Raviv Scotland

Dyslexia – how does it feel inside? Half-term’s over, schools are back and there are many young people who experience difficulties with reading; writing and spelling that are doing their best to hide what they struggle to do from their peers. Imagine, the gut-wrenching feeling of how am I going to get through the rest of the term? You wake up every morning feeling sick, fearing that your peers will ridicule you. You’re asked a question that you know the answer to but just need that little extra time to process the answer, by which time someone else has blurted it out…feeling like a failure, being told to try harder, stop being lazy and then, you have to repeat the same difficulties day after day. Dyslexia, a blanket term to describe several areas of difficulty that may co-exist and have a major impact on ones ability to progress with literacy skills such as reading, spelling, writing and short-term memory. Reading and spelling difficulties include struggling to be able to break down words, reversing words such as ‘was’ read as ‘saw’ or reading ‘he is’ instead of ‘is he?’ or ‘auction’ instead of ‘caution’. There tends to be a lack of fluency when reading aloud, a slow, hesitant reading rate, varying degrees of comprehension, depending on whether they have struggled to read for themselves and put all their energy into trying to make sense of the words; or if the text has been read out to them, where there is more chance they will have grasped the meaning of it. I often use the analogy that someone struggling to read and to process information in the brain is taking the slow, twisty, bendy ‘B’ roads to get from A to B, however, their peers take the motorway to get from A to B and process the same information in a straight-line and therefore much faster. Dyslexia is not all about difficulties some have key strengths such as the ability to tell vivid, imaginative stories and to hold in-depth conversations, well beyond their years. Finding out that they are good at certain things and being praised accordingly can make all the difference to their day and how they feel inside. Give them the praise they deserve today!