Writing with Dyslexia – by Emmet James Driver

There “their” is the wrong “they’re”

What is dyslexia? Well, try reading the sentence above. As you’ve noticed all the homonyms are confused in it. For anyone who got it straight away, well done. But everyone else, that confusion you experienced while trying to make sense of that string of words, that’s what dyslexia feels like. It should read: Their “they’re” is the wrong “there”. Implying that dyslexics confuse these words, among dozens of others.

The definition of dyslexia is: a condition of the brain that makes it difficult for an individual to read, write and spell. But really it goes beyond this, here you’ll find a list of common signs, traits and coping techniques an adult dyslexic suffers from. It’s not a dyslexia test per say, as a trained psychologist should always be consulted if you do think you or your child is suffering from it. But for those of us who know we have dyslexia it can be reassuring to read and know you’re not the only one, and shocking to see just how much of who you are originates in what is wholly regarded as a negative force in people’s lives.

Managing with Dyslexia

A number of years ago I was working with a friend. He starting telling me that his girlfriend’s little brother had just been told he is dyslexic. My friend, knowing I too suffered from the same disability asked me how the symptoms of dyslexia affected my writing. My first reaction was, of course, the defensive, immature response based on years of being considered an idiot. NO! Of course not. “Oh really?” he responded, in genuine surprise, “you don’t get stuck on words, or confused when writing a long section? You don’t mix up your tenses and words that are pronounced the same?”

That was when it hit me, my dyslexia had greatly effected my writing. In truth, I had struggled for years and years, but to me it was so common place I didn’t even think about it. I just got on with my work, not completely ignorant, but definitely uncaring towards my mistakes and struggles.

However, following that conversation, I couldn’t stop noticing it. Years of writing with dyslexia, and never paying it any mind came back in one fell swoop, and I found myself nearly crippled (writing wise) purely because I was stumbling over every word, debating every sentence.

Making Mistakes

So, my first tip for the dyslexic writer, don’t think about it. You are going to make mistakes, a lot of them. You’ll construct sentences so poor even you can’t get a grasp on what you were trying to say. You could be typing along without a bother and then you look up and everything is underlined in green and red. (I hate the green one more, it just doesn’t get me, you know?) But you have to push on, correcting is for editing, if to you stop to manage your mistakes when you’re in the middle of a flow, you could lose everything you are thinking about.

Not to mention the confidence knock you could get from a machine pointing out just how bad you are at grammar.

Don’t think of spell-check as your best friend, think of it as you’re rival. The Gary Oak to your Ash Ketchum. The guy running alongside you who is just that bit ahead. The one that pushes you to do better. However, if you stop mid-race to work out why he’s ahead; you lose. Just keep running until the race is over, then go back and look at what you could have done differently.

Rage Quit

This ties in nicely to my next tip, try not to let your frustration show. People around you probably won’t understand, though, if they do, you’ve got back up. But most people won’t get why you’re getting so worked up over it, they don’t understand how your brain works, which is fine, if you’re honest you don’t know theirs works either.

They don’t understand the crippling confusion that comes with trawling through a spreadsheet looking for that one mistake, they wont get how all the numbers look the same, the way your eyes can’t focus on what you’re looking for, and the way you mind is racing, worrying over what you’ve done wrong and how you can fix it.

You are going to make mistakes, a lot, and it won’t get any better. Dyslexia is not something you can truly cure. You can manage it, maybe even train yourself out of the symptoms, but it will always be there. The best thing to do is be honest about it. Honest with yourself and others. Its nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, I’ve learned to be proud of my disability, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Prescription for Laughter

The easiest way to be honest about something is to have a sense of humour about it. If you’re concerned about how your co-workers or employer will react; don’t be. They won’t be negative about it, and if they are, then congratulations to them, they just broke discrimination laws. But you should find, that if you are able to laugh at your mistakes, (in knowing the cause of them) the others will find it funny as well. They won’t think; “poor [insert name], I best not trouble them about it,” they’ll feel free to laugh at and point out your mistakes also. Which at the end of the day will make your job easier.

The Importance of Being Literate

This is my most important bit of advice for managing your dyslexia, any parents combing through should pay special attention to this if you’ve recently discovered your child is dyslexic. Reading is, in my opinion, one of the best and most engaging ways one can advance beyond it.

Now, many children with dyslexia form an antagonistic relationship with reading. Normally, because they won’t be very good at it. And no one likes to do things they aren’t good at, especially children who are still developing the sense of self which allows any person to succeed in later life.

Being made read out loud in class can emphasise this even more and by the time the child is in high school they hate reading, and all forms of written work. And I mean HATE. It makes them feel stupid, different and, well, broken.

So how do you overcome this, or tackle it before it takes hold? Read what you love. Read stories, or articles or blogs that you enjoy about topics that genuinely interest you. This is the most important thing when trying to read; be on your own, and don’t think about your problems. You may have serious trouble reading, and I mean serious, it isn’t totally uncommon for a dyslexic child to end up completely illiterate. This is not just because of dyslexia, this comes down many factors including education, concentration skills and most importantly, how well they engage with reading.

A severely dyslexic friend of mine, (one who has the worst end of the spectrum, combined with OCD and ADHD) claims to despise reading, but his head is always buried in his phone, and he’s not just skimming pictures. He is reading and understanding complicated articles and guides. Put a novel in front of him, though, and he’ll run for the hills. So remember, reading is reading, no mater what form it takes.

TOP TIP FOR PARENTS: Give this a try; read to your kid. Choose something like Harry Potter, something they can really be engrossed with, and start reading it to them. Give it a month or so, wait for them to get really into the story, and then, stop. I don’t mean turn around and say “I’m not doing this anymore.” I mean every time the child asks, just say you’re busy, tired, or whatever. Encourage them to read without you. If you’ve chosen the right story the kid will inevitably pick up the book themselves, just so they can find out how it ends.

Getting on with it

This is something I did for years without knowing and then had to re-teach myself. Don’t think about it. If you find you have to re-read a sentence a couple of times to understand it, then do that, but don’t chide yourself for it. Don’t even think about how annoying it is. Just understand the sentence, that’s the important part. If you get what it says then who cares about how long it took you to get it?

A major problem many people with learning difficulties suffer from is procrastination. Putting it of because its going to be difficult, or challenging, or force you to really examine your dyslexia. For tips on dealing with procrastination have a read of my recent post about it here.

Remember, putting it off wont make it any easier. So if it is your disability that’s making you hold off from picking up the pen, do try to ignore it, because worrying about it will make it much much worse.

In School

Now this is fine when you’re at home. But in a classroom or workplace setting it can be difficult, especially when very few non-dyslexic people truly understand being dyslexic. It takes a lot of experience, and possibly even countless degrees and research done on the topic, but still they can end up missing the mark.

For years I’ve gone through the internet looking at tips and guides for how to manage dyslexia. And the ones written by non-dyslexics always stand out. These guides tend to work off assumptions as (most) of your teachers will. They will assume x, y and z about how you understand things and give you a “simple” set of rules to follow to make up for you problems.

Now, it should go without saying that no two people learn in exactly the same way, and if that’s the case, why is assumed that ALL dyslexic people do? So, lets be clear about something, these are their problems. Don’t let them tell you how you feel or how you think. Be unashamed, if you make a mistake say that’s grand, just say “I’m not going to let you make a big deal out of this“.

Spelling, a trade secret

Its only spelling, here’s a secret to all you kids out their, spelling is irrelevant. How often when you’re having a conversation with someone do they say: “sorry, how do you spell that word?” Never. Teachers all around the globe can call for my head for saying this, but spelling is exceptionally immaterial to everyday life

Obviously if you’re trying to be an author you can’t submit something lathered in spelling mistakes. But fixing mistakes is far easier than trying to make sure they don’t happen. I recommend the add-on Grammerly, it is far superior to any word processor’s grammar checker, and can tie in to your browser as well. It will find all your mistakes, as well as point out the way in which you’re forming your sentences. Dyslexics tend not to form sentences the same way to everyone else. This can be as much a blessing as a curse. Sometimes your sentence won’t make sense, but sometimes, you’ll word something in a way no one could have thought of except you and your weird brain.

If you get bogged down in worrying about it, as I said above, you wont get anywhere. I’m dyslexic and I have an excellent vocabulary, why? Because I read, a lot, far more than most of others my age did. And I did it with a disability. How? I didn’t worry about it. I loved reading for me, it wasn’t for anyone else, it certainly wasn’t for my teachers, who, if they had had their way, would have seen me in a special class especially for people with learning disabilities so that my “problems” didn’t slow down the rest of the pupils.

Turn around to these people and point out that while your spelling and grammar may suck, in a spatial reasoning exercise you could very well make a class of you peers look like infants.

Après Class

So what are the main effects dyslexia will have once you leave education? Education and the education systems of the world don’t like dyslexic people. Their hard to categorise in a straight forward manner. You can’t just say, oh their practically the same as everyone else, so lets just treat them the same. Neither can you say they have a serious, dehabilitating disability, we have to segregate them and work on them.

This really all comes down to personal experiences. Many kids get lucky every year and have wonderfully patient and experienced teachers. I myself found that my college dealt with dyslexia and other learning disabilities very admirably. Unfortunately, for most dyslexics, no matter where you are, education is going to be hard. Teachers will tell you that you have to work harder, push yourself more, otherwise you won’t succeed. Flash forward to the end of your education, and you’ll find no one can spell properly. No one can use punctuation and grammar entirely correct. And most importantly, no one cares.

Don’t Panic, be Dyslexic

For all you dyslexic kids out there worried about your future, don’t be. You have a superpower. Your problem solving, spatial reasoning, hell your understanding of the world is more than likely superior to your peers, and they think you’re disabled. But in fact, you’re Daredevil, he lost his sight when he was a boy and so his hearing took on super human prowess. Dyslexia is the same, despite all your problems, you can use the skills you do have to a much higher degree. There is only one thing standing in your way, and this is crucial…

Confidence

Parents, teachers, and anyone reading this, you have to understand this, you must give someone confidence in their work for them to succeed in any way. You must help them believe that because of this disability they can achieve so much more.

The number of famous people with dyslexia is staggering, the number of people who have changed the world irrevocably who suffered from dyslexia is astronomical. (Albert Einstein, WB Yeats, Agatha bloody Christie, to name but a few) It is the most common form of learning disability. You may be different to everyone in your class, but out there in the world, it’s the really awesome people that you have the most in common with. Screw the plebs, screws the norms, you’re weird, different and special, don’t forget that. Embrace it, use it, every time you succeed think about what an achievement it really is.

Living Life

If you’ve just learned your dyslexic, or have been dealing with it for years and feel you are just unable to manage, don’t panic. Don’t even worry. You can still do everything everyone else can do. I worked in an office for years dealing with spreadsheets, budgets and other such boring, but crucial, nonsense.

I struggled, I got frustrated, I thought to myself “I can’t do this” then, I got on with it and I did it. Because I was getting paid to work, and just because it may be harder for me to do it than anyone else, I’m still getting paid. And there was plenty of stuff that I excelled in, purely because of how my mind worked, that others struggled with or couldn’t do at all.

Everyone is good at some things and bad at others. And because you may be catastrophically bad at one thing, probably means you’re unbelievably good at another. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and a good employer/leader/teacher can identify that and help people work to their individual strengths. In the adult world, dyslexics are just like everyone else. Except, we have the royal excuse as to why we’re so bad at some things. What’s the rest of the world’s excuse then?

As I said a the start if you do think you or your child may be dyslexic don’t hesitate to find a child psychiatrist. The earlier dyslexia is identified, the better. Just ask your GP or school guidance counsellor if you are unsure.

Tip from Eli: to find an assessor in your area you can visit the Professional Association of Teachers of Students with Specific Learning Difficulties (PATOSS)