs by Age Group

Signs of Dyslexia start becoming obvious by age three and although they can often be mistaken for a normal development time table that varies with all children, clusters of these issues can start to stand out from other children. As children mature and become adults their "dyslexia" doesn't go away; they hopefully learn to work with it and accommodate themselves. Many dyslexic children are not so lucky. Some are successful adapting to a left-brained world and others are plagued with their "learning differences" having no guidance to deal with them. The first step is to know what these issues and traits of "dyslexia" are and then strategize a plan to work with them. A lot of these indicators or traits occur with other health and mental issues or personality types that are not dyslexia.What we list here however are common to dyslexics as an overall group of indicators.

Dyslexics are dominant right brain learners and thinkers in a society that reflects and values the thinking processes of the left brain. "Righties" can have a difficult time fitting in. This list of indicators and traits are about the particular view of the world common to righties that can create issues for them. This is not to say that being a left-brain thinker is better. They have their weaknesses and limitations with certain types of processing also. We are trying to help you determine if your child might be dyslexic so that you can begin to understand them better and learn to show them how to use their right brain thinking style and gifts effectively, brilliantly and successfully in a left brain world.

PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN

There are many ways to recognize a dyslexic child at a very early age. All dyslexic children will vary and never have exactly the same dyslexic and right-brain indicators. There is no definitive test for dyslexia. No child will have all these issues but you are looking for a clear pattern of traits occurring in the different sections listed below that indicate considering that the child is dyslexic. It is important to remember that Primary Dyslexia is inherited and if one of the parents has dyslexic issues there is a 50% possibility that their child will have them too.

1. Some Dyslexic children are delayed talkers and do not start speaking until as late as three or four years of age. It is not unusual for them to suddenly start talking over a short period of time and will be speaking in full sentences soon after they start. A child should get a hearing test to rule out hearing problems if they are only saying a few words and often incorrectly after three years of age or for other delayed development problems. Other Dyslexic children can start talking very early, at about one year of age, and even in full grammatically correct sentences. The high intelligence that often comes with being right-brained dominant is usually noted at this early age through their use of language and pictures, but not necessarily letters and numbers.

2. Dyslexic children sometimes lisp or stutter. Phonemic awareness problems can be one of the reasons for this or difficulty "finding their words". Dyslexics are predominantly "picture thinkers" so at times, especially when young, they will struggle to find the right words to say.

3. They can mix up sounds in multi-syllabic words such as "pasghetti" for spaghetti, "aminal" for animal more so than the average child.

4. They can have difficulty learning the names of letters or the sounds of the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, colors, shapes or how to spell and write their name. This is the beginning of them having difficulties with understanding certain types of abstract concepts versus concrete. They think primarily in images and not necessarily letters and numbers. Animals, people and objects are real but letters and numbers are abstract and mean nothing to them yet.

5. They have difficulty learning to say the alphabet in the correct order or counting to 10 correctly. The Dyslexic child does not understand sequences well. They see the "big picture" easily but not the individual parts.

6. They show confusion with directionality such as left from right, up or down, over or under, now or later. Dyslexic children think three dimensionally and 360 degrees around themselves so directionality can be bewildering because they don't know always know where they are in reference to right or left, up or down, etc. For example if you ask a Dyslexic "Can you point to my left hand?" - watch their eyes and body movements. They will generally be imagining themselves coming around the back of you to find your left hand. They do not realize it should be the hand opposite their right hand. This is why when they are told to do something in regards to direction they might ask a lot of questions to determine your left or their left, behind you or them, which "over there" because they see many "over there's".

7. They can have problems learning to tie their shoes or can't do it at all. This is a directional problem again and difficulties with delayed fine motor skills that Dyslexics can have.

8. Dyslexics can have difficulties learning to rhyme words (dog and log, cat and bat) or repeat a mother goose rhyme or other rhyme accurately or say them the same each time. These are again delayed language and speech problems that can occur in Dyslexics.

9. They don't usually have hand dominance until about seven to nine years of age and some can use their left or right hand alternately for different tasks such as eating, printing, throwing a ball or drawing with a crayon.

10. They have difficulty learning to print letters or numbers or keeping them on a line or copying a word that they have an example of. Because they see the "big picture" they can see an exercise page as one image and won't know where the limits are or where to start. This requires training to help them see the lines where they are meant to print their letters and words. The sample here is by a 7 year old.11. They have difficulty with saying R, L, M and N properly in a word such as "wed" for "red" or "wam" for "lamb". Phonemic awareness issues.

12. They have difficulty with "phonemic awareness" which is the ability to hear individual sounds in a word. For example if you asked them what sounds they hear in the word "cat" they would not be able to tell you they can hear "c"- "a"-"t". They can also pronounce words like "banana" as "nana" because they don't hear the "ba".

13. They have trouble remembering to use the right word for objects or actions (cookies, drink, give me). Language delays.

14. They may have had a lot of ear infections. This can explain phonemic awareness and language problems if there has been some damage in their hearing. They also tend to be sensitive to foods, additives, and chemical products.

15. Dyslexic children usually enjoy being read to especially if pictures accompany the readings. They can have the ability to look at the pages and repeat the story word for word after two or three readings, but they are not reading it. If you pointed to the words individually they would not be able to tell you what they are. They are memorizing the whole story and using the pictures on each page as a cue to what the words are for those pages. Parents can be mistaken thinking that the child is reading the words when they are simply memorizing the story.

16. Dyslexic and right-brained children are generally quick to learn their colors and the differences between the shades of the colors especially if their best learning strength is visual. They might struggle with the names, which is due to the right brain seeing the color and trying to connect to the part of the brain that puts a sound to the name of the color (the area of the brain that does this processing is located in the left brain and is called the Brocca).

17. They require more details when given instructions or seem to be confused by your request. All actions must be discussed and demonstrated clearly. Dyslexic preschoolers must be told when to do a task and how to do it. They must be told directly What? When? Where? and especially Why? They need to understand why they must do something in order to accept it. Once they know what they are expected to do and why they will generally be very cooperative and strive to do a good job. For example, if you ask a dyslexic child to clean up their rooms or toys, they will not understand what you mean by "clean up". They require full explanations such as pick up all the dirty plates on the table and put them on the kitchen counter. Or ask them to stack all their toys on one shelf. A general statement such as clean up your room is overwhelming and confusing because they don't know what you want specifically. It can be extreme at times also. One of our dyslexic children,Gen started preschool when she was three. The teacher called after a week and was very concerned about her behavior. She said Gen was not participating in anything. She wouldn't sing, dance, draw, do activities, answer questions the teacher was asking, nothing. After the phone call I asked Gen why she wasn't doing these activities. She said simply, "nobody told me to". I asked her if she had noticed the other children were participating and she said yes but nobody had told her she was supposed to also. I told her that she could follow what the other children were doing and if she had a question about an activity to ask the teacher to be sure. Then I called the teacher and told her what Gen had said and she always made sure Gen understood what to do after that. A mother of a fifteen year old Dyslexic we were tutoring told us a story that helped her realize how important complete instructions were to her daughter. She asked her daughter to clean up the kitchen after she had made some food for herself. Her daughter asked, "Clean up what?" Her mom thought her daughter was giving her a hard time. She said again she wanted the kitchen cleaned up. Her daughter said, "The floor, the counters, the sink, the fridge, what?" Her mom realized she was serious and told her to clean up her dishes from cooking and eating and her daughter did. Dyslexics are very literal.

18. Dyslexic children can seem wise beyond their years. They can accept a decision from their parents and authority figures if it is logical and makes sense where another child might have a tantrum at being told no. They often like adult conversations and can think emotionally and intuitively on many levels. They tend to make comments about a situation that is very mature. An example of this was a Dyslexic five year old child we worked with that constantly asked his religious teacher difficult questions such as "If God loves us why would he make evil and wars in the world and have bad sicknesses?"

19. If they are naturally artistic which is also a trait of being right-brained they will be drawing early and usually more accurately then other children of their age. They also can be aware of thinking three dimensionally which is very unusual for young children. They can get very upset if you want them to draw or color something differently from what they have done. This is their picture and it is how they see it in their minds. Changing it to be what is more acceptable such as a brown horse for a blue horse can be very confusing because this is how they see it and you can damage their self-esteem by forcing them to alter it. The following is an example of a drawing by a dyslexic six year old child of flower vases on a round table that her first grade teacher had set up for the students to draw. You can see she grasps the idea of the vases being three dimensional. She was also attempting to show the table was round by curving the line of the table. Dyslexics also notice detail - the green plant like objects in the foreground were decorations on the table cloth.

DYSLEXIA SIGNS IN CHILDREN 6 YEARS OLD TO ADULT

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

1. They often have a high IQ, but do not do well academically, especially in written schoolwork and tests.

2. They are generally somewhat behind in their classwork but not enough to get them noticed as having issues and needing an IEP (Individual Education Program) by the school to get them tested for Learning Disabilities. Many parents of Dyslexic students we know will tell us of their frustration with the teachers and school representatives not agreeing there is a problem. They are called "slow developers" and will catch up when they are ready. But they never catch up; they continue to fall farther and farther behind. They are told to wait and see how their children are doing in the fourth grade as many outgrow certain issues by the third grade. The problem is by that point a lot could have been done to improve their reading, spelling, writing and comprehension. By grade four it is more difficult to catch them up as much as they could have in kindergarten, grade one or two.

3. They are generally bright, articulate and complex thinkers but are struggling to learn how to spell, read, write and do arithmetic at the same level as their peers.

4. Teachers tell their parents their Dyslexic child is lazy, dumb, careless, immature, not paying attention, they ask too many questions so obviously they are not paying attention, not trying hard enough, or they are behavior problem and acting out in class.

5. They often feel dumb and don't understand why their class mates are able to understand the school work but they can't. They develop self esteem issues and "self limiting beliefs. If they can't spell, read and write they can't learn anything so they stop trying.

6. They cover up their weaknesses by compensating or adapting. Examples: -many develop their own ways of reading,spelling, writing,etc. -they look at pictures in books and figure out the written words they don't know or by guessing from their shape or the context of the text. -they listen to someone read a story or information while they look at the pages that are being read and remembering what is read. Then when someone wants them to read the page, the Dyslexic student will repeat what they heard and use the "picture" of the text and any accompanying pictures to remember the words. -being class clowns to divert attention away from themselves. -trying to avoid writing in class as much as possible.

7. They are easily upset and anxious in school because of their difficulties and might even try to avoid going to school.

8. Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics and story-telling.

9. They seem to lose track of time and "Zone out".

10. They learn best with concrete, real information hands-on demonstrations, personal experience, experimentation, observation of cause and effect in the real world, visual aids and manipulatives.

11. They can worry about feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing, or copying.

12. They seem to have difficulty with their vision, yet eye exams don't reveal a problem. (often convergence and/or tracking problems or Meares Irlen Syndrome)

13. Extremely observant, or lacks depth perception and peripheral vision. Or they hear sounds most people don't.

14. They can have hyper-sensitivity to their environment: bright light hurts their eyes (one child told me that bright sunny light made him feel like he was melting), loud sounds or music can hurt their ears, very sensitive to noises that sound like scratching nails on a chalk board, they may like to wear a lot clothes or certain types of material irritates them on their skin but there are no rashes, too many people in a room can make them feel claustrophobic or certain textures in their mouth "feel funny".

15. They can have a dominant left ear instead of right which is usually the case with left brain dominant people. Dyslexics can tend to turn their right ear to what they are listening to to hear better. It's more difficult however to process information with the right ear. Tomatis, A.A. (1978). Education and dyslexia. Fribourg: AIAPP. Tomatis, A.A. (1996). The Ear and Language. Dorval. Ontario: Moulin.

'If the left ear is dominant, two problems arise: 1. The sounds from the left ear go first to the right brain hemisphere, and must then cross the corpus collosum connecting the two brain hemispheres to get to the language centre in the left hemisphere. This delays sound reaching the brain by a fraction of a second, causing auditory confusion and possible stuttering or dyslexia. 2. Someone who is left ear dominant relates to sound principally through low frequencies with wavelengths between 35m and 140m, which results in them feeling distanced from the source of the sound. This imparts a feeling of isolation from people s/he tries to communicate with. High frequencies give meaning in language, because they define consonants plus they carry the emotional content of the message.' ~Sound Therapy Perth~

16. Dyslexics have difficulty putting thoughts into words, speak in halting phrases, leaves sentences incomplete, stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking.

17. If not a talented athlete they can be very clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports; have difficulties with fine and/or gross motor skills and tasks or prone to motion-sickness.

18. Dyslexics tend to be ambidextrous more than the general population.

19. They tend to have exceptional long-term memory for experiences, locations, and faces. Young Dyslexics under the age of five can have surprisingly accurate memories of experiences they had when they were very young.

20. Poor memory for sequences, facts and information that has or has not been experienced - alphabet, counting, days of the week, months of the year and in order, the seasons of the year, names and dates in school work, people they meet or know about. But they can remember a surprising amount of information and details of events in their lives, movies or subjects they have interest in. As a Dyslexic I can never remember names or dates but someone can ask me about something I experienced and as long as their question triggers a memory I tend to remember a lot of details. Clients from years before will call up and once I can imagine who they are or their house (never their names) I can remember all kinds of information - their dog had puppies, they went on a vacation to Disneyland, someone was sick and especially all kinds of details of the work we did for them.

21. Dyslexics think primarily with images and feelings, not sounds or words. Some Dyslexics have little internal dialogue and are not thinking very much in words. I compare it to having a movie going on in your head all the time. This is one reason Dyslexics can have trouble finding their words because they are not thinking with them. For example, take a word like "honour". A Dyslexic will see an image or story of honour in their minds or several but cannot remember the word. They will keep mentally searching around bringing up one picture after the other of "honour" hoping one of them will trigger a memory of the word. This is both embarrassing and very frustrating. Add the effort of "writing" these words down and a Dyslexic can give up.

22. They have a strong sense of justice and will stand up for people despite risk to themselves.

23. They tend to be emotionally sensitive and very intuitive.

24. Dyslexics tend to strive for perfection. They will redo something over and over to make it "perfect".

25. Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, time pressure, emotional stress, or poor health.

HANDWRITING PROBLEMS- DYSGRAPHIA

Dysgraphia (or agraphia) is a deficiency in the ability to print or write, regardless of the ability to read and is not due to intellectual impairment.

SIGNS OF DYSGRAPHIA INCLUDE:

1. The student tends to not capitalize the first letters on names or starting sentences.

2. The spaces between words are too large or the words are too close together.

3. Capital letters are not sized correctly.

4. Letters such as "t", "d", "p", "g" don't extend properly all the way up or down on the lines.

5. The student will capitalize regular words.

6. They cross out words or erase a lot.

7. They have difficulty keeping letters on the line.

8. Letters are not formed well.

9. They tend to cram letters to close together in a word or too far apart.

10.Many spelling mistakes.

11.They will hold their pencil in an odd grip uncomfortable grip. For example, grip with the thumb on top of the fingers (a "fist grip").

12.They lose their focus of what they are writing due to their concentration on trying to write.

13.They can have pain when writing due to a tight grip on their pencil causing cramping and muscle spasms in the arm and shoulder (sometimes in the rest of the body). Pain usually starts in the center of the forearm and then spreads along the nervous system to the entire body. This pain can get worse or even appear when a dysgraphic is stressed. People experiencing this pain from Dysgraphia often do not express how they are feeling but they don't realize it's unusual. Sufferers do not know that it is not normal to experience this type of pain with writing.

14.For some people with dysgraphia, they no longer write, and just type everything, so they no longer feel this pain.

16.Inability to flex (sometimes move) the arm (creating an L-like shape), and general illegibility.

17.They can be slow and methodical with their writing.

19.They may talk to themselves while writing.

20.Reluctance or refusal to complete writing tasks.

21.Young children will often put their head down on the desk to watch the tip of the pencil as they write

22.They have difficulty copying notes off the board which can be slow, painful, and exhausting. The student looks at the board over and over as they are only able to write one or two letters at a time. They often speak the names of the letters under their breath. This process is repeated over and over.

23.The child frequently loses his/her place when copying, misspells when copying, and doesn't always match capitalization or punctuation when copying—even though the child can read what was on the board.

24.They don't understand the limits of the page so their words can be all over the page and margins are often ignored.

25.The child may have a great deal of difficulty learning to write cursive.

SPELLING PROBLEMS FOR DYSLEXIC CHILDREN

1. Their spelling tends to be worse than their reading.

2. They tend to phonetically spell words:

any ('eny')

many ('meny')

does ('dus')

said ('sed')

they ('thay')

because ('becos')

island ('iland')

eyes('ies')

friend ('frend')

enough ('enuff')

3. They will have difficulty with vowels and vowel combinations. For example, instead of spelling "them" they will spell it "thm", or "red" instead of "read".

4. They will work very hard to study their spelling words for their spelling test. They may get many or hardly any correct on the test. They will then forget the ones they did get right by the next week or cannot spell them correctly in sentences they write the same week.

5. They also will have great difficulty on a spelling test when the words are read to them in a different order from when they studied them.

6. They continually misspell common sight words which are also called service words or the Dolch list such as "they, what, where, does and because".

7. They will misspell copying something from a book, worksheet or the whiteboard.

8. They usually are erasing and crossing out extensively in their work.

9. They spell the same words many different ways, often on the same worksheet.

10. They misspell many words - especially simple one syllable words such as those on the Dolch List or Service word list. Conversely they often are able to spell words that are longer more complicated words. These words are usually connected to specific things or ideas they have interest learning about. They are often nouns which they can picture in their minds. We had one student who could not spell the simple words but could spell volcano, magma, mantle and lava because he had enjoyed learning about volcanoes and was able to connect the words to real things he could visualize and think about. It's hard to visualize the words "the, again, simple, from" which is important for a Dyslexic to remember the spelling of the words.

READING PROBLEMS FOR DYSLEXIC CHILDREN

1. They can read a word on one page, but won't recognize it on the next page.

2. They have been learning phonics and seem to be sounding out words they know, but can't or won't sound out an unknown word.

3. They read individual words slowly and often incorrectly when they are not in sentences or have pictures around them to give them context.

4. When they are reading they may say the wrong word but it will look similar to the correct one and it will start and end with the same letters.(trail - trial, form - from)

5. They may insert or leave out letters, such as could-cold or star-stair.

6. They may say a word that has the same letters, but in a different sequence, such as who-how, lots-lost, saw-was, or girl-grill.

7. When reading they tend to read without expression or fluency and stumbling over most words or saying them incorrectly.

8. They become tired after reading for only a short time and want to stop.

9. Reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.

10. They have directionality confusion when reading and writing b-d, p-q, b-p, n-u, or m-w. The letters "b,d,p,q" are the same symbol going left/right and up/down which can be very difficult for a Dyslexic to remember which direction they go.

11. When reading they guess at words by looking at their shape and make mistakes by saying other words that look similar. The words they say will often not be even in context with sentence. (sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking)

12. When reading a story or a sentence, they will substitute a word that means the same thing but doesn't look at all similar, such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep

13. They misread, omit, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of

14. They omit or change suffixes, saying need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately.

15. Complains of dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading.

MATH PROBLEMS FOR DYSLEXIC CHILDREN

People with dyslexia are often gifted in math. Their three-dimensional visualization skills help them "see" math concepts more quickly and clearly than non-dyslexic people. Unfortunately, difficulties in directionality, rote memorization, reading, and sequencing can make the following math tasks so difficult that their math gifts are never discovered.

1. Memorizing addition and subtraction facts

2. Memorizing multiplication tables

3. Remembering the sequence of steps in long division

4. Reading word problems

5. Copying an answer from one spot to a different spot

6. Starting a math problem on the wrong side

7. Showing their work

8. They often "see" math in their head, so showing their work in almost impossible.

9. Doing math rapidly

10. They often excel at higher levels of math, such as algebra, geometry, and calculus if they have a teacher who works around the math problems caused by their dyslexia.

POOR WRITING SKILLS

Handwriting sentences, paragraphs, answers to worksheets or tests,stories, reports, essays and any other form of writing is difficult for Dyslexics for many reasons:

1. Writing about anything will tend to take more time for them than other students. This is caused by their difficulty organizing their thoughts into a logical order or formulating a written answer to a question. "They know what they want to say but they can't find the words". They will generally be able to answer a question verbally in a complete and articulate way but get lost when trying to write it.

2. Dysgraphia will slow them down and the effort to print or write legibly will make it very difficult for them to stay organized and focused on what they want to write. Dyslexics are "drawing" letters like they would draw an object. They think primarily in concrete images and letters and words are not real to them. This makes it hard for them to imagine what they look like and then "draw" them.

3. They will try to avoid writing as it takes them forever, tires them out, can cause muscle strain in their arm and pain in their hand, causes them confusion and embarrassment with their classmates.

4. They don't want to write notes off the board or write down information the teacher tells them to write because they can't follow the notes on the board or keep track of what the teacher says.

5. Punctuation is confusing for Dyslexics unless they are trained properly to use it. They also have a tendency not to notice it when reading.

6. They are usually great story tellers with lots of detail but can't write their stories down without great effort and generally lack a logical order to the story. They can start one thought on one part of the page and finish somewhere else.

7. They can write in long sentences without stopping for punctuation breaks. This is due to seeing everything in their minds in images without breaks. They are trying to write what they are thinking which all blends together because they see the whole picture of whatever they are trying to say.

8. They are not sure when to use capitals whether at the beginning of sentences or proper names. Sometimes they will randomly capitalize words in a sentence that shouldn't be a capital letter.

9. They do not understand the difference between sentence fragments and full grammatically correct sentences.

10. They will have difficulty understanding that a sentence needs to have a "subject" (what the sentence is about) and "predicate" (the action of the subject) to have a complete sentence. Dyslexics will write more in sentence fragments.

11. They do not see their errors when trying to proofread whether it is spelling, capitalization, grammar, or organization of sentences.

12. When they read back their work they will say what they wanted to say and not what they wrote. They might not even realize they are doing it.

13. They tend to have difficulty staying within the margins and lines. They see the whole piece of paper as one image and don't know where the limits are or even see them. Sometimes they have trouble with eye tracking or convergence issues when writing on the lines.

14. They may have stabilized text issues which is called Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome or Irlen Syndrome. Black text on white paper can be difficult for the brain to see. This makes writing on white paper hard for them. Colored paper helps with this problem.

TESTING

DIRECTIONALITY

Most dyslexic children and adults have significant directionality confusion.

Left-Right confusion:

1. Even adults have to use whatever tricks their mother or teacher taught them to tell left from right. It never becomes rapid and automatic.

2. A common saying in household with dyslexic people is, "It's on the left. The other left." That's why they are b-d confused. One points to the left and one points to the right.

3. They will often start math problems on the wrong side, or want to carry a number the wrong way.

4. They will get confused when reading a magazine that has two columns of text on each page and start reading the wrong column.

Up-Down confusion:

Some children with Dyslexia are also up-down confused. They confuse b-p or d-q, n-u, m-w, s-5

About directionality words: First-last, before-after, next-previous, over-under -Yesterday-tomorrow (directionality in time)

North, South, East, West confusion:

-Adults with dyslexia get lost a lot when driving around, even in cities where they've lived for many years

-Often have difficulty reading or understanding maps.

SEQUENCING STEPS IN A TASK

1. Learning any task that has a series of steps which must be completed in a specific order can be difficult. That's because you must memorize the sequence of steps, and often, there is no logic in the sequence. These tasks are usually challenging for people with dyslexia:

2. Tying shoelaces: this task not only has a series of steps, but many steps have directionality as part of them. Many children do not master this task until they're teenagers.

3. Printing letters: the reason they form letters with such unusual beginning and ending points is that they can't remember the sequence of pencil strokes necessary to form that letter. So they start somewhere and then keep going until the letter looks approximately right.

4. Doing long division: to successfully complete a long division problem, you must do a series of five steps, in exactly the right sequence, over and over again.

5. They will often know how to do every step in the sequence, but if they get the steps out of sequence, they'll end up with the wrong answer.

6. Touch typing: learning to touch type is an essential skill for people with dysgraphia. But it is usually more difficult (and requires much more effort) for a dyslexic child to learn to type. Not only are the keys on the keyboard laid out in a random order (which requires rote memorization).

ROTE MEMORY OF NON-MEANINGFUL FACTS

1. Memorizing non-meaningful facts (facts that are not personally interesting and personally relevant) is extremely difficult for most dyslexic children and adults. In school, this leads to difficulty learning:

2. Multiplication tables

3. Days of the week or months of the year in order

4. Science facts: water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, etc.

5. History facts: dates, names, and places. Dyslexic students do well in history classes that emphasize why some event happened, and the consequences of that event, rather than rote memorization of dates and names.

6. Telling time on a clock with hands

7. People with dyslexia have extreme difficulty telling time on a clock with hands:

8. When asked what time it, they may say something ridiculous, such as, "It's ten past quarter to."

9. They may be able to tell whole hours and half hours (5:00, 5:30, etc.) but not smaller chunks, such as 5:12.

10.Concepts such as before and after on a clock are confusing. Therefore, time and arithmetic is impossible. Getting them a digital clock only helps a little bit. Now they can tell what time it is at the moment, but if you tell them to be home in 15 minutes, they can't figure out when that would be.

EXTREMELY MESSY OR EXCESSIVE ORDERLINESS

"MESSY" People with Dyslexia can have an extremely difficult time organizing their stuff, life, and schedule.

STUFF

1. They tend to make piles of things rather than to organize them and put them away. For these Dyslexics their "big picture" is not separated into parts.

2. So they have extremely messy bedrooms, lockers, desks, backpacks, purses, offices, and garages.

3. But they do have a tendency to know where individual items of importance to them are in these piles. Often they will also know when something has been moved. I have had some of our clients tell us that they see these "piles" complete in their minds.

4. The messy Dyslexic will generally not know however where the rest of their belongings that are not of importance to them are located.

One young client told us he could see in his mind exactly where the components and programs of his computer games were but could never find his school backpack. He was able to visualize his computer game stuff and their location but he had not committed the visual of his backpack to memory because it was not important to him and he didn't put in one place all the time so he could find it. He would drop it anywhere and since his "visual memory" wasn't turned on at that moment he wasn't even aware he had put it down.

The need to "pile" is interesting. I believe it's about the attempt to organize and keep a Dyslexic's mind calm. I myself as a Dyslexic started out in my early years as a very messy person but I did know exactly or approximately where everything was.

I got tidier over the years for a couple of reasons. I had a house, children and a business to keep organized. My problem with my "piles" was it took too long to find things especially when I was running out the door with children, lunches, their "stuff", my "stuff" and several stops to make.

Secondly I started to realize that when I was organized the "picture" of my life in my mind was calmer.

But I had to work very hard to change and I'm still not very good at it. We as Dyslexics get totally overwhelmed and confused with organization.

I do however have certain piles I feel I need to organize at some point. I have a tendency to make piles in cardboard boxes and carry them with me from home to work. I don't know exactly where or what things are in that pile but I do have the calming knowledge that they are in that box somewhere. By bringing them with me I feel I will find time to organize them. So some parents may have noticed that their children will insist on carrying a pile of stuff with them when going to different places.

I want to emphasize though that they are not being lazy or uncaring as a disorganized person. It is not of importance in their minds and is also not a natural way to be for them so they have no clue how to be tidy.

LIFE

1. Messy Dyslexics never get anything done on time. We send Christmas cards after Christmas (I thought it would be great to create a line of cards that was like "sorry I missed your birthday cards" - "Sorry I missed sending you a Christmas card on time". My cards would arrive on Christmas day or the day after Christmas and some of the cards were never get out at all.

I send birthday presents to my grandchildren late, get my taxes out at the last minute, try to get tickets to things the day of the event, collect a list of emails to reply to and suddenly months fly by. We mean well but somehow can't get it together. This is also called "procrastination" which can be a huge issue for a Dyslexic.

2. Messy Dyslexics have a terrible time with organizing their life in general.

SCHEDULE

1. Dyslexics live in the "now", not past or future so schedules can be a frightening part of their lives.

(Still working on the rest of this thought)

-or-

"EXCESSIVE ORDERLINESS"

1. They can be meticulous, extremely organized, colour-coded and very concerned about everything being the right place. They will know when something has been moved.

2. Dyslexics who are orderly feel that if the space around them is not organized they will be anxious and their mind will be chaotic with images. Their tidiness will help them keep a logical order to any task they are doing. For example, a tidy Dyslexic will often have a very organized clothes closet, arranged by type of clothing and arranged by colour. Generally they will start with white, colours and then black.