‘Dyslexia’ is often applied as a label without any real understanding of what it means. Some people think that if you are dyslexic it means you can’t spell and you might be “a bit thick” – they couldn’t be more wrong!
The dyslexic brain is different from ordinary brains. Studies have shown differences in the anatomy, organisation and functioning of the dyslexic brain as compared to the non-dyslexic brain.
Most of the literature on dyslexia focuses on the difficulties associated with reading, writing and memory tasks. However, the dyslexic brain also demonstrates positive aptitudes, which are also primary characteristics of dyslexia, and, therefore, cognitive. These aptitudes can be advantageous in certain careers or courses and stages of the learning process, but they are often ignored or overlooked.
How often when you are listening to a speaker do you recognise they can speak authoritatively about their subject, but don’t actually ‘know’ their subject?
Dyslexia is one such area, it has become the sole prerogative of Educational Psychologists to talk about, but often without a true understanding or experience of what its actually like to be dyslexic.
Myopic Disability I define as the inability to see past the disability to the strengths of the individual and Dyslexia is particularly prone to this, even its name focuses on one facet, that of difficulty with words, yet the dyslexic has much more to offer and has many strengths that exceed that of the non-dyslexic.
If we look at a talented artist, we recognise their strengths by declaring “Oooh aren’t they artistic?” we give no consideration to any weaknesses they may have, but for the dyslexic we do exactly the opposite, we focus on the disability and then base our strategy on dealing with the issue, whilst conspicuously ignoring the abilities….
Welcome to the world of Dyslexia!