Your Top Dyslexia Questions Answered!

Today on Dyslexia Journey, we are going to respond to your listener questions.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja and this is Dyslexia Journey. And we are excited today to do something new that we haven't done before, but hopefully will become a regular feature, which is to respond to viewer or listener questions that we've gotten either through the YouTube channel or on the podcast. And just to start off, if you want to send us one, you can either just put a comment for YouTube or you want to give them the email.

You can email us at ParentingDyslexiaJourney at gmail.com. No spaces, ParentingDyslexiaJourney at gmail.com. So this is just really fun for us because it's great to interact with you in whatever way we can. And just to hear about some of the questions or concerns that you might have, it gives us a chance to just have a little discussion about some of them. Hopefully sometimes also answer a question or point you to a particular resource depending on what it is.

So our first one, I'm just going to grab it here so I can read it, actually came from a YouTube comment. And here is what was written there. So it says, is there a cure? Both of my parents were extremely intelligent and I suffer from dyslexia. And I overheard my parents saying, I don't know why she's so stupid when I was a child. I'm 55 now and I still struggle. So first of all, we're just so sorry to hear about that experience that is so difficult and, you know, affects someone so profoundly, especially as a child hearing that.

So we're just sorry to hear that and then that it's been such a struggle. Yeah. And so the first first point I'll make is dyslexia does not mean you're stupid. Yes. We talked about this on a recent episode for Dyslexia Awareness Month. This is super important. There is no correlation between dyslexia and intelligence. You can be dyslexic and extremely intelligent at the same time. Right. So it's really about, you know, particularly in the past, but unfortunately, sometimes still is the case occasionally, that it wasn't recognized what was going on.

Right. Why was this particular student or this particular child struggling? Which is why were they struggling? And there used to especially be this assumption that if they were struggling, that was correlated with intelligence. Right. Which is not the case. Right. Or that they were lazy. That's something. Right. That's another big one that we often hear as well. Yeah. So just to say it straight out, though, there's no cure, but that's actually a good thing.

So we also talk a lot on this channel about, you know, the positive traits, that dyslexia is really, you know, it's about neurodiversity. It's about having a different brain that processes information and interacts with information differently. And they're often, we've said this a lot of times, too, on the channel, that there's often extra good visual spatial skills. But it can be in other ways, too. Like, it can be, you know, outside the box storytelling.

So it can even involve things that are helpful for language skills. Right. It's just that barrier. Right. That barrier. So rather than a cure, you want to talk about some of the things that are hopeful around what can be done to make the struggle. Sure. Yeah. So there's a couple of things to think about. And on this show, we often focus on children, but it can be true for adults as well.

And so first thing I'll say is, is it's never too late to continue to work on improving the things that you're weak on, you know, the reading and writing skills, perhaps, as well as leveraging your strengths. creative thinking, whatever that happens to be for you. so specifically around, the kind of, traditional weaknesses associated with dyslexia, like reading and writing. there's, there have been, a lot of, there has been a lot of research and, kind of innovation about how to, remediate is the term they use how to remediate dyslexia, which is, which really just means, teach people with dyslexia, in a way that works for them.

Teach them, get them, get them kind of up to the level of everyone else in terms of up to grade levels is generally the way it's talked about in terms of reading and writing. And, so there are specific, techniques that people trained in dyslexia education tend to use. the Orton-Gillingham approach is, is one that, you might often hear talked about. Yeah. And so, so I think, and beyond that, you know, often when we talk to other dyslexic adults beyond, you know, whatever they've done for remediation at whatever point in their life, they've done it.

A lot of interacting with the world and the struggle part has been various techniques that they figure out that work for them even beyond that piece. That's, you know, technically about the reading itself, which are things like perhaps using speechify or, you know, audio books, and just maybe learning different systems. Darius Namondran, I know has his own specific technique of information organizing, which he calls mind mapping and he's developing a whole company around that.

so there's, there can be other techniques that are, it's kind of almost like accommodations in school a little bit, the equivalent for as you go forward as an adult, but there's a lot of that to be done as well. So, so yeah, I mean, it's going to be a little different for everybody in terms of what works in that way, but I would say potentially looking into still remediation and finding someone who, who you might want to work with in that way.

For example, we had on Kim Parra, you could check out the interview with her. She has the flash method and she works one-on-one with people, you know, or like I said, perhaps just exploring lots of different ways that that, and then finding what feels most comfortable to you. Of course, there's always an adjustment period when you try a new technique, but as you try different things like deciding does doing more audio help with, with what you need, and all of that.

And I guess, actually, I just thought of another thing. So there's also the aspect, I don't know if the struggle is partly in the workplace or not, but it's also, you know, much more common now to actually let a workplace know about, any sort of neurodiversity type of thing. And, you know, really they should be accommodating you in the, in those ways as well. We have an interview as well, that relates to that and we'll put links to all of these particular episodes, whether it's about the workplace, whether it's about different techniques.

But there'll be many, many more you could look into. we'll just put those in the description box or show notes so that you can have a quick link to any of those particular episodes. Yeah. And then one other one I'd like to call out specifically is, we did a recent interview with Aria DeHaas, who, actually does one-on-one coaching with dyslexic adults. So he's a great resource as well. Yes. Right. He does coaching.

So that would be, you know, really working through the mindset and all of those things that could be super helpful. Yes, very much so. So we wish you just really well on your journey as you go forward. If you have any further questions, just, you know, let us know again in the comments or if you want to email us. So our second and final for today, question that we received, this one was emailed to us because it was a podcast listener.

I'll just go ahead and read it to you. so it says, hi, Nick and Sonja. Do you recall what specific subtests lead led, sorry, to a diagnosis for your daughter? My fourth grader seems to have many traits of orthographic dyslexia affecting reading, writing, and math. Per my request, her school conducted an educational evaluation, but she didn't qualify for an IEP, which is an individual educational plan. She's intelligent, creative, endearing, and, and endearing and compliant.

So she flies under the radar. It seems so similar to your experience. On this particular test called the Wyatt 4, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. her phonological processing was in the 90th percentile. Orthographic processing is 19th percentile. Reluctance, resistance, challenges with spelling, sight words, math facts, random, reversals, automaticity, and ortho, orthographic fluency at the 16th percentile. And we're going to talk about all of these terms mean in a second here.

I'm trying to have her evaluated outside of school with assessments that delve a little deeper into dyslexia. I know that orthographic slash surface dyslexia is more elusive. Thanks for your advice. So we're just going to break all that down a little bit more for you because I think, you know, we did share, we did communicate and, you know, talk about the specific subtest, but I think there's so many pieces here that are valuable for everyone to know about.

So let's go ahead and dive in. Yeah. There's a lot to unpack here. so first of all, let's talk about this term orthographic dyslexia, and this isn't, actually something that we've really delved into yet. Although we've alluded to it, I think several times. We've always called it surface dyslexia because that's what it was called when our daughter was diagnosed, what they happen to call it, but it's both. I mean, right. That's the same thing.

You'll hear some people call it orthographic dyslexia. Some people call it surface dyslexia. And so rather than try to explain this myself, I'm just going to actually read a quote from a, post that we found that explains it really well. so this is, an article that we found online by Donna Henderson, doctor of psychology, and we will obviously link to the original post, in the show notes. and so she writes in the most common type of dyslexia, phonological dyslexia, people do not have adequate phonological skills.

So they have difficulty sounding out or spelling even regular words. Okay. So that's the common type of dyslexia. Other students, however, may have adequate phonological skills, but fail to fluently use the spelling rules of a language, particularly for irregular words. They may continue to erroneously believe that words are a perfect representation of spoken phonemes. This type of dyslexia is less common and is referred to as surface dyslexia or orthographic dyslexia. And then, so she goes on, she goes on to write, whereas people with phonological dyslexia have difficulty sounding out words.

People with surface dyslexia rely on the spelling sound correspondence too heavily. For them, words that cannot be sounded out, the irregular words, such as through, are misread or misspelled because people with surface dyslexia rely on sounds when spelling. For example, S-E-S-H-E-N for session. Without applying the spelling rules of their language and without being flexible for words that don't follow the typical rules. This can lead to very slow and effortful reading as well as poor spelling.

And yeah, I think it's a really good explanation. I will say that, you know, this is in a way just one aspect of how the brain is different, right? I just thought it's a good thing to point out here. So we're talking about something very specific on how they diagnose and really sort of try to separate out into different types of dyslexia. But, you know, there's other things like brain differences that seem to indicate how information is sort of like pulled together in brains differently.

So that dyslexic brains often, they think, have, for example, like more connectivity on the sort of holistic thinking level. So there's other things, too, that go into the dyslexic brain and how things are different. But this is very useful for the purposes of identification and that it is different in terms of how you might work with a particular kid. Right. And I doubt it's completely binary like this. I doubt that dyslexic people are either 100 percent phonological or 100 percent orthographic.

But it does seem to be. Yeah, it splits pretty. It does split pretty, you know, well. And that is why, you know, like some people are diagnosed later. That's not the only reason, again, people are diagnosed later. But I think it was partly true for a daughter because they did some simple she never had the full panel of phonological, but they did some simple testing of that, you know, and she could match sounds to to to the letters and to, you know, shorter combinations of letters.

And so then they just immediately said it's not dyslexia, but it was only looking for the phonological type, not the orthographic or surface. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. OK. And the second key point here is the kind of how dyslexia gets masked in kids who are other otherwise quite intelligent or even average intelligence. It's really because often kids are able to kind of get by and like, as the listener said, fly under the radar because they're compensating in other ways.

And so if, you know, and we talked about this before in a classroom of 30, 35 kids, if someone is is doing average, then they're not necessarily going to get noticed or get the attention that they need to really figure out what their specific learning challenge is. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So let's dig into the actual the actual psychoeducational assessment that our daughter had that got her diagnosed with orthographic dyslexia. And again, this is not necessarily what you might get at first. Like this is a pretty extensive one.

Right. So it's going to might vary a little bit whether you've had this or not, but but we'll go into what this extensive one does look like. So you get a sense of it. Yes. And so I'm going to tell you the specific tests that she was given. And for some people, this is going to be totally unfamiliar for those of you who have some experience with the testing process. You may recognize some of these tests. So the specific test that our daughter was given was the differential ability scale, second edition.

So that's the DAS two. You'll see it abbreviated often the Wechsler intelligence scale for children, fifth edition. And you'll see that as the WISC five or WISC dash. Right. It's W I S C, but they just say WISC. Yeah. And it was specifically the processing speed index from the WISC that she was given. The Pfeiffer assessment of reading, which is abbreviated FAR, the Woodcock Johnson for tests of achievement. So that is abbreviated WJ IV, the Roman numerals, ACH form A of that.

The Wechsler individual achievement test, third edition. So that's the WIAT, W I A T three, essay composition. Yes. And I just want to add here that it took me a long time and I usually don't even mind looking into dense things that much. Like to part, I mean, in a way only like recently am I parsing it more, how like just understanding fully what these are. So if you're, if this is just sort of just consider this like a way to start getting familiar, I mean, you can totally look these up later or listen again, cause it's going to be a little bit dense when we talk about this here, but I think it's important to have the familiarity with it.

Just not, don't worry about like understanding it perfectly. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the exactly these tests, these assessments look like, for example. but I think it is important to understand because if you go in to get assessed, they're going to start throwing these terms around, right? They're going to say, oh yeah, well, yeah, we, we, we, we gave her the whisk for, and it showed this or whatever.

So it's helpful to just sort of be familiar with this. Yes. okay. So the, the next point here is that what, what was important in our daughter's diagnosis? And I think what is often important, and again, I hate this term, but I'll use it here, in so-called gifted children's, diagnoses is showing a differential between, scores on some tests, which are a supposed measure of, quote, raw intelligence or IQ. and then scores on other tests that identify specific areas of weakness around reading and writing.

Right. And I was, I just want to add in like whatever, even if you don't, you know, like us don't love it. That intelligence is sort of like tested that way and all that. I think the idea of there being differences like this though is key and like really does make sense. Like no matter what you think of that, like, why would there be those differences? So the fact that there's a difference at all, like is meaningful anyway.

Right. And so, in, in this case, the, what our assessor did is they, they used kind of one test as a baseline and that was the DAS two, which is the differential ability scales. They used that as a, they used that as a supposed baseline to get, our daughter's IQ essentially. And then all of these other tests, were to dig into specific areas of reading and writing that, and really, showing that she was significantly weaker.

like even a standard deviation or two on the results of those tests as compared to the IQ as shown on the DAS two. Right. And this includes things like processing speed, right? So, so it gets down to these specifics within the reading and writing. Right. And so the specifics, I mean, in case, in case this is helpful, the specifics were, that she showed a low processing speed index on the WISC five, low scores on broad reading, broad and broad written language on the Woodcock Johnson for, which was a timed test.

It's important to note that as well. And so a good assessor will actually differentiate between timed tests and untimed tests, to really, try to assess out if there are specific processing speed issues, as well as, extra time that it takes to express oneself in written form or to read. Right. and then, the Woodcock Johnson for, the relative proficiency index was, low compared to the IQ. and then the Wyatt three, which it was interesting. they actually gave that both with a time limit and without a time limit. And the scores were significantly different there. and then on the FAR, this is super interesting as well. And this is, I think one of the things that makes a big difference between, kind of an average assessment and a really, excellent assessor is on the FAR, which is this test of writing, or sorry, what is, what does the FAR mean? oh, sorry. Reading. Fight for assessment of reading. the overall, her overall scores were average. And so a naive assessor would look at that and say, and this is unfortunately all too often what schools do is they'll just get something like that and look at the average score and say, okay, this child did average. Like there's not a problem.

Mm-hmm. But if you dig into the specific subsets, which you can do on these tests, what they found is that very specifically nonsense word decoding, rapid automatic naming, visual perception, irregular word reading fluency, and orthographical processing are all significantly below what is expected given her IQ and above average overall reading comprehension. Mm-hmm. So those sub tests really, really matter in getting this level of detail for, for most people. Exactly. So it's, it's, you know, something to be said for getting the, the more intense testing. and it's not, like I said, always where everyone starts. Unfortunately, it can often be expensive. So as you might know, if you saw our recent interview with, Laura Hennigan, it sometimes is possible to have a school pay for a test like this. So I'll leave all the legalities.

And that, that, that, to watching that episode, but just, just a little like note, cause we hadn't even realized that that sometimes can be possible. So thank you so much for, to those, that viewer and the, that listener for, you know, interacting with us, sending in questions, comments. and so again, if you, if you even have a follow-up to what we just, you know, talked about here, let us know, let us know in the comments or at our email.

Yeah. Parenting Dyslexia Journey at gmail.com.