Untagging Dyslexia

“MAG-A-NET-A”……Kiran was trying to tell her son the color he was to pick up. This was about two weeks ago…. I was in a session with my 5yr old student Joy, drawing pictures while his mother was also around. He pulled out a purplish color and asked his mother, who was sitting next to him what color it was. She dutifully read the name, as phonetically as she could….. what is MAG-A-NET-A?” We all laughed, I intervened: “It’s MA-GEN-TA.”

We all have different hair, eyes, body sizes, and different preferences in hundreds of areas. Some are attracted to adventure and variety whereas others are most comfortable with the consistent and predictable. In these and many other ways, we aggregate differences which sometimes collect in such a way that we put a label on them, such as "ADHD" or "Dyslexia" or "Dyspraxia".

Joy is a sensitive and hard-working boy who deeply wants to succeed. He is dyslexic (reading difficulty), which makes his brain work as much as five times harder to decipher symbols, translate them into sounds and then string those sounds into meaningful words. While the rest of us see a word like “comprehend” and can sound it out and automatically pull out the meaning from our auditory memory banks, it is not so straightforward for Joy. 

There are, however, other more fundamental differences between people. At the level of these differences, it is possible to gain direct access into the way a person's mind works, the way they store and process experience and emotion, the way they make decisions and choices. These differences have to do with how we experience and make sense of the world around us.

Do you often notice yourself saying things like "catching a glimpse of," or "looks like"? Or are you more likely to say "loud and clear" or "voiced an opinion"? Or "get in touch with" or "start from scratch"? Expressions like these may be clues to your preferred modality, or preferred way of making sense of your world.

If you couldn't see or hear, or if you couldn't feel texture, shape, temperature, weight, or resistance in your environment, you would literally have no way of learning. Most of us learn in many ways, yet we usually favour one modality over the others - some are visual learners, some auditory, while others are kinesthetic learners. Many people don't realise they are favouring one way because nothing external tells them they are any different from anyone else. Knowing that there are differences goes a long way towards explaining things like why we have problems in understanding and communicating with some people and not with others. The understanding may also explain why we handle some situations more easily than others and why we may have learning difficulties.

         For centuries the problem of dyslexia has been wrongly equated with a lack of intelligence but we now know it's more a problem of perception. Ron Davis, author of the book "The Gift of Dyslexia", said that, "Dyslexia was related to a sense of internal disorientation and perception".

Dr Don Blackerby, an NLP expert, discovered that their subjective experience or perception was driving the symptoms. The perception on their part was that they either could not control their mind or their mind controlled them as they perceive multiple images. These images are moving rapidly and sometimes mysteriously disappear; the images often occur simultaneously. There is a strong body and/or emotional response to the images; and they can't control any of these internal experiences.

While working with these children over the years, I felt that they had difficulty making stable and clear imaginary pictures.

So what if they knew how to change this perception? What if they knew how to stabilize their internal pictures and take back control of their internal experiences?

Using NLP techniques such as the "visual spelling strategy" and "emotional state management" it can be taught how to access their 'visual memory' quickly and easily, and so 'see' words correctly. This will have many benefits, not least of which are increased confidence and self-esteem and reduction in frustration.

One of the concerns is that the student is not able to distinguish the difference between a b and d, or a 6 or 9 or a p or q. I found that many of my students were not connecting the sound of the letter or number with the image. When somebody would say "Draw me a b", the sound did not pull up the image for the student to copy. Using NLP techniques, it is a simple matter to teach the student to connect the sound to an image.

Some students with dyslexia also reverse certain words. For example they will pronounce the word saw as was. This appears to be a simple matter of knowing right from left and in knowing that words in English language are only to be read from left to right. Again using NLP techniques, it is very quick to reprogram their mind to know the difference between right and left and to read only from left to right.

The easiest way for someone to learn something is to put it into a reference frame of something they’re passionate about.

After my attempts to use NLP with my students, I realized that a lot of work needs to be done at many of what NLP refers to as the "neurological levels" (identity, beliefs and values, capabilities and skills, behavior and environment) instead of just on the behavior and environment, which therapists have traditionally been working on. In fact, the interventions at those two levels would not hold in the face of limiting beliefs at the higher levels of capability, beliefs/values and identity. I have been witness to some encouraging results using NLP with a few of my students. Joy is one of them.

Albert Einstein, the great scientist, who had been removed from school for being slow and dyslexic once said "You cannot solve a problem at the same level it was created. You have to go to a higher level."

A clear understanding of the problem is thus essential for any intervention. In a way everyone is special, and everyone has needs which may not be the same as others. The children with dyslexia or discalculia just need to be understood and seen as just another normal.  

Labels help us to tell things apart, to know the differences between….but labels don’t only SHOW differences, they make them too. And pigeon-holes are not even good for pigeons! They allow no room to grow while education should grow wings.

What if we used all the resources we were born with, developed our sensory acuity and honed our rapport skills?.... remembered and accepted that every map is unique and none of them is the territory? Then we could dispense with labels, and let that uniqueness that we sense in others BE the difference.

Maybe the first step is to educate ourselves to be curious, to understand everything that is special about everyone else: not to label and package it in convenience, but to recognise it and honour it for the gift it really is.