Focus Pocus!

Focus pocus! 

Have you ever been sick with a cold?  Of course you have, unless you’re super human.  Do you remember feeling like you couldn’t convey a coherent thought while you were sick?  It was even worse if you still had to go to work.  You may have taken cold medicine thinking it would help alleviate your symptoms only to find you still couldn’t seem to focus.  Being a dyslexic is like having a brain fog from a cold 24/7.  

One minute you feel focused but the next minute you’re not.  Certain things you see clearly but most of it is a blur.

Well... while it may feel like a focusing problem and it certainly looks like one to those who are trying to teach a child with dyslexia…it is not!  It is a huge misconception that dyslexic’s have a focusing problem.  That they can’t focus long enough to understand what’s being taught.  Actually we have a, “learn it this way only” problem. 

In all fairness, we’re too focused.  When someone begins talking to me, my brain immediately stops listening after the first thing they say.  Why? Because it's focusing ONLY on the first part of what’s being said to “figure” it out.  Whether by picturing what’s being said or asked of me or because I didn’t fully understand the words you said.  But eventually when my little brain does figure it out, I will catch the last thing you say and then work to piece it all together.    

As an EMT we called this tunnel vision.  Tunnel vision (as an EMT) is when you come up to an injured person in a car wreck and your eyes automatically go to his broken leg.  You carefully splint his leg just the right way.  Unfortunately, you’ve forgotten to check his airway.  Because why did the wreck happen?  He was choking on a cheeseburger.  Now he’s dead anyway because your eyes couldn’t see past the broken leg.

A dyslexic lives their life in a tunnel such as this.  They focus on the first thing they “see” and everything else seems confusing and blurry because their brain won’t… can’t see past it.   Whether they are reading a book, being read to or talking to someone, we focus on bits and pieces of what we hear.  The rest is a blur.  But we quickly try to figure out this blur, mainly to save face because who wants to appear stupid and incapable of understanding something. 

It’s embarrassing to have a paper in front of you that others are reading and everyone is finished laughing at the joke and you’re still on the first paragraph.  I am 38 and I will still read the first line, skip through the middle picking out keys words and then read the last line or two and laugh with everyone else.  

Back to my point, this foggy cloud or blur is why so many dyslexics are good at thinking outside of the box and putting things together… but in a creative way.  Our brains are always trying to figure something out and won’t hear anything else being said or they are being creative and adding to what’s being said.

This is also why so many schools have a tough time picking out someone with dyslexia.  We learn quickly how to hide it.  A dyslexic understands everything through creative processing.  That’s why so many dyslexics are creative people. It's just the way their brain works.

So when teaching, remember to let them be very creative.  That’s how they will learn it best.  Read a page and then let them draw what they “see.”  Even if you’re teaching math, let them draw pictures until they “get it.”  When I was learning how acidosis and alkalosis affected the body… I drew pictures.  I had read it numerous times but it wasn’t until I drew it out that I really understood it.  

In all things when teaching a dyslexic child, remember patience and being creative are the keys.  Just because you could learn it like the other 98% of the class did, doesn’t mean they will learn it the way you were taught.  As I said in a different post, multi-sensory learning with hands on teaching is best for anyone who suffers with dyslexia.

If you would like to become a dyslexic tutor, there are lots of great reading programs that are available to learn just how to teach a dyslexic child such as Orton-Gillingham or Barton Reading.  Click on the sites to find a program near you.