I sat on the ground with all the other Architecture students, trying to sketch a perspective. I’d never drawn, before. It was awful. I could see the vista before me, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t translate the vision to the page. The left and right sides of my brain were completely at odds with one another. I finally broke down and sobbed. I wanted to do it. I really, really wanted to be able to do this thing that everyone else around me could do with ease. My brain just couldn’t get it to work.
If you’ve never experienced something like that, you might not understand learning disabilities like dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and sensory integration dysfunction that might prevent a child from comprehending language, even though both hearing and vision are fine. But just think of the frustration factor! A child with a learning disability isn’t unintelligent: his or her brain is just wired differently. If your child is sullen, resists or avoids school work, or if you hear the complaint, “your child is so bright, but doesn’t apply him(her)self…” then perhaps there’s something deeper than a rebellious nature or a lazy child.
According to HelpGuide, ” All of the following are necessary symptoms of an official learning disability:
- average or above average intelligence (as measured by the IQ score)
- significant delay in academic achievement
- severe information processing deficits
- uneven pattern of cognitive development throughout life
- a disparity between measured intellectual potential (IQ score) and actual academic achievement
- the learning disability persists despite instruction in standard classroom situations “
Testing is available if your child is in public schools, though if you can afford it, you might want to follow up with private testing. Determine which, if any, difficulties your child is facing, and face the challenge head on, as a team. Reassure your child that this is an obstacle, not a roadblock, to his or her learning. There are ways around most of these problems, and with the right therapy and loving support, your child can overcome his or her difficulty and succeed.
Remember, Albert Einstein didn’t seem like a genius when he was a kid!
Photo cred: Broken Pencil by e-magic on flickr
I will try to be brief which for me is difficult, about my feelings about dyslexia and intelligence and what is generally said and what I feel is the truth.
The statement that just because dyslexics are poor readers doesn’t mean that they are of low intelligence is true.
The people that are identified as dyslexics are generally average or above average intelligence is true.
That dyslexics should be told that just because they have poor reading skills doesn’t mean they are slow is true.
While those statements are true they shift attention from the fact that there are also below average dyslexics that could benefit from interventions. There have been a few good studies that gave interventions to poor readers regardless of intelligence levels and the lower intelligence poor readers also increased their reading skills along with the more intelligent poor readers.
I think it is a crime that just because lower intelligent dyslexics are harder to detect that they should be defined out of existance.
In all the times I have made the comment that only diagnosed dyslexics are of average or above average intelligence and that does not mean that all dyslexics are of average or above intelligence, Never has anyone come back and said there was a study that proved dyslexics were of average or above average intelligence.
I have had lots of comments that say this or that person says that being a poor reader does not mean you are of low intelligence. I agree with that.
I stand by my statement that the information about dyslexia and intelligence misinformes the public that there are no below average dyslexics. This results in a failure to look for dyslexics who may be helped just because they have lower intelligence.
The federal government excludes low IQ dyslexics by definition. I am guessing this is conserve financial resources as the National Institute of Health never concluder that.
Dyslexia is considered a learning disability in the Federal Register under Public Law 94-142. As with other learning disabilities covered under this law, dyslexia involves what is called an exclusionary diagnosis. That is, instead of describing characteristics directly, the definition describes all the conditions that must be ruled out (e.g., low IQ, physical handicaps, environmental factors, etc.) before making a diagnosis
Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies estimate the prevalence of this disorder (dyslexia) at 20% of school age children. This means that one in five children have the fears and emotions expressed above. It is by far the most common form of learning disability. In addition, dyslexia affects all socio-economic classes and all races equally (2) (2). It affects as many boys as girls (3). However, boys are usually spotted more quickly because they tend to exhibit externalizing behaviors such as acting out when doing poorly in school. Consequently the teacher is more likely to look for a problem in a child who is acting out in class rather than one who is quiet. Thus, boys who tend to act out more will be noticed more by the teacher.
As described above, children with the disorder often feel stupid as a result of their constant struggle in school. However, there is no correlation between intelligence and dyslexia. Furthermore it is important to note that phonological abilities do not depend on IQ – the genetic risk can affect learning to read in children of high and of low IQ equally though the problem is easier to detect in those of higher ability who do not show other learning problems. This does not mean however, that it will be easy to differentiate at school entry
between children with dyslexia and children at risk of failure because they come to school from socio-economically or linguistically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Has anyone actually looked to see if low IQ children would benefit from reading intervention compared to higher IQ children?
There’s now evidence from research at York University that shows – contrary to what you might have expected – that children with a low IQ can be helped just as much with reading problems as children with a high IQ, providing it’s the right reading programme and providing it’s implemented in the right way. What you might have expected is that children with a low IQ wouldn’t progress as quickly as children with a high IQ: but what these studies in York have found, he says, is that they do.
I couldn’t be brief so I cheated and took some information from the blog I started recently.
That’s fascinating, John. thank you for sharing it with us. I don’t know what I’m talking about, really, having had little experience with dyslexia — my uncle is dyslexic, and stutters, but he’s average intellligence. Is it possible that there is a different definition/label for the subset of dyslexics that you are helping with your glasses? perhaps they have sensory integration disorders as well as dyslexia? I spent a lot of time volunteering in ’special ed’ classrooms when I was young. It taught me to find the wonder and beauty in everyone, not just the pretty and popular.
I haven’t found any resources about dyslexia at lower IQ levels and most people involved will be surprised that there aren’t any good studies about dyslexics having higher levels of intelligence either.
Let me give you an example that changed my life and is about the saddest waste of potential I have ever experienced. Briefly, I accidentally discovered filters that seemed to remove visual problems for a dyslexic back in 1992. After reading all the literature and seeing how badly everyone thought about tinted lenses as a solution I really didn’t want to get involved.
My girlfriend’s son seemed to meet the description of reading below his intelligence level for being dyslexic as he was a 20 years old special ed student and had never written or read a word in his life except his name and still did not know his alphabet. He was classified as being mildly retarded, had cerebral palsy affecting his left side and had some hearing loss.
Being bored one day, I thought to see if the filters I had found might help Chris. It wasn’t readily apparent how to go about that but eventually I tried writing out the alphabet once in order and below that I scrambled the letters. I asked him to match A-A and B-B etc. He could only match 13 of the letters. That did seem to help explain why he never learned his alphabet or to read.
After putting on these filters he could match all 26 letters and in 3 days he could read the alphabet from flash cards. He wrote his first note to his mother after a week. Since then I have been looking for the research that has been done to conclude that dyslexics are only from the group of average to above average intelligence and I do not believe it has ever been done.
I have come to the conclusion that it is based on a sampling bias of looking for dyslexics in that group and the difficulty of identifying standards for lower intelligence people along will a callus who gives a ( fill in your word of choice) about them because they aren’t going to amount to much anyway. There is also the feel good factor of “Don’t feel bad Johnny,you are not stupid because you have trouble reading ,you have dyslexia and dyslexics are usually smart.”.Repeat that feel good statement enough and without any true data it becomes the truth. Diagnosed dyslexics are usually smart but I believe there are many more undiagnosed dyslexics that are not.
The same type of statement is made that dyslexia is not associated with vision. Vision is not a factor for the majority of dyslexics. There is a subset of dyslexics that also have visual dyslexia problems and a smaller subset of dyslexics that have a predominately visual problems. If you read enough about dyslexia you will see that some dyslexics describe visual problems that make reading difficult. Statistically dyslexics have a higher rate of poor depth perception and the people that say dyslexia is a phonological problem never even suggest a reason for that.
I sell See Right Dyslexia Glasses that only have one claim . I claim that for the dyslexic that can describe a visual problem that makes reading difficult, that problem will be removed by the glasses. I also note that poor depth perception will be corrected. I have close to a 100% success rate for those dyslexics and I offer a money back guarantee. They are available at http://www.dyslexiaglasses.com .
I used to work for a company whose product was research papers. Everyone’s papers were vetted by a number of other people before they were sent out. The most common mistake I found was that something small was studied and yet the conclusion involved a much larger issue. I sometimes found myself going back to authors and asking how he or she could conclude the larger issue from the data from the smaller issue studied. In dyslexia research it is very common to study a factor and make conclusions about dyslexia that it seems to be the norm. These overblown conclusions are just not good science.
When I write about dyslexia research I always try to include that I don’t question the data. In fact I base my opinions on the data I see published. There are 2 major flaws with the many conclusions drawn from most dyslexia research. The first is that all prior research is discarded for no reason and the second is that some factor of dyslexia is studied and the conclusions are about dyslexia in general. This is a widespread pattern and is often missed by the general public and those that are just starting to gather information about dyslexia for personal reasons.
Aha, the link works again. Here is Dr. Sally Shawitz’s expanded quote from the website, trying to dispel the myths of dyslexia: “A fourth myth holds that people who struggle to read are not very smart. On the contrary, some of the very brightest boys and girls struggle to read. Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence, average, above average, and highly gifted. The writer John Irving and the financier Charles Schwab are both dyslexic and I have included their stories in Overcoming Dyslexia not only because they dispel myths about dyslexia but also because they provide wonderful examples of how boys and girls who struggle can become highly successful men and women.”
There is nowhere on the site that you quote that mentions the phenomenon of dyslexia at lower IQ levels… could you please site other sources? I’m curious! Thanks
John, thanks for commenting. HelpGuide specifically sets the criteria bar for dyslexia at ‘average’ OR ‘above average’ intelligence, not high intelligence as you have written. I’d like to read the source material on who the some people are who think dyslexia might occur at IQ levels lower than 85. Do you have any more references? The Shwablearning link you posted doesn’t work… thanks!
I think part of the issue might be that although people with dyslexia are perceived as being ’stupid’ they are anything but.
I posted on another site today about the myth that dyslexics have above average IQs. I added a comment by Liz to mine at the bottom.
You are right about helpguide having that list, but needing to have an above average IQ to be learning disabled is not supported by any data. It is also counter productive if the goal is identifying and helping learning disabled because it means that some who are LD are dismissed by the definition.
Personally,when I see bad information that I know is wrong I tend to discredit any other information that is given along with it.
According to Sally Shaywitz, MD
http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.aspx?r=718
Quote:
Dyslexia occurs at all levels of intelligence, average, above average, and highly gifted.
(More recently, some people have been expressing curiosity about the incidence of dyslexia among people with IQs lower than 85 — might it also occur independently of IQ, and might the underlying deficit account for some developmentally disabled folks’ difficulty in learning to read at a level commensurate with their intelligence.