It's not as bad as it sounds -- Dyslexia Advice Line and Discussion Forum

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Subject: It's not as bad as it sounds

Author:
Ana

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Date Posted: 11:06:16 11/29/11 Tue

I'm amost 60 and have been very dislexic my entire life. It's been a nightmare in some ways but a blessing in others and I think too many people focus on the negative.

No, I'll never be a good speller, I have real trouble with things like phone numbers, and I almost can't use "push number whatevever menues" on the phone, but I can see and undstand concepts and relationships in a glance, that "normal" people can't understand even if I show them to them.

I think part of dislexia is having a brain that works just as well in forward and reverse so my brain makes me consider all the possibilities all the time. Normal people only consider the possibilities that they expect to see, and we dislexic people can't affored to ignore all the other possibilities. So as a result, we routinely examine and consider the big picture in almost everything we do, so that we can use relationships they take for granted or just ignore, to verify what's real and what's not. We learn more about what we see, and we undertsand things they don't even think about.

That's not to say that normal people couldn't develop those skills, but their much less likely to because they can do most of the things they have to without constantly examining the big picture because they can count on what they think they see the first time. I can't.

I can't add simple numbers in my head but I can pretty accurately predict the answer to complicated physics problems.

I can't dial phone numbers I haven't dialed before, but I can organize and coordinate complicated projects that have so many deails that normal people can't get their hands around them.

I can't copy numeric information from one sheet to another without making mistakes, but I can create complicated budget worksheets that most normal people can't even imagine.

I don't have a learning disability, I have a different set of skills than most people and I know better than to measure my own sense of self worth by measuring sticks that only assign value to skills I don't have or use.

It's sad that most dislexic kids will go though life thinking they are second class learners, when in fact they probably excell in other skills that could be equally valuable to them and productive to society if they were just allowed to focus on them and be proud of what they can do instead of only sad about what they can't do.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: It's not as bad as it sounds	claire	12:05:54 11/29/11 Tue