A good friend of mine has dyslexia.?!
Question: She often has the letters switched around when she sends me emails, it was weird at first, but I understand now; she can't help it. What other effects does dyslexia have on a person? Do they have trouble reading or learning things? I don't think they are slow or retarded. Its not just mere spelling errors and I am not uptight over spelling at all, I couldn't care less, but I wondered how dyslexic people see the world. She is a brilliant person otherwise and is a bit older than me. I am 38, she is 53. I am serious. I really care about her.
Answers: She often has the letters switched around when she sends me emails, it was weird at first, but I understand now; she can't help it. What other effects does dyslexia have on a person? Do they have trouble reading or learning things? I don't think they are slow or retarded. Its not just mere spelling errors and I am not uptight over spelling at all, I couldn't care less, but I wondered how dyslexic people see the world. She is a brilliant person otherwise and is a bit older than me. I am 38, she is 53. I am serious. I really care about her.
I have dyslexia. It affects me in the following ways:
I have a poor short term memory
I get times and dates mixed up
I get on the wrong number bus
I can't remember telephone numbers or bank PIN numbers or I remember one from like 5 years ago.
When I look at a telephone number written down, the numbers swap places with each other and I can't read it accurately.
I have a different way of learning things to most people. it has to become instinct to me, I can't tell you how I do things because that would be working on a mental level and on a mental level I get instructions mixed up.
I am very intuitive. I know how to do things, and the answers to things, but I can't remember where I learned them! I just do what "feels" right.
I can't write along the lines on a ruled piece of paper.
Sometimes I just can't comprehend what I read, I just don't know what the author is trying to say.
I am very very literal. Like when I was a kid I was told to "follow Jesus" and I spent hours wandering around fields trying to work out where he was going!!!!
Everyone is different though. I don't have as many problems reading as some people. Many people look at the page and the words move around. You can get round this by putting a yellow or pink acetate over the page or by printing on cream paper. Also some people are such slow readers that by the time they get to the end of a sentence they forget what the start was!
My friend Ewan is so dyslexic he can barely write a sentence. He is a very successful chef.
Show your friend this and see if she recognises anything of herself. You need to be there for her more emotionally than to help her with spelling etc. Finding out you are dyslexic at 53 is no joke. It is not uncommon though. I found out at 21 and I was so angry, upset and all the missed educational opportunities, and also sad that I could not train myself out of it.
It is surprising that her Dyslexia has not been diagnosed properly and treated till she became 53. But all is not lost. There are excellent psycho therapies available for dyslexia. people with dyslexia have low self esteem , they are confused , they are loners , sometimes obsessive.
They can be excellent in performing arts like music , painting , dancing etc where their confusions about letter and numbers do not matter.
Your friend has classic symptoms of visual dyslexia which can be defined as having visual problems seeing written words in a clear stable and focused manner making reading difficult.
Transposing letters and having words moving makes it difficult to develop a visual memory of what words look like leading to sometimes bizarre spelling errors as well as making reading a real battle.
As another answer said colored overlays may help her problem. To say that colored overlays will remove all of her problem may be an over statement but they do often reduce the visual problem for some people.
I sell a product ,See Right Dyslexia Glasses, that is guaranteed to remove her visual problem. They will make the words stop moving and she won't see transposed letters. Most dyslexics don't have any visual problems. A minority of dyslexics,like your friend, have visual problems that make reading difficult. So you can relate to her problem, imagine doing all of your reading on a roller coaster. There are many different visual dyslexia problems. Often visual dyslexics have letters obscured and seem to be missing. To relate to those visual dyslexics imagine all of your reading takes place on Wheel of Fortune before the puzzle is solved.
As she is 53 years old and has a job that I suspect requires little reading to be successful, don't be surprised if she isn't interested. If she was a lawyer that was spending 10 hours a day reading what should be 2 hours of reading material she would likely be much more motivated.
Much of the writing problems of visual dyslexics is that they don't have a visual memory of what words look like because when they read the words just don't always look the same.
Non-dyslexics develop an accurate visual memory of what words look like. They know when a word just looks wrong.
If you or your friend would like more information about visual dyslexia visit my web site at www.dyslexiaglasses.com . I have contact information there where I can be reached by e-mail or phone.