Joy was interviewed on the show "Tuned in to NoCo" (radio station 99.9) to discuss dyslexia and the work we do here at the center. Excerpts from the interview are below, along with her radio interview above. There are good tips in here for understanding what dyslexia is and is not and for recognizing the warning signs of dyslexia. You can read the entire article HERE.
Contact Us or give us a call at 970-460-6771 if you think you or someone you love may have dyslexia.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Joy's interview:
Dyslexia is a sound-based language disability. So, it's not vision related. It's very auditory. So, it's not a problem with the ears or your hearing, it's how the brain is hearing sounds – how the brain is understanding sounds. It's a big myth out there that it's related to vision. Like if you see letters backward or you see words backward - it has nothing to do with vision. It's all related to the brain and how it is processing language in a different way.
Dyslexia occurs when our brains are not mapping an audible sound with its accompanying symbol correctly.
Our brains are not wired to know how to read. So, how we learn how to read is based on speech first and how we are saying sounds, how we are hearing sounds...So when the brain is not understanding sounds very well, then the association between the sound and the letter gets mixed up. We call this mapping. So it's not mapped correctly. It's not an automatic process for that student and this kind of builds over time and becomes more challenging.
The most common sign of dyslexia is trouble spelling, but Short says there are other signs to watch out for as well.
Spelling challenges are definitely a key sign of dyslexia. So, spelling things phonetically instead of using the correct spelling. Some other early warning signs are speech delays – so if a child is not speaking like their peers. This can happen as early as 18 months old or two-years-old.
Any good tutoring for dyslexia is going to strengthen the brain's ability to hear sounds in a new way and how to put the sounds together. When we tell a student with dyslexia to sound out a word, they literally don't have the skills to do that. So, in tutoring, we are doing activities to strengthen the brain and understand sounds in a more efficient way.