h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dyslexia is only a symptom of many disorders such as Auditoty Processing Disorder, Visual Processing Disorder(sometimes refered to as Irlen syndeome), ADD, ADHD, Autism and many others.
So you should list many other sites other than the BDA site which has become slightly confused just recently, especially regarding comorbidity. Which is a real problem for them as dyslexia is not a disorder, only a symptom of other disorders

Hi Dolfrog, good to meet you.

I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I think I saw a post from you on another British site today (although, which one has slipped my mind for now, I’ve got it book marked around here somewhere) about learning skills. Like here you were talking about “Auditoty Processing Disorder, Visual Processing Disorder(sometimes refered to as Irlen syndeome), ADD, ADHD, Autism” and about invisible(?) disorders win perception (if in fact it was you). I’ve never heard about these things before.

You obviously have a lot of knowledge and I would love to learn more about what you have to say. I am an undergraduate anthropology student in Canada. My particular interest these days is about how dyslexia factors across cultures. (see 514986)

Smiles from E’Bert

Hi E'Bert

My main concern has been the recognition of my own Disability Auditory Processing Disorder.
I started my voyage of knowledge descovery some 5 years ago. it has involved joining many forums and visiting many Web sites.
The story started about 11 years ago when my eldest son was having problems during his first year in school. He was being described as dyslexic, but some how did not fit the traditional mould. When he was 10 after many clinical assessments and observations he was about to be diagnosed as being Autistic, but luckily for him we took along his younger brother to his final assessment, and the way they related so well ruled out Autism and we were told it was CAPD. ( until that day i had never heard of it, but i had identified that i sufferred from the same problems which were troubling my son)
There was no information available in the UK about CAPD as it called then, so i had to wait until we gained internet access and find most of the information from the USA and Australia.

Since then i have ben biulding my knowledge of APD and the related invisible disabilities as you listed earlier. APD is one of the most dificult to detect as it can be masked by some of the other mentioned disabilities as there are many areas of overlap but for different causes. So we have similar syptoms, and one of the symtoms is dyslexia.
It was during a discusion about dyslexia that an eminate Educational Psychologist eventually produced the list of causes of dyslexia, and there were more on his list which i can never fully remember. What really prompted him to break cover was the observation that the coping stratgies that use such as multi-coloured texts and other visual aides would not be beneficial for those who suffered from the Visual processing disorder (sometimes refered to as Irlen syndrome) for whom it may cause some difficulty.

So both groups have dyslexia as a symptom, but the coping strategies required are very different and may even clash.
So when my son was initially diagnosed as dyslexic he was given extra phonics to help him read, when really he has problems processing auditory information, so he needed more visual or other compensatory aides.

Those who like me suffer from APD the dyslexic symptom is the not the main problem, our main problem is processing conversations, and verbal instructions which happen in our daily lives, which is not so much of a problem for say those who suffer from visual dyslexia, although they also have other symptoms to face during their daily lives as well as reading.

Unfortunately the defintion of dyslexia become very muddied and conmfused to mean too many things, when it it only really refers to a reading disability. All the other underlying issues tended to be overlooked, until just recently.

you may be interested in visiting the WEb site of the voluntary organisation I help to run APDUK, at http://apduk.org where we hope to provide as much helpful information as possible and the most informative of links.

best wishes

dolfrog

back again the APD does not always allow me to process all od a post.

The most indiginous population of APDs are the native Australians can never spell their proper name ( i am dyslexic) and one of the forums i am a member of is sponsoring an online research project "HOw APD affects Adults" and the professional involved come from Australia, and has many clients in the bush.

best wishes

dolfrog

Thank you for your insight. I’m just at a conference over the weekend, but I do want to learn more from you. I’ll have more time to get back to you (in more detail) during the week.

Until then, this is me wishing you happy harvest holiday of your location (Halloween or guy fox or any other. You pick)
E’Bert

I am sorry about taking so long, school just got in my way.

Your struggle to learn more is inspiring. I would like to thank you again for sharing with me.

You mention that your main area of trouble was with auditory information. Have you come across anything about someone with Auditory Processing Disorder learning to lip-read even if they can hear?

Also, I was reading lately a cross cultural study of people with dyslexic symptoms from England, Italy, and Spain. They used a combination of tests and measuring brain patterns to identify dyslexia. It was interesting that people who learn Italian as a first language have less visible symptoms of dyslexia whereas people who learn English as a first langue have the most symptoms in daily life.

Ebert

Hi E-Bert

had a busy week or so recently publication of our organisations newsletter, and the editor demading my contribution. And having a running battle regarding the techeniques used to teach reading on another forum. All fun and games.

I have briefly loked at you post with interest. My eldest son who has APD does lip read, he has done so since the age of 4 when he was alos suffering from glue ear. (Glue ear is a method of acquiring APD, so not only did he get it genetically he also unfortunate to have it magnified by his gluye ear.
It provides him with a visual aide to understanding what is being said.

I will get back to you later as i have much catching up to do.

dolfrog

P.S. the newsletter had 614 downloads in the first 30 hgours after publication, we can not believe it .

Hello, just a quick hello and to say I find this whole thread extremely interesting.

I have three boys who have all had problems with speach and language delay and two have regular glue ear problems...(prone to it) as am I, and I just wanted to add to your discussion that I lip read and have done for as long as I can remember. If I am in a situation where I cannot lip read then unless background noise is zero I struggle and those speaking to me probably notice a slightly puzzled look on my face...in fact I had numerous hearing tests when younger because of my problem with hearing and all came back that I had no problem and yet I do. In addition I had a cat scan at 13yrs due to what was thought of as a problem and all came back fine...as did other brain function tests at the time. Educationally I drowned until I dropped out at age 13yrs, spelling has been the biggest problem and I struggle big time still, math isn't brilliant although has improved with use, after reading your information I think the math was a problem because the teacher always had his/her back to me. On returning to ft education at 16 I read most of my work as it was an adult education class...so it was rare to have oral instruction, but when I did have that I always looked at the instructors lips and it was awkward for say math where I was expected to look at the board...so had to look at the instructor then the board then the instructor...it slowed my progress a bit. I discovered to my joy that I was not stupid at all and with the adult education being self lead I zoomed through the tasks, which does make me wonder if children should not be taught to read and then to work unaided unless needing extra help...computers will probably lead to this anyway I would have thought. Reading both books and online has improved my knowledge greatly and I have over the years brought my education levels up greatly. Vocabulary is still low and I am working on this as I am on my way to being a ficiton writer. Words that look normal some days can look odd to me other days...I don't know why but it is only words that don't read out phonetically; basically words that require memorizing.

Reading was very very hard to learn and this was the case for my boys too, but once reading was established then education was boosted...for my boys...thankfully they were in special units of 3 children per 1 teacher. Sadly this is all being phased out and young kids with these problems now must really be struggling.

Thank you again for all your information, this has been a really interesting discovery as I was starting to think my kids and I were on the Aspergers spectrum and yet I have nor have my kids any problem with making friends, communicating (as long as I can lip read to add back up) or any social problems one would expect of Aspergers/autism.

Teresa

Hi E'bert

Just an up adte on the dyslexia front
this was sent to some leading UK academics who specialise in dyslexia or related issues and caused quite a stir.
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There has been a recognition that the whole reading process is short of agreed working models to act as educational bench marks. On the Becta Senco forum for instance there are problems trying to find an agreed working model of the task of reading, the skills required to carry out the task, and how these skills inter related when performing the reading task.
This then brings into question which reading program is best suited to teach these undefined skills, and if you can not define the skills required, how can you begin to help those who may have in information processing deficit that make acquiring these skills difficult.

The next problem surrounds the definition of dyslexia itself. Many adult dyslexics are finding that they share some common problems but also they have some other very different problems. This is not surprising. Dyslexia is a man made problem. Man first developed speech using his sound alarm system, and then developed a visual notation of speech, which we now call text. So having problems with reading, writing or spelling is having problems with a man made communication system. So having problems with reading, writing, and spelling, dyslexia can not be a condition, and all who have problems with reading writing and spelling are dyslexic not just those who have a bit of paper to say so. Dyslexia is like a runny nose very obvious to identify but the underlying cause is more difficult to diagnose. The mythical condition of dyslexia could be like the mythical condition of runny nose, add other symptoms such as headache, hot sweats, and hot flushes, and you have condition and scientists measure the speed of the runny nose. But this ignores the real underlying causes of say flu or hay fever.

The next issue is the one that concerns parents and adult alike, and can also be the most costly both financially and the self esteem of the individual. The magical cures for dyslexia. There is a whole industry making money out of the pain of the dyslexic and preying on the stressed but uninformed parent. This all goes back to the lack of definitions of reading, the skills required in the task of reading, and defining the deficits that may cause problems performing the reading task.
If you can not define reading, the tasks required to perform that task, define the nature of the problems that may make acquiring those skills difficult, how can you even begin to design cures for an undefined problem.

For all other problems a remedy provider has to stipulate how their product helps a suffer or even define which suffered it may help and those it cannot help, what side affects there may be etc, and there is usually a government watchdog that oversee all of these issues. This does not happen with dyslexia it is open to all to claim cure a cure all without any qualification. So how can dyslexic know which program would suit him best, he has a diagnosis of dyslexia, it does not tell him the underlying causes of his problems, and there are these program claim to be magical cure all, so why should he choose one remedial program as against another. One such providor may have the better marketing department, but how about the product. Nothing to say how it helps or who it helps or even who it would not help. And what about refunds if the program does not work.
The other more important problem is that each of the different underlying causes of the dyslexic symptom have different sets of coping strategies, and sometimes the coping strategies used by one group of dyslexics would conflict with those needed by another group of dyslexics.
And that is all before the whole range of issues created by the failure to have a One Stop Diagnostic system for all Invisible disabilities that would prevent the educational child abuse created by having to go from one specialist to another over many years to find out the true cause of a child's problems.


These issues are not impossible to resolve provided someone has a big enough hammer to repeatedly hit the professionals over the head with until they get it right.
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I haved not see much official reaction as yet, but i gather some lines of communication became quite heated around this thread.

best wishes

dolfrog