Growing up DySLeXic

I learned my letters and words just like everybody in 1960.

See Dick.

See Dick and Jane.

See Spot run.

But reading was always difficult. REALLY difficult.

And reading music was a trick, but my mother listened patiently through 5 years of piano lessons anyway. No matter how hard I tried, my left hand and right hand just didn't play together. They both played -- but not necessarily at the same tempo or on the same phrase -- even in music I'd completely memorized.

As late as junior high school I still couldn't reliably tell time on an analog clock. And the Texas public school tradition of that era of having children square dance in the gymnasium on rainy days when outdoor physical education was impractical was a DISASTER! How to "alaman left with your old left hand" if you can't always know which is left? If I wasn't running into somebody, I was slowing the works down to the point of collapse.

Of course, nobody at that time had any idea what dyslexia was, and so I was just a lot of trouble to teach. One teacher went to far as to say I was uneducable.

In the sixth, seventh and eight grades I was in slow and lower level classes right up until the day they did universal IQ tests for all the students and I had the 2nd highest IQ (according to that test...) in the school. So they pulled me out of the slow classes and dropped me into advanced classes almost overnight, deciding I just wasn't being challenged enough, or I was lazy -- hard to say.

In high school, I would have flunked out completely if it had not been for my algebra and geometry teacher, Mr. (now Dr.) Grady Grizzle. This man figured out -- with no tests and no specialist on learning disabilities -- that I had a real and observable problem. My homework papers were ALWAYS wrong. My answers on written tests were ALWAYS wrong. My work at the blackboard was ALWAYS wrong -- but before class everyday I was helping a dozen kids with their homework -- and doing it all in my head and out loud.

So he started asking me to do the work out loud He would call on me to make sure I had it -- and then just alter or replace my grades based on what he observed that I knew rather than what I could read or write.

I never made "A's" or "B's" -- he couldn't justify that -- but I passed both years and graduated.

Unlike my brilliant son, (ahem) I didn't visit and apply to half a dozen of the best schools in the country. My grades were barely passable -- but my SAT's and ACT's were both good. My father said I could go to Texas Tech, Texas Tech, or Texas Tech -- so I went to Texas Tech. For his money, he was sending me off to grow up and maybe get married.

Having faked my way through most of high school was almost sufficient for faking my way through college -- producing the same almost acceptable grades and not much learning.

Until I got special permission because of my interest, and enrolled in a graduate class as a Sophomore. The class was Aesthetics in the Philosophy Department, and was one of the first classes taught by Danny Nathan, recently Ph.D.'d from the University of Chicago. I knew it would be an interesting and useful class to someone like me, even if it wasn't required by anybody for anything....

The class had 9 textbooks. And I was expected to come to class having read them on the prescribed week. Even with lesser requirements because I was only receiving undergrad credit -- the reading load was staggering, but I wanted to learn about Aesthetics so much that I basically locked myself in my dorm room until I figured out how to read the books.

In hindsight, what I really learned was to focus and concentrate so completely on the page that I didn't lose my place or wander between lines or words.

I read the texts for that philosophy class -- slowly but surely -- and have been reading ever since. Just a few months ago, a good friend recently retired from teaching economics was watching me read off the Internet and commented that I read more slowly than anyone he'd ever seen.

No doubt.

Over the years, I've finally got right and left straight (most of the time) and even taught English in the public schools for a couple of years. In those years, I identified 2 boys who were both dyslexic and didn't realize it -- one so severely that he had been relegated to classes for the mentally challenged for much of his education. When tested, the children's hospital said that he was the most severely dyslexic young person they had ever encountered. --The last I heard he was going to college.

I try now to find digital clocks when possible, and I have finally given up keeping a checking account because I can't keep it balanced and refuse to pay penalties for the rest of my life. Money is easy -- numbers are hard.

I had to retake the GRE to apply to graduate programs this year -- and on sample tests scored shamefully low on the math sections. But after several rounds of tutoring by a friend who teaches remedial math in a Texas high school, and the persistent help of a 15 year old tutor -- I got back what I had once known and finished the math section with a respectable 650.

On the analytic section of the GRE -- which requires the kind of "in my head" work that I CAN do, as opposed to the numbers on a screen/page work involved in the standard math -- I scored 730 without even finishing the last 5 questions of the test.

Quite a difference. If I could have read faster -- I might have finished.

So my advice to up and coming dyslexics -- and their parents, teachers and friends -- is to learn as soon as you can to concentrate so thoroughly that you can follow the words across the page. Use a ruler if you need it to track with. Use your finger. Go as slow as you need. Take breaks when you need them. Do whatever it takes. The real learning is what's in the books...

...but how to gather what's in the books has to come first.

Learn to use a word processor to its full capability because it can make unreadable handwriting irrelevant and faulty spelling a thing of the past. Get people to proofread every word you write. Do whatever it takes.

Dyslexia doesn't mean stupid, slow, or uneducable. It doesn't mean deficient in any way. It just means you're wired different and have to overcompensate a bit. But a lot of dyslexics are very bright and very good at other things -- you just have to figure it all out for yourself. I've never been sure I liked the idea of calling this a "learning disability." I've always learned just fine. I just couldn't necessarily write it all down or be tested on it in conventional ways.

But once you learn to overcompensate for the difficulties -- hardly anybody ever notices unless you tell them.

I promise.

---

Copyright (C) 1998, Lynn Maupin Webb
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ducksoup/555
Reproduction or distribution in any form of material contained in this site without credit to Lynn Maupin Webb and reference to this email address is strictly prohibited.
L.M. Webb can be emailed at purciful@yahoo.com

Participate in my Survey:

Announce this Web Site to a friend!

Type In Your Name: Type In Your E-mail: Type In Your Friend's E-mail:

Your Comments: Send me an announcement too.

---