Dyslexia. What a word to spell if you’re dyslexic.
Yes, this is one of the most commonly known elements of having dyslexia: the challenge of learning how or to recall spelling words. This challenge does vary from person to person and depend what stage of learning you’re at. What do I mean by this? I mean for some people, like myself, I had tremendous trouble in learning to spell and read at primary school, but when I got to secondary school something just clicked for me. BAM. It was a lot easier for me and some of the stress was relieved. I say easier, but even today I still have moments where my spelling is appalling, and my recall of simple words like ‘the’ is frequent. Very frustrating! The good thing is though, this may be my weakness, maybe even yours, but how many strengths do you have?
One of the huge pluses I like to remind people of (just to be annoying) is that dyslexia gives us the ability to think outside the box, to think of a solution to problems where others can’t .This is why big companies more recently are employing people with dyslexia, because they need people to fix problems quickly because their reputation depends on it!
“This is a huge leap in the right direction, being recognised for all our strengths. Finally.”
Our strengths and the support for people with dyslexia isn’t unfortunately up to par in the school system yet. In a lot of schools we are still seen as a bit of a ‘defect’; meaning we are bad at learning because of something in our brain that ‘isn’t working very well’. I experienced this kind of attitude whilst I was in my education and being a T.A. I still see this hideous attitude towards dyslexia, so I decided to build my business (The Dyslexia Coach) to prevent further disregard for us.
“I believe that for all our challenges that we may have as dyslexics, the strengths that come with us just outshine them.”
Reminding yourself of your own personal strengths every so often will diminish the power over you in moments of challenge. A good technique I use with my clients and with myself is to encourage keeping the positives in front of your mind. It’s called ’20 reasons’, which I adopted from my coaching background and then furthered the technique to suit most occasions.
This activity can be done by writing down (advised) or just in the head. Example: ‘’my dyslexia is great because….’‘and you finish the sentence off, saying or writing the same beginning every time with a different ending, until you at least get to 20 reasons. You may find it becomes difficult to find 20 reasons but persist as there’s always 20 at least.
“The most important thing to remind yourself is that, yes you have dyslexia, but it doesn’t define you as a person. Dyslexia is just a small part of you and accepting what it is, good and bad, means you can just get on with life.”
