What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a puzzle to parents, teachers, and even medical personnel who attempt to diagnose it. That is why, in spite of well-intended interventions, many children continue to struggle with reading throughout their school years, falling behind in the early grades, and usually failing in the later school years to catch up to their peers. Indeed, dyslexia is a puzzle that goes unsolved as far as most cases are concerned. Yet, after a decade of working with struggling readers, I am convinced that it is possible for a child to overcome dyslexia, become an avid reader, and possibly even have a few advantages over peers who never experienced being dyslexic. (For an example of such an advantage, see Growing an Architect.)
Many parents are under the mistaken impression that dyslexics see letters backwardsSo, what is dyslexia? Well, the word itself basically means “poor reader.” However, most people have the impression that a child with dyslexia sees things in reverse or upside down. While this is not usually the case, I have learned from experience that vision does come into play in ways that are poorly understood by parents, teachers, and even many optometrists and ophthalmologists, as well as other medical practitioners.
Teachers naturally encounter many "poor readers" but they tend to avoid the term dyslexia, usually having been instructed that dyslexia is a medical diagnosis beyond their realm of expertise. Yet a teacher is often the first to notice that a child is struggling to learn to read compared to his peers. Parents, too, if they are attentive, often suspect something is wrong by the time their child enters school.
But let’s grant that dyslexia is a medical issue. The problem with treating dyslexia as a medical issue is that the medical community doesn't fix it. What they tend to do instead is diagnose dyslexia and then suggest accommodations depending upon what a child’s particular strengths and weaknesses appear to be from testing. Rarely do they diagnose an underlying cause, however, and if they diagnose no cause, then logically, they see no cure. They just prescribe various accommodations to address the condition, much like a child with one leg shorter than the other is prescribed a special elevated shoe to accommodate that condition.
Once diagnosed, schools attempt to accommodate dyslexics in a multitude of ways, ranging from desk placement in the classroom, to reading tests aloud, to providing books on tape, all the way to specialized one-on-one instruction. In spite of these interventions, research has shown that once a child is behind in reading skills in school, he not only fails to catch up; he keeps losing ground to his peers with each passing year. Fortunately, many school professionals recognize that dyslexic students often have normal intelligence and actually do manage to educate them in spite of their reading struggles. But only rarely is dyslexia itself considered "fixed."
Then there are the books. You can find hundreds of books filled with programs that claim to help a child overcome dyslexia and In truth, dyslexia is not yet well understood by either educators or the medical communityhundreds more explaining how to just live with it effectively. Some of the programs in those books might actually fix a reading problem, but the absence of any sort of consensus regarding what works is an indication that dyslexia is not yet well understood.
Nevertheless, several years of experience working with struggling readers, many of whom would have been considered dyslexic, have convinced me that dyslexia can be often be successfully addressed if certain measures are taken. In the next section, Dyslexia: Symptoms or Causes?, I'll give you a broad overview of how I see the problem after a decade of experience with struggling readers, and how my experience has led me to view dyslexia as a condition that can be overcome in many cases, maybe even most.