#dislexia

So we joke a lot on tumblr about media "rewiring our brain" and but most of the time the books we love do not fundamental change they way we live our lives.

Sometimes in unique circumstances through they do

Anyone who follows my blog or reads more Than three of posts may have noticed that I can't spell worth shit. This is because I am dislexic, maybe not as dislexic as some, but pretty darn dislexic. I hot diagnosised in 1st grade and attended resource room for language arts from second through 6th grade. I also whent to the resource room to take social studies and science tests so that someone could help me read out the questions. They wanted to test my knowlage not my reading comprehension.

I wasnt illiterate but reading was hard for me. My vocabulary, sentence structure and ability to parse ideas were all average or advanced. But my ability to get words off the paper and into my head or out of my head and down on paper were not great. But may parrents and teachers worked with me! My mom read to me! My dislexic mom read me thousands of pages of Brian Jaques' Redwall series. She took me to the library. And I checked out so many audiobooks. I loved stories.

So one day during Christmas break of 6th grade (11 years old) I got Alana: the first Adventure out of the library.

And I loved it!

And I needed to know what happened next!

And our library system didn't have In the hands of a godess on tape. It was only in print.

So I couldn't put it on hold and just wait!

I NEEDED to know what happened next.

So I put a hold in the paper back.

I got the book in the middle of January, and I sat down and read it in two days. Every moment I had free, I read, on the bus, on the toilet, when my math worksheet was done, I read.

And suddenly I could read! I'd spent years learing what words looked like and my brain could match the shape with the idea. The last 5 years of work paid off. And in could suddenly read, and I could read fast.

In my family of dislexics, we call it clicking, when you are finally able to recognize enough words by sight rather than sounding them out. But you go from reading slowly reading alarming fast.

Over the next few months I devoured all the tortall books. And any other mide grade novel I could get my hands on.

In three months my parents and teachers whent from fighting to get me to read to fighting with me to put the book down.

At the end of the year i God a class award for Being the biggest reader.

I went from the girl who hid that she couldn't read to the one who was famous for it.

Which of these TWO things has taught my dyslexic ass the difference between right and left better

A. All of the traditional tricks dyslexics are taught and share with eachother

Teeheehee

Maybe….overusing my brain power

This is just day UNO?!—

Oh my dear, dear dear, dearest one… This I have much experience with… 

Dyslexia, like anything takes practice and patience to deal with. There’s no one magic answer… Believe me, I know…

Each person has a different path… For you, it might be studying phonics or wrote, memorizing the shape of letters and words

…as I did…

Start out simple. Practice every day. Sometimes books with sequential pictures known colloquially I believe as ‘comics’ can help put context behind words and sentences and ease ones brain into having fun while practicing going faster…

As for books…

Do you think that I would go through as many as I have if I was simply reading?

Listen to your books. Especially listen and read the book at the same time…

That means that no book is unavailable to you and that you don’t have to feel that practice comes at the expense of a good story.

As for writing…

Let me just say this… In our time we have scribes to check spelling or means of artificially transcribing our voice. But I believe in your time you have things that will help you with spelling. Belief me spelling only gets better with practice….

As for wanting to be a writer…

~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~

I will tell you an anecdotal story.

There once was a girl I believe from your time and your planet. When she was young, she could not read at all. She could not write at all. Her parents were told that she might never graduate school, that due to some of her other difficulties, she might not even be able to hold a job. Nevertheless, they never let her feel different or limited so she never acted different or limited.

She slowly learned to read and write with the assistance of her parents and some wonderful teachers. It took many years (I believe she only started to be even remotely proficient in her 14th year)…

Would you like to know how I know about her?

She became a writer. A paid writer. She wrote about her story and people paid money to watch it on stage and screen. She was able to have a whole wonderful career as a writer. By 35 she had three movies coming out and clients who came to her to ask her to help them write!