"He would be the smartest lad in the school if the instruction were purely oral." - Dr. Pringle Morgan (1896) The very first case of dyslexia noted the unexpected part of dyslexia that has since become included in common definitions of dyslexia in the US. What is...
Asynchronous Development [Premium]
Asynchronous development refers to an unevenness in development which may include wide differences in various aspects of cognition, physical development, and emotional development. The unevenness in these different aspects of development can create paradoxes (being ahead in some abilities as well as behind) and opportunities as well as stress. Asynchronous development was first introduced in the academic and educational literature in the context of gifted children – children who showed wide discrepancies between strengths and weaknesses and who were sometimes referred to as being “twice exceptional”. In the figure below, an example of score variations is seen in a gifted student with dyslexia. Where the standard scaled score for age is 100, this student had strengths in verbal comprehension with a score of 140, whereas […]
My Child Won’t Go to School: What to Do About School Avoidance
By Dr. Dan Peters of Summit Center "Things were fine last year and now he wakes up with a stomachache and says he doesn’t want to go to school. It takes me forever to get him out the door. We are often late. He ends up screaming at me and telling me I am the worst...
Helping Your Student with Intensity [Premium]
“Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. “ — Ross Greene, The Explosive Child The difference between the experience of one student and his or her dyslexia can vary a great deal depending on temperament. In psychology, temperament refers to consistent differences in emotional disposition and behavior that are biologically-based and relatively consistent over time. Temperament is part of a person’s personality, which also includes intelligence, humor, interests, and talents. Among the various temperamental differences, certain “difficult temperamental traits” may make some school experiences (like remediation or pull-out) difficult to accept. Examples of difficult temperamental traits include: negative responses to new people or situations, slowness to […]
People Power Strengths
Over the years, we've met many dyslexic adults with people strengths that span the full range of careers. Sometimes people with strong empathy are drawn to jobs that really need the human touch - whether it's counseling, nursing or other health professions, or in...
Your “Mini-Me” and Bullying [Premium]
English singer-songwriter Robbie Williams recently shared that he was saddened after learning that his 10-year old daughter who is like a “mini-me”, dyslexic also with musical abilities, was rejected by a friend who decided she didn’t want anything to do with her after learning that she was dyslexic. “I tried to make it clear to her that sometimes you just have to let other people go, that you should let them go – but without sacrificing your self-esteem in the process…This girl did not deserve her love and friendship…I speak from experience.” Because many adults today discover that they are dyslexic only after their children are identified in school, this reliving the school and social-emotional stresses as their own children try to navigate their lives […]
Smooth Sailing into September
It's that time of year again when students have either started back or are beginning to start back to the school year and even old work routines. While some aspects of getting back to old routines are welcome, there are plenty of reasons why students, teachers, and...
Sky’s the Limit: Finding Self-Efficacy [Premium]
“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning…” — Mahatma Gandhi More people may have heard about self-esteem than self-efficacy, but self-efficacy may be a more important quality that will predict how a person may make personal life goals and meet challenges in the future. Self-esteem relates to how one values oneself. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is a belief in how you can be successful or achieve something in the future. MAJOR INFLUENCES ON SELF-EFFICACY Dr. Albert Bandura, a pioneer in the study of self-efficacy, states that the major influences on self efficacy are: — mastery experiences (starting out as a beginner […]
Understanding Dyslexia as an Exploratory Advantage [Premium]
“Approaches to explaining developmental dyslexia must account for both the difficulties and the enhanced abilities that are typical of people with developmental dyslexia. All the proposed strengths… relate in some way to seeking out the unknown, often at the expense of exploiting known information. A useful framework for tying together these observations is cognitive search, which involves a trade-off between exploration–exploitation.” — Helen Taylor and Martin David Vestergaard In an extraordinary article in Frontiers in Psychology, two Cambridge University scholars have put forth a paradigm-shifting concept of dyslexia that integrates over a century of research from diverse perspectives. It is a tour-de-force that might help society put dyslexia in its proper context. From the paper (the simple term “dyslexia” is substituted for developmental dyslexia […]
Dyslexia as an Evolutionary Advantage
Dyslexia is not a neurological disorder or even an impairment, but rather a concession for having cognitive strengths in exploration, big-picture thinking, creativity, and problem-solving that have contributed to human survival amid changing environments. This insight...
PTSD and Dyslexia
"This study identified that emotional trauma took place in all participants, and this resulted in many having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder manifestations as a result of returning to school for their own children. Participants still noted anger and resentment as...
Finding the Positive
Recently, I received an email from parents of a student that we tested almost ten years ago. They were celebrating their recent news of his acceptance into his college "dream" pick. Things had looked very different a decade ago, but since that time, I know he had...