Dyslexia

This article is not going to reinforce the traditional view on dyslexia. My goal is to give you some “food for thought”. I’m going to be bold and talk about how I believe dyslexia comes about. Though my “belief” has been built on experience, it is only my view point!

What is dyslexia?

It is currently admitted that 5 to 10 % of the children at school are diagnosed with dyslexia. Here are a few precisions about this word to understand what it covers. Contrary to common belief, dyslexia is not just reversing letters when talking or reading. Dyslexia is not a speech impediment even though it can co-exist with or follow speech impediments. The speech difficulties usually impair the verbal fluidity, vocabulary, abstract thought or syntax complexity.

Dys-lexia means: “difficulties in reading” and by extension is used to describe difficulties with spelling. We usually talk of dyslexia when a child has durable reading and/or spelling problems as well as a normal intelligence.

Here’s an interesting fact: nowadays children with reading and spelling challenges typically present with an overlap of different conditions such as dyspraxia, dysgraphia, ADD, ADHD, eczema, asthma, allergies and digestive problems. For some reason, very few scientists have tried to figure out why that is. One of the few exceptions is Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride.

The problem with today’s science is that we focus on one speciality and dig deep into it, thus totally loosing a holistic view of the problem we are trying to understand. For example, neurologists can now describe to you with great detail how the brains of “dyslexic” people process information differently and some might suggest programs based on the “dysfunction” to retrain the brain. They may be doing a good job of describing specific patterns that are common to many learning impaired children, but they do not much in terms of explaining them.

What if the very detailed observations of the neurologists were in fact the effect of another cause, and not the cause itself? Now I’m not saying that what brain imagery shows doesn’t exist. I’m wondering if the true causes, because I believe there are often more than one, are not to be searched for elsewhere.

The causes: lets have a look at what we usually find in literature

Without pretending to be exhaustive, here’s what you’re likely to come across. Depending on the authors, countries and time, it has been said that the cause of dyslexia lays in:

  • Minimal brain damage
  • Genetic factors
  • Neuropsychological deficits
  • Instrumental deficits
  • Emotional issues
  • Socio cultural handicaps
  • Inadequate pedagogy
  • Biochemical causes
  • A combination of some of the precedent causes

I would like to talk about three causes which often co-exist when a child is diagnosed with dyslexia.

  • The biochemical cause: which is dismissed in the French speaking world. This understanding of learning challenges – not only dyslexia - looks at how an unbalanced physiology influences the brain’s capacity at analysing and processing complex information, such as the ones necessary for reading and spelling.

    Dr. Alex Richardson’s research, from the Oxford physiology laboratory (UK), demonstrates the vital importance of certain nutrients in the physiology of dyslexia, such as omega-3 oils. She addresses in her well documented book “They are what you feed them” the overall importance of food in helping children being able to learn.

    Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, neurologist and nutritionist, explains very clearly the complex relations between a healthy gut, our behaviours and learning abilities. She documents how toxins produced in the gut and from the food find their way up in the brain.

    In her very informative book “Gut and psychology syndrome” she demonstrates very clearly how children rarely present with just one condition such as dyslexia, ADHD, ADD, eczema, asthma, autism, various learning and behavioural problems. There are many overlapping conditions. For example there is an approximate 30 – 50 overlap between ADHD and dyslexia.

    For some children, just changing their diet and reestablishing a healthy gut flora is enough to get them happy and learning again!
  • Emotional issues: I would like to emphasize how much low self-esteem and negative beliefs about oneself play a big role in learning disabilities, whatsoever. This is why I always teach EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques - to the child and one of his parents to help him build a positive self esteem which will enable him/her to reinvest learning and truly tap into his/her potential.

    I have yet to meet a happy and confident “dyslexic” child. As  a colleague of mine, David Guignard, states in his book: “In 35 years of practice, I have never seen a severe dyslexia which wasn’t linked to important emotional disturbance, that is to a personal history marked by one or many traumas.”
  • Pedagogy: Some reading methods are more appropriate than others. That is not to say that some kids will learn whatever the method, but for others it will be crucial.

    Another bad habit we are getting into is wanting to teach children to read far too soon! A child’s brain development and eye development are rarely mature enough before 7 years old. Before learning to read and write, children have many other experiences of their surrounding world to make.

What are typical symptoms?

The most common reading difficulties are:

  • Phonological (the ability to isolate syllables and /or sounds in spoken language)
  • Auditive confusions of close sounds ([d]/[t], [k]/[g]…) and/or visual confusions (b/d, p/q…)
  • Inversions (pro=por)
  • Missing letters or sounds (trick=tick)
  • Understanding what’s been read
  • Remembering what has been read
  • Time and space
  • Attention and working memory
  • Letters and/or words moving on the page
  • Slow and difficult reading

The most common spelling difficulties are:

  • Phonetic: they alter the final word either by skipping a letter or sound, crossing over letters, adding letters, confusing letters or syllables
  • Confusing letters which look alike (p/b, m/n, ou/on, )
  • Not distinguishing words from one another: an elephant = anelephant
  • Confusing homphones : read/red

Dyslexic children often experience difficulties in grammatical analysis, complex sentences and structuring texts.

The thing is that all children make these kind of mistakes whilst they are in the early learning stages. It is the persistence and the quantity of these mistakes that will lead to a diagnosis.

So what do we do next?

I do not have “the” answer. I can only share my experience and my observations. I strongly believe in “mens sana in corpore sano” which means, a healthy mind in a healthy body. Based on this I have taken some options.

First

I ask myself if the child’s physiology could be optimised. Therefore I question the parents about the child’s diet and his digestion, allergies. These informations will help me in having an opinion on how healthy his gut is which will give us clues on how well he assimilates nutrients which are indispensable for a healthy brain, thus memory, attention and general learning skills..

Before being able to actually learn we need to be receptive to learning. This receptiveness is not only emotional or intellectual, it is also physiological. If a child’s brain is daily inundated with chemicals, it’s subtle neurochemistry will be profoundly disturbed. We mustn’t forget that we are wholistic beings.

Second

I will help the child look at his limiting beliefs (I can’t do this, I’m stupid, I’ll never learn, this text is too long for me, etc.) and teach him EFT to release them. EFT is also known to be able to get rid of typical symptoms such as: letters floating around, blurred spots on a page, outlines around letters, not being able to read small characters, etc.

Third

We will look at the actual remaining learning challenges and that is when my language therapist’s tool box comes in. Evaluating his actual language, reading and spelling skills. Then we will decide which areas he needs help with and how to take him from where he is to bring him all the way to where he should be.

What are the consequences of dyslexia?

The child needs more time to understand, learn, memorize, read and write. The “dyslexic” child makes more effort to read and write so he gets tired more quickly. When he gets tired he makes more mistakes gets frustrated and feels stupid. It is a vicious cycle.

When do we decide to consult a specialist?

To wait or not to wait, that is the question…

It is easier to intervene early on. Having said that it is also possible to help an older child or adult. The main difference being that the older child or adult will often have come to strong conclusions about his abilities and limitations, which will need some EFT “clearing” first!

In conclusion

We have not finished talking about dyslexia. We do not know everything about it yet and each therapist has his own way of looking at it. Some will be more in tune with the emotional aspects, others with the instrumental aspects, etc. Do not forget that therapists are just human beings, like you!

One thing that I’m quite sure about is that we are diagnosing more and more “dyslexic” children and that we cannot afford to dismiss environmental factors such as food, food additives, personal care products, pollution, medication, heavy metals, etc. anymore. There is a serious emergency.

We somehow prefer to ignore that what we put in our mouth and on our skin actually gets into our bodies, into our blood stream and ends up in the brain leading to chemical chaos!

One final tip

Please stop saying your child is dyslexic. This is not who he is. He is temporarily experimenting dyslexic symptoms. Stop talking to people about it, focus on the solution, not the problem. You do not want your child to identify with a diagnosis because that will considerably narrow his possibility of growing out of it.

At the Free Child I teach you to act on as many levels as possible, to free your child from food toxins, chemicals, limiting beliefs, fears and low self-esteem. I personally believe that we have unlimited potentials, but sometimes we don’t know how to unlock it because we think we’ve lost the key!

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