Dyslexia: This is for My Son and Every Person with a Learning Difference
Posted On July 12, 2021
- I always told my son, “Jaiden, you’re in the company of greatness! Albert Einstein, Leonardo DaVinci, Pablo Picasso, Whoopi Goldberg, George Washington, Steven Spielberg, Mohammad Ali, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Henry Ford, Jennifer Aniston, Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise, John Lennon, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Octavia Spencer, Ben Foss, many others, and one in every 10 people” But I guess like many his age, he just wants to blend in. However, about a month ago, I found out, and told him “Jaiden, guess who else is Dyslexic? Tom Holland, the new Spider-Man”! And he palmed each side of his face with both hands, the way he does in surprise excitement, smiled and said “really!? that’s so cool”!
According to The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity “Dyslexia takes away an individual’s ability to read quickly and automatically, and to retrieve spoken words easily, but it does not dampen their creativity and ingenuity.” However, in a world where intelligence is often wrongly associated with literacy skills people who read slower, struggle to spell correctly, and have a hard time putting their knowledge into writing, are thought of as intellectually lazy. Yet apart from the high achievers already mentioned, some of the most impactful, life changing inventions and research of our time have all been made and pioneered by dyslexics; Alexander Graham bell – Telephone. Wright Brothers – Airplanes. Thomas Edison – Motion Picture Camera. Richard Branson – Tourism Space Shuttles. Leonardo DaVinci – Artist Extraordinaire and Earliest Transport Vehicles. Albert Einstein and Michael Faraday – two of the greatest scientists of our time. All Dyslexics.
Modern Science through MRI scans has shown that during reading tasks, a dyslexic has only one active lobe in the left hemisphere of their brain. This is the side responsible for processing language based tasks. Whereas, in non-dyslexics, 5 different parts of the left hemisphere is activated during reading. So when a dyslexic reads, it’s impossible to comprehend the level of effort being put into the task, and this is what makes them struggle with school subjects that involve a lot of reading and writing. On the other hand, the right hemisphere of the brain which is responsible for innovation, imagination, creativity, and intuition is in some cases larger in dyslexics than in non-dyslexics. Making dyslexics big picture seers, outside the box thinkers, and out of the ordinary dream achievers.
So, it is no surprise that 35% of all CEOs, 40% of all self-made millionaires and 35% of all entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Plus, if 10% of the world population is dyslexic, yet they represent much larger percentages in circles of achievement, it speaks to what is often referred to as “The Dyslexic Advantage”. This advantage is what famous dyslexics like Richard Branson and Maggie Aderin-Pocock credit their success to. It’s also the reason forward-thinking institutions and corporations focused on technological innovations, are actively recruiting dyslexics, so their organizations are strongly positioned for an innovative future. Nicholas Negroponte, also a dyslexic, and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab has famously referred to Dyslexia as “The MIT disease” as a result of the number of brilliant dyslexics enrolled at the institution.
But the road to getting our son, who was officially diagnosed by an Educational Psychologist in 2019, to recognize his advantage has been rough. And anyone who has a neurodivergent child with a Learning Difference can attest that the mainstream education system breaks your child and extinguishes their light daily! It’s a system which values rote learning and memorization more than it does curiosity, creativity, and innovation. So every day I’m learning to not only be the voice for my son, but to teach him to advocate for himself in a system that is not built for the 20% of students who have a Learning Difference, 80% of whom are dyslexic. Even in the corporate world, many adult dyslexics try to hide their challenges daily, because they grew up stigmatized from suffering at the hands of parents and peers who thought if only they would try harder, they could do better.
But it’s time we try harder and we do better to embrace neurodiversity and normalize accomodations that help level the playing field for dyslexic students. Today, many schools’ obsession for eye-reading and writing as the only means of expressing knowledge, has forced many brilliant minds to go undiscovered. We’ve somehow trained ourselves to let the spelling errors in a dyslexic’s writing have a bigger impact on us, than the potential life changing idea they’ve shared in that writing. And even when the purpose of education is knowledge acquisition, we’ve made it so that a student just verbally telling a teacher what they’ve learned could never be seen as equally valid as writing it down, no matter how brilliant the ideas expressed verbally are. And at the end of the day, all students in most schools would be expected to eye-read test questions and answer them in writing, both mediums which are highly disadvantageous to dyslexics.
It’s like getting two expert chefs to express their knowledge about making omlettes. One is a native English speaker while the other is a native French speaker. But you tell both chefs to express their knowledge only in French. Guess who’s going to seem incompetent? For equity, both chefs should be able to express themselves in the language they’re most comfortable speaking. When a dyslexic is forced to use methods of knowledge expression for which the anatomy of their brain is not even in favor of, you put that child in a disadvantaged position. So they work 5 times harder for half the results, and nothing but frustration is bound to follow. No wonder many Dyslexics, including Einstein, drop out of school. And for some, success only comes when they are free to explore their brilliance without inhibitions. While for others, the damage to their self-esteem is so deep that they absorb every negative comment ever thrown at them and completely give up on trying.
Like the parable of the baby elephant; it’s tied to a tree and tries setting itself free by pulling the tree down, but it fails after many tries because it’s not strong enough. Years later, it grows to become a giant elephant capable of pulling much larger trees down, but it never tried again because the memory of its past inadequacies overpowered its innate abilities. This is the story of some dyslexics, and I refuse for that to be my son. So I will spend every day advocating for him, reminding him of the greatness he has within, and creating an environment where his genius is nurtured and never extinguished.
For more information about Dyslexia check out the links below. I also have a 3 video IG TV series on Dyslexia on my Instagram page @Nomadic4
http://headstrongnation.org/parents/learn-the-facts
https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/dyslexic-achievers/all-achievers/
https://www.stemjobs.com/8-famous-stemers-struggled-school/7/
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/dyslexia-and-brain-what-does-current-research-tell-us
About The Author
Lovette Singleton
3 Comments
Comment this is enriching! I truly appreciate this article.
CommentAn absolute eye opener!.. awe-inspiring!… educative, informative,above all, ENCOURAGING!… I sincerely feel that so many children & adults are dyslexic but unaware- living in frustration. A BILLION THANKS TO YOU,LOVETH for this timely informative/intellectually healing piece!?
Thank you! And you’re correct. Many adult dyslexics confirm that they knew they struggled in school, but were unaware of their status as dyslexics, until they got assessed in adulthood. And many more are completely unaware.