I would like to mention that this article is different from the rest of the blogs here and it was inspired by my personal experiences.
Middle school was over. I was a high school student now. More subjects, more hours, but I was excited, very excited. I was always the smartest and the best student in my school and I was planning to continue my streak. I sat through all of my classes happily until literature class came up…
The teacher started the lecture then one by one we started to read from the book out loud. It was my turn. I started reading out loud with self confident and from the very beginning the teacher started correcting my reading mistakes, mistakes I wasn’t aware of.
From that moment on I always hated literature periods. Other students would make fun of my reading and my teacher had the lowest expectations possible from me. I used to think that I get too nervous or I need more practice, therefore I tried reading all the lectures beforehand and because of my photographic memory, I could remember everything and the result was less mistakes. But this was frustrating and after a while I accepted that I was “slow” in literature.
Other than reading, I had problems with spelling and dictation even before high school. Before exams my mom would study with me for hours. There were some mistakes that I would make over and over again continuously. For example I mixed up “except” and “expect”.
During that time I didn't know the reason for all this. Always, even today, people say it’s because I’m “careless” or I don't pay enough “attention” or I’m not “focused”. I have to admit, after all these years I can feel the impact of these words.
It was my last year of high school, a new student joined our school. And she was the first person to call my “carelessness” something else…
-I think you have dyslexia.
-Dyslexia?
-Yeah, don’t worry, it’s not an illness. Even celebrities have it…
When I started to work full time I had to write and read a lot in Persian, and I felt the pressure even more. Since letters are separated in English it’s much easier for me but while working in Persian I feel this direct pressure on my brain.
Before I go to school my mom taught me how to read and write. She would get me tons of books and poems to read. This helped me a lot and I faced less problems than most dyslexics. Not everyone has this opportunity. Many battle with depression and in some cases this deep depression leads to suicide. The reason I decided to write this article was to raise awareness. Dyslexia isn’t worth going through so much pain and difficulties, but still so many kids and adults go through so much.
But what exactly is dyslexia?
If you search the web you might come across terms such as learning disorder or disability. As a dyslexic person myself, I should mention that none of these terms shows what’s really going on inside a dyslexic person’s mind.
Dyslexia has different types and most of them don't have any problem learning and understanding. Many of dyslexics like me, also have ADHD.
One of the articles that I read on dyslexia and I actually found it helpful mentioned that disfunction in processing the language can cause problems in reading, writing and spelling, and in some cases even speaking. Dyslexia isn’t the sign of unintelligent laziness. Most dyslexic kids and adults brains process informations in a different way and that leads to seeing some texts differently. Everyone from all different backgrounds and walks of life can have dyslexia. Some might have reading and spelling problems and some might have difficulties writing or distinguishing left from right. Some might not show these signs, instead they might have a hard time processing grammar and understanding a text. Dyslexic people can’t express themselves correctly. For them, using words to express their thoughts during a conversation is very hard and sometimes they can’t understand others’ words as they are. This happens because of the way some dyslexic brains process conversations. All these problems will give the person an image of himself which is true. Without support and help children can turn away from learning and lose their hopes.
In addition it also mentioned the problems a dyslexic person might have in different ages.
Kids and youngsters problems :
*Spelling and dictations
*Remembering formulas and numbers
*Hand writing and holding the pencil
*Instead of learning and understanding they memorize
*Mixing up some letters or words while reading and writing, such as “d” and “b”, “felt” and “left”.
*Following instructions
*Understanding words in math
Teenagers and adults problems:
*Reading worse than expected
*Understanding proverbs, adages and jokes
*Reading out loud
*Managing time
*Learning a foreign language
*Memorizing
Not everyone experiences all of the problems mentioned. Different people experience dyslexia in different ways. At the end what’s important is to understand people instead of judging them. Reading, researching and studying about subjects we don’t know about can raise awareness of different matters. When you understand something, you know exactly how to deal with it.