How High Visual Intelligence Can Cause Apparent Dyslexia
Most teachers of 5 and 6-year-old children will tell you how baffled they can be by this phenomenon.
There will often be several bright children in the class, who can do most things well and have a good attitude, but fall behind in reading.
Initially everything can seem OK. But, while other children’s reading progresses steadily, these children will hit a plateau at around 6. As the text they are expected to read gets more complicated, they will get more and more confused, often guessing wildly.
In the end their reading will go into reverse as their confidence implodes. They can feel the worry of their teacher and parents, but don’t know what to do.
These children will often be labelled dyslexic. But that is quite wrong.
Dyslexia suggests there is some underlying problem that cannot be overcome.
But these children are usually just trying to read the wrong way. There is no reason why they should not be able to read.
Here is what’s really happening.
A child will always approach a problem in what seems the easiest way. To a visual child, memorising the alphabet and simple words seems easy. People praise their achievement. So they think that they are reading. And early reader books encourage this with a very limited vocabulary.
So their parents and teacher believe all is well.
But problems develop as the text starts to use a broader range of words. Some children will naturally switch to scanning the words phonetically.
Others cannot make the switch without careful instruction. Their auditory perception just isn’t up to hearing the phonic structure of the words.
And these children are heading for failure
They will use the context to guess wildly, taking the first letter of the word as a guide.
They are baffled by their predicament and have no idea why it has gone wrong. They can feel people’s frustration, but have actually been working hard.
Of the one in five children who reach the age of 11 unable to read properly, around 80% are in this group. It virtually destroys their chances of a good academic career and severely limits their working options.
And that is a tragedy, because we routinely see exactly these children learn to read in a matter of weeks. They have no underlying reason not to be able to read. They are just going about it the wrong way.
The label dyslexic carries a great risk that everyone will just relax into acceptance of the situation as inevitable. That leaves the child to deal with a much harder path through life.