A 10-Year-Old Describes What it’s Like to Have Dyslexia

. . .and we dive into tips from adults and kids for how to survive school when you’re dyslexic.

If you have a dyslexic child or teach students who struggle with dyslexia you may have wondered what it feels like or wish you knew what those with dyslexia actually see when they struggle to read. Maria describes her problems, how letters morph together, and which letters she thinks look exactly the same!

Maria, What’s it like to have dyslexia?

”Sometimes I forget words when I am talking or reading!

When I am talking to friends or my teacher and a word is suddenly gone, sometimes I have to ask them to ask me later.

Sometimes, I can describe the word or name that I forgot and they can help me figure it out.

When I am reading, and I forget a word that I should be able to sight-read, I have to slow down and sound it out! It can be embarrassing to forget words!”

I (Annie) remember when Maria wanted to tell me something about her cousins but couldn’t remember their names.

”Mom remember those girls?”

”What Girls?” I wondered

”Those girls who hurt themselves ALL THE TIME snowboarding. The last time they were here they both broke a bone!”

”Oh, you mean your older cousins?” I asked.

”Yes, I want to ski with them!!!”

She did a good job of explaining who they were, so I could help her remember their names, but I am an adult, I have the patience to listen to her explanation.

Sometimes her friends don’t have the patience to listen to her explanations if it takes her a while to think of a way around the missing word or name.

Maria says that It can be easier (at times) to be silent or to do whatever her friends want to do than to make herself understood.

What Does it Feel Like when You Try to READ Despite Your Problems with Dyslexia?

It feels like the letters mix together. Some letters mix worse than others.

What Does Dyslexia look like when you read?

The B and the D often seem mixed together, and the C and the O look like the same letters.

The N and the U often get switched around and the U and the V often look like the same letter to me.

What do You Feel When You’re Asked to Read?

It’s really boring, and it feels like it’s going to take all day or 100 years to read a short book!

Because I read slow and sometimes need to sound things out or ask for help when the letters get mixed up I often forget what the story I am reading is about and get hyper-focused on trying to figure out each word!

What Happens When You Need to Read Aloud?

”I don’t like to read out loud!

I feel like I read much slower when I have to read aloud.

If it feels like it’s going to take me 100 years to read quietly, then reading out loud feels like it’s going to take a million years!”

”In some crazy way, it feels really embarrassing to read out loud!”

It’s Been Said, that those with Dyslexia are Extra Creative. What Are Some of Your Creative Ideas?

”I like to build big houses in Minecraft and with Legos.

Sometimes my friends say that I think of ways to use legos that they would never think of!

They say that I use lego in ways they were not meant to be used, but friends claim that what I make is really cool.”

I (Annie) wish I had a picture for every extraordinary Lego project that Maria made!

She caught my attention when she was just five or six-years-old because she used the legos in ways that I would never think of using them. She took everyday building materials and made something extraordinary!

Annie Eklöv

By putting lego pieces that should be lying down and standing them up or by making lego creations that fit within lego creations she thought up floating kitchen shelves for her lego kitchen, camper vans that unfolded into amazing glamping areas, or pieces that fit inside other pieces which slide and do all sorts of things that the creates of Lego probably haven’t thought of!

Avoiding Pitfalls When Getting a Dyslexia Diagnosis, My Story

I (Annie) am dyslexic. When I was a kid I had a horrible time reading! I would get stuck in the same paragraph, and if my mom asked me to read for half an hour, I would read the same paragraph over and over again. Somehow, I couldn’t follow the words down the page.

I grew up in the USA and I feel like they do a more thorough job of diagnosing Dyslexia where I live now in Sweden.

In Sweden, kids can usually get an in-depth screening in school. If you need help with major tests like getting your GED or your driver’s license test then you need a medical Dyslexia diagnosis. You can start by turning to your local doctor or your school nurse.

[Even today I need to search on Google several times for words like ‘Thorough’ (I just searched this word) because Grammarly doesn’t recognize what I am trying to spell! Usually, after 3-4 searches I can come up with the word I am looking for when it’s an especially hard word for me to spell!]

My parents screened me for dyslexia when I was a kid. The experts said that I was mixing up some letters, but it wasn’t abnormal that kids do that. Even though I was a bit old to be mixing up letters they didn’t think I actually had dyslexia, and they said I would probably grow out of it!

Well, 30 years later I can tell you that I did not grow out of it! I just found a mistake in one of my blog posts where I switched two letters around and neither I nor spell-check caught it even though it no longer formed a word!

I would say that I have a mild form of dyslexia if I compare myself with my daughter and one of my cousins that I spent time with growing up.

Assuming, I would probably grow out of my problems was the difference between my getting help in school or not.

Annie

If the ‘experts’ at the screening would have said, ”Check back with us in a year if she is still struggling, we don’t think she has dyslexia, but we are not 100% sure” it could have made a big difference for me in school.

I didn’t get any help in school even though I could never learn how to spell and I couldn’t see the difference between certain words. Angel or Angle? Sweet or sweat? I couldn’t tell the difference!

Annie

I had some wonderful friends growing up who would occasionally help me proofread my assignments.

I remember one time when a friend who was helping me threw the paper on the floor disgusted because I wrote a sweaty kiss instead of a sweet kiss to end my story!

Somehow I managed to make it through high school and graduate with honors and an A average. I will say that all of those grades were hard-earned because I had enough self-drive to keep my grades up.

I did come up with some strategies for getting good grades on my own, but I completely gave up trying to learn how to spell because I couldn’t seem to remember even when I tried!

When we had spelling tests, I would study during the break before class, and I managed to hold the information in my head long enough to take the test. I did this by associating words and letters with rhymes.

This was not a bad strategy, but I wish I had had a grown-up who understood dyslexia to help and encourage me.

If I had known that, I could learn how to spell many more words with practice and rhyming techniques I may have tried harder!

I just figured that using rhymes to remember how to spell was a short-term fix to an unsolvable problem!

Because I was always told I didn’t have dyslexia when I brought up these school problems, and I had no history of dyslexia in my family. (My cousin is younger than me and wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia during this time.) My mother, father, brother, and even my grandma were excellent spellers! I just figured there was something else wrong with me!

Some important considerations if you think your child has dyslexia

• Young children often don’t know why they can’t read, why they read slowly, or why they hate reading. If you ask them they say ”It’s hard”!

• Often it’s parents or teachers who notice kids switching letters when they are writing or notice when kids struggle to read who decide the child needs to be screened.
  • Unfortunately, young kids can switch letters around when they are learning to read and write and many kids do grow out of this!
  • This makes it hard for parents and teachers to know who needs to be checked for dyslexia and who doesn’t when kids are at the beginning of their school journey.

• When I was tested for Dyslexia, I had no idea why they were screening me. I tried to be helpful, but I was too young to have identified the problem for myself, thus I couldn’t really explain my problems to anyone.

• If you take your child for screening and those who are screening your child can’t say 100% that your child has or does not have dyslexia, then getting them rescreened after a year or two can be a way to eliminate any doubt.

• If I had been rescreened in junior high or high school I would have been able to explain what my problems were, because at this point I could put my finger on what I was switching around, and what I couldn’t remember. I even knew many of the words I continually spelled wrong, but it made me feel helpless. I knew I was always spelling them wrong, and I couldn’t figure out a way to spell them right!
  • Words where switching only two letters around can create a different word, seem to be a continual problem for me!
  • Angel vs Angle. These types of words were impossible for me to remember! I couldn’t keep track of which word I was writing or even reading if there was no context.

Tips for Getting Through School With Dyslexia

Tips for Those Who Have Mild to Moderate Dyslexia.

(If you have severe dyslexia, scroll down to the next heading.)

• Don’t underestimate the power of a quick refresher during your breaks between classes if you have a hard test that day.

• Try to use rhymes for remembering words and for remembering how to spell the words. Find something that the word or part of the word rhymes with, and it’s helpful if you are rhyming one word that you actually know how to spell with a word that you don’t know how to spell.

• Another trick I used for spelling was associating ideas with the word I was trying to spell. For example, Storage if you break the word up you get Store and Age. If you imagine that there is a store that sells age and you can pay to get older or younger suddenly you can remember how to spell storage. Most people with dyslexia are extremely creative and have vivid imaginations.

• One thing I wish I had received help with during my school years was spelling on tests! I had a science teacher who was fond of having us write and explain things in-depth on his tests. Even if I understood the concept I often got marked down on the test for misspelled words. I remember trying to figure out if I was writing about angles or angels on one of his tests! In the end, I guessed wrong!
  • I wished that I could write down the words that I confused with other words and their explanations on paper and use them during his tests. This may be up to the teacher what words are ok on a test-by-test basis, and some teachers may not like this idea at all, but if you don’t ask you won’t receive help!

• My daughter uses different colored cellophane papers which she puts on top of the paragraph she is reading to help her see the words better. Which color helps is often different for different kids. She doesn’t use this all the time, but if she is having an especially hard time she gets it out.

• When I am reading text on the web or in books it can be easier to read if everything, even the pictures, is aligned left.

• Reading text that is printed crooked, sideways, or printed on the page any other way than the normal straight Left to the right way, is much harder to read!
  • Once I told some friends to meet me at a certain store when we were shopping in the city. I wondered why they took forever to show up! I read the address from the sign and I thought I had it right, but the sign had text printed sideways and when I went out to reread it I realized that I mixed some letters and numbers around and unknowingly sent my friends to the wrong place!

• No crazy backgrounds, like black with white text or text on top of patterned backgrounds. If this bothers you too, make sure to tell your teacher, so when she copies papers for you to use for reading or homework, she can think about what type of paper it’s copied on.

• No weird fonts! I like to read simple classic fonts. If strange fonts are hard for you to read, make sure your teacher knows this. That way if you read out loud, she knows not to ask you to read extra difficult text because of the way it’s printed.
  • My daughter cried when I tried to get her to read books with weird fonts! At first, I didn’t understand why she was crying. There were a few words on each page with a picture, and I knew she could sound out all the words. When I finally got her to calm down, she said she couldn’t read the font!

• My daughter likes to read comic books (not magazines) Donald Duck in book form where everyone has their speech in a bubble. This can be harder for some people with dyslexia to read these types of books (I prefer not to read in this format) but because my daughter is extremely dyslexic and still struggles to read smoothly at age 10 the bubbles break the reading up into small attainable goals.

• Get a good program for spell-checking. I like Grammarly. Spell-checking has come a long way since I was in school. Grammarly, even the free version, catches many more mistakes than the classic spell-check did when I was in school.

• When I notice that I always misspell a certain word I read it and make note of where I keep making mistakes. When Grammarly checks that word I read through the correct version instead of mindlessly clicking on whatever they suggest. If you do this every time you will eventually be able to spell it right.
  • Sometimes it took me 50-100 times to spell it wrong, read the correct version, and note my mistake, but if you pick a few of your worst words to do this with consistently eventually it will stick!

• Don’t assume that your spellcheck always knows what you are talking about! Even really good spellchecks can misunderstand a word that has been extremely misspelled! I noticed when I first started using Grammarly that I often clicked on their suggestions without thinking, and that made for more proofreading!

• looking words up in a classic dictionary can take considerably more time for kids/adults with dyslexia. I was required to use a classic dictionary in school. I understood the concept of alphabetical order early on, but I could not remember the alphabet as a whole. To Find where a letter should be in the alphabet I would begin with A and say the alphabet in my head. When I got to the right letter I knew approximately where to find it in a dictionary. When I found that letter this process had to be repeated for the second and third letters until I finally found the word in the dictionary or cookbook.
  • This got somewhat better with age because I learned that some letters were at the beginning the middle or the end of the alphabet which saved me some time.

• I use Google as a dictionary! I used to refer to an enormous English dictionary when I was unsure of how to spell a word, but these days technology has put the dictionary at our fingertips! It takes far less time to google a word on my phone than to look up a word in a classic printed dictionary! Plus I always have my phone with me!

• Remembering dates can be hard for those with dyslexia. I often had to guess the dates on school tests! Even when I could remember the numbers, I would forget if it happened in May or July!
  • The trick is to put the dates on a timeline and hope that your teacher will give you credit for understanding the concept even if you forget part of the date. For example, I can remember that our house was built in 1790. I can also remember that it was built during the French Revolution. I may not remember the exact dates for the revolution which were May 5, 1789 – Nov 9, 1799, but I could study for my test by remembering that the French Revolution started the year before my house was built.
  • Sometimes it helped to remember a few dates and then to add and subtract from those dates. For example, the Declaration of Independence was signed on the 4th of July 1776. In this case, I can remember the 4th of July quite easily, but not 1776. If I put it into the timeline of when my house was built in 1790 It’s easier for me to remember that the Declaration of Independence was declared 14 years before my house was built!

• Remembering dates and Birthdays (Birth-dates) can be hard for people with dyslexia.
  • Use a calendar like Google Calendar and get help to write down when important events are happening when your sports events are, and when your close family and friends’ birthdays are. Set reminders!
  • Some calendars will let you use pictures instead of words!

• Ask your teacher if you can take a picture of the whiteboard before she erases what she wrote and starts over. If you can’t have your phone in school ask your teacher if she can take a picture with her phone or the school’s iPad and send it to you.
  • I know phones in school can be controversial, but technology can be extremely helpful for those with dyslexia.
  • Taking notes in school doesn’t usually work for kids with dyslexia

Tips for those who have a more severe type of Dyslexia

• My daughter, Maria, has such a hard time reading that she can get some of her textbooks in audiobook format.
  • Ask your child’s teacher if this is something the school has readily available.

• When Maria needs to read chapter books for school, we usually have her read a page or two even if it takes lots of time. Then my husband or I often read the rest of the book out loud, so she can see the occasional picture.

• Maria has a hard time writing, and we are working on learning how to speak in her texts on Google Docs. Unfortunately, it’s harder than you think to use voice-to-text.
  • You need to speak clearly in order to make voice-to-text work.
    • Don’t mumble
    • pause at the end of your sentences
  • Before you start talking in your text, make a basic outline for your school assignment. Use pictures to remember the main points.
  • Make sure you know the subject you are going to talk/write about well that will make it easier to talk about the main points without reading texts.
  • Have your thoughts in the right order! It can end up being a jumble of words on the page if you haven’t thought through what you want to say first. Often when you just say whatever comes to your head the text-to-voice translation doesn’t make any sense.
  • Have a grown-up read through whatever you write using voice-to-text. If you have severe dyslexia you won’t catch many major mistakes in the texts and there are often mistakes when using voice-to-text.
  • Google’s voice-to-text for Google Docs is the best one we tried. The second best is Apple’s voice-to-text.

• If you or your child have severe Dyslexia, you may need to ask teachers to give oral tests. Maria takes oral tests from time to time.

• Maria gets writing help with some of her school assignments. At school sometimes they have someone scribe for her and at home, we try to have her write as much as she can, but we often end up helping her write part of her assignments.

• Paying for advanced spellchecking software like Grammarly which will check for many more mistakes than free spellcheckers can be worth the money! You can use voice-to-text, and run the advanced software to check for spelling and grammar mistakes before you ask someone who doesn’t have dyslexia to check your document.

Taking notes in school doesn’t work well for kids with Dyslexia!

Maria can’t take notes in school. She simply can not write fast enough to keep up.

Lage tried to take notes, but it didn’t help him remember which is the point of taking notes!

I tried to take notes growing up and I found it more distracting than helpful.

I remembered most of what the teacher said if I focused on the teacher and listened well. I didn’t often take notes because it distracted me in class and often my notes were not very legible.

My son Lage tried to take notes from what his teacher wrote on the board, but when the school tested him for dyslexia they noticed that he wrote one word at a time.
It took him so long to write each word that he didn’t have any idea what the sentence he just wrote said!

Most kids who take notes read an entire sentence and then write the entire sentence and this ensures that they remember much more of what the teacher says!

Kids with dyslexia don’t have the ability to read and write like their peers and the distraction of trying to write while listening may keep them from hearing the teacher all together!

Annie Eklöv

When I was in school, I would always zone out in math class. One day I decided that I was going to try to do better in math class, and from that day on I would pay attention!

I sat in the front row and concentrated on the teacher as she talked walking back and forth in front of the classroom. I was trying to actually understand the concept she was teaching because I had to ask for help on my math assignments when I didn’t pay attention!

Apparently paying attention was not to my teacher’s liking!
I got reprimanded in front of the whole class for not taking notes and not reading along in my book even though I learned better by just listening!

Looks can be deceiving! I apparently looked like I was paying attention and taking notes in class when I looked down at my book and doodled or picked at my fingers! I can assure you that I was not paying attention at all!

It would be great if all teachers were well informed about learning disorders and how they might manifest in their classrooms, but that is not always the case!

This particular teacher squelched my desire to learn math!

I decided I would never pay attention in her class again to get back at her for embarrassing me!

Unfortunately, I ended up hurting myself and my dad spent many hours answering my math questions!

Annie Eklöv

If you have kids who have dyslexia make sure you let all their teachers know how your child learns best!
Having a teacher who understands the difficulties of dyslexia can boost your child’s self-esteem and avoid devastating experiences like being shamed in front of the class for something that is not their fault!

Annie

Dyslexia and Eye-tracking

When I was a kid I had trouble with eye-tracking and dyslexia.

When reading, I couldn’t follow the words down the page. I would get stuck in one paragraph! If my mom asked me to read for half an hour I read the same paragraph over and over and over and over and over! In fact, I only read one paragraph!

Annie

It’s no wonder I thought reading books was the most boring thing I could possibly do. Don’t get me wrong I loved being read to I just didn’t want to read myself!

Quite often kids with reading problems have more than one reason why reading is harder for them than their peers.

It was hard to know where my dyslexia stopped and my eye-tracking problems began!

Thankfully a screening for eye-tracking identified that problem, and going to vision therapy once a week for six months helped my reading immensely!

I practiced eye-tracking once a week for half an hour with a professional, and then got exercises to do at home.

”Children with learning-related vision problems have difficulty in the classroom and with reading and homework because of the effort involved in making their eyes work.”

Gallaway Beckett Vision Therapy

If you think your child has problems in the classroom due to vision problems check out the link below.

Dyslexia and ADHD

Both my older kids have ADHD and Dyslexia. My son Lage has milder dyslexia and my daughter Maria has a more severe case of dyslexia, but an ADHD/dyslexia combination is not uncommon.

Reading can be extra hard when you have dyslexia and ADHD. When you have dyslexia you can have trouble seeing what is on the page.

If you also have ADHD you don’t have the patience to figure out the jumbled letters you are trying to make sense of!

Annie Eklöv

If your child has trouble reading, be patient, and most importantly BE CURIOUS!

Practical steps for helping your child with reading problems!

• Talk to your child’s teacher to get a complete picture of the problem.

• If your homeschooling mom
  • You can ask a teacher you know for advice.
  • It can be helpful to have a friend or family member spend some time with your child and see how your child reads and writes.
  • Sometimes it’s hard to assess the situation when you’re so close to it, especially if it’s the first time you come across these problems

• Get your child screened for Dyslexia, eye tracking, and ADHD if you suspect that their reading problems could stem from these issues.

• Practice reading by setting small attainable goals.
  • pushing kids to read for long periods of time usually does more harm than good.
  • Reading increments of ten or fifteen minutes followed by play or physical activity for 15-20 minutes before you start another ten to fifteen-minute reading session usually ensures that the child is alert and able to learn during your reading times!

• Don’t ask your child to read for long periods of time by themselves (More than 15 minutes) if you don’t know that they can actually read!

Many kids can read words, but actual reading implies that the child is understanding the stories and concepts that they are trying to read!
It’s fun to read a story if you understand what you are reading and you can get caught up in the intrigue of the story.
If you are reading as my son did in school where he read one word at a time and didn’t understand how each word fit into the big picture, then reading is a chore
Many kids will just pretend to read if they feel that they can’t make their reading problems understood!

When I was a kid, I had to read during the summer. Reading sessions of half an hour made me frustrated and discouraged me because I couldn’t read properly.

Annie

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