Bianca's Experience With Dyslexia
Growing up it was always difficult for me when it came to reading and writing.
I began to notice I was having issues in elementary school. It wasn’t until I was
reaching grade 11 that I decided to reach out and get help. To me I felt that it was
all in my head and I just needed to focus harder. I made my first visit to my doctor
regarding these issues in the fall of 2016. My doctor heard me out and gave me
an insight on Dyslexia. She told me that it wasn’t anything to be too concerned
about but she wanted me to take a few tests so that she could get a better
understanding of where exactly I have was having difficulties. She sent me to
another specialist that sat me down for hours at a time reading and writing numerous
sentence sequences. After a few weeks of trying to understand the cause for my
difficulty in reading and writing my doctor diagnosed me with slight Visual Dyslexia.
Visual Dyslexia can refer to a range of things, often suggesting an unusual visual
experience when looking at words or numbers. This term sometimes describes
the challenge of surface dyslexia. Kids can’t recognize whole words by sight.
The reason most likely is that their brain finds it difficult to remember what the word
looks like. (Understood, 2014). For me I have more trouble when I have to type or
spell out words. It will take a few tries before my brain actually realizes that I made
a spelling error. Certain letters such as “B and D” I tend to switch around often.
Another difficulty I have is when I need to copy numbers that are being spoken to me.
For example if someone reiterated the numbers “4 7 3” I may copy it down as “3 7 4.”
At first this was very frustrating for me because it was causing me issues at school and
even work. Little mistakes like these were affecting my school work because my
professors would catch grammatical errors that I may have not noticed therefore
deducting marks for it. Working at a restaurant I was responsible for taking order
over the phone. I often mistaken phone numbers or addresses and this would cause
problems for me. I decided to find solutions that could help reduce the number of
mistakes I was frequently making. Though I couldn’t completely prevent them I was able
to take steps that would help decrease them. When it came to school I decided to have
other people, whether it was peers, teachers or family read over my work to catch any
mistakes I may have missed. At work I would go over my orders and repeat myself a
couple times to make sure I was catching the correct numbers. I've grown to understand my
learning disability and rather than allow it to stop me from doing the things I love I learned
different coping skills that help prevent my mistakes.
I began to notice I was having issues in elementary school. It wasn’t until I was
reaching grade 11 that I decided to reach out and get help. To me I felt that it was
all in my head and I just needed to focus harder. I made my first visit to my doctor
regarding these issues in the fall of 2016. My doctor heard me out and gave me
an insight on Dyslexia. She told me that it wasn’t anything to be too concerned
about but she wanted me to take a few tests so that she could get a better
understanding of where exactly I have was having difficulties. She sent me to
another specialist that sat me down for hours at a time reading and writing numerous
sentence sequences. After a few weeks of trying to understand the cause for my
difficulty in reading and writing my doctor diagnosed me with slight Visual Dyslexia.
Visual Dyslexia can refer to a range of things, often suggesting an unusual visual
experience when looking at words or numbers. This term sometimes describes
the challenge of surface dyslexia. Kids can’t recognize whole words by sight.
The reason most likely is that their brain finds it difficult to remember what the word
looks like. (Understood, 2014). For me I have more trouble when I have to type or
spell out words. It will take a few tries before my brain actually realizes that I made
a spelling error. Certain letters such as “B and D” I tend to switch around often.
Another difficulty I have is when I need to copy numbers that are being spoken to me.
For example if someone reiterated the numbers “4 7 3” I may copy it down as “3 7 4.”
At first this was very frustrating for me because it was causing me issues at school and
even work. Little mistakes like these were affecting my school work because my
professors would catch grammatical errors that I may have not noticed therefore
deducting marks for it. Working at a restaurant I was responsible for taking order
over the phone. I often mistaken phone numbers or addresses and this would cause
problems for me. I decided to find solutions that could help reduce the number of
mistakes I was frequently making. Though I couldn’t completely prevent them I was able
to take steps that would help decrease them. When it came to school I decided to have
other people, whether it was peers, teachers or family read over my work to catch any
mistakes I may have missed. At work I would go over my orders and repeat myself a
couple times to make sure I was catching the correct numbers. I've grown to understand my
learning disability and rather than allow it to stop me from doing the things I love I learned
different coping skills that help prevent my mistakes.
Wow! Good for you. That was very deep and inspiring:)
ReplyDeleteSuch a pleasing real story to hear from someone with Dyslexia. I can tell how sincere you are and how interesting it might have been to speak about this freely. I would love to hear more about these Coping Skills.
ReplyDelete