Dyslexia us our superpower!

So someone asked us about Dyslexia this week and if we could start to share our story.  Their son was struggling hugely with coming to terms to with the idea that he had dyslexia and they asked us to start sharing how we cope with dyslexia. We were very lucky when my son had his diagnosis. We had to pay privately ourselves after the school assured us, he didn’t have dyslexia he had autism and was lazy – good hey! Thank heavens for our wonderful ed psych. When she discovered that in fact my son had nothing wrong than really severe dyslexia – he was 8 and more than 4 years behind in reading and writing – she pointed out that to him that actually he had something called Dyslexia which while was classed as a learning disability he had in fact got a superpower. His superpower was his incredible brain. She told him that every child who had dyslexia had this superpower, but everyone was slightly different – as is their form of dyslexia. That the reason he struggled was that his superpower made his brain and abilities s so incredible that the everyday brain like hers and mine just couldn’t cope. That basically dyslexics think in a 4d/5d ability and those without in a 1d/2d ability. That because there were so few who have this amazing superpower, they can’t understand it and because the world is so often rubbish at things they didn’t understand they often left dyslexics feeling rubbish about themselves and their abilities. How true is this?! And in fact, that it was our responsibility to harness those individually amazing powers and change the world – even if it’s by creating artwork, the ability to tell stories, to use logic to think of solutions, to create food, to soothe animals, to soothe others. As wonderful example of this is to look at the people in the world who have dyslexia. Made by Dyslexia is a great place to start this with videos from Jamie Oliver, Orlando Bloom, Richard Branson, Keira Knightley and more. It’s also incredible to realise that people like Einstein were dyslexic – he didn’t start speaking till he was 6! Just look at some of these people who had dyslexia. I didn’t know Walt Disney did! Throughout his life he struggled with reading aloud and word retrieval!

So if you have been told that your child has dyslexia or they have been told they have symptoms please do try to see the positives. Yes, its harder but in fact we ended up taking my son out 4 months after his diagnosis to teach him in a multisensory style – he is now working at age related expectations or above!