Decoding Dyslexia: Lyla’s Story

By Author: Im Perfect by Urveez
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As I share my experiences and knowledge, I would not mention names of my students. All the names used here are fictitious and they only resemble the person as I continue sharing our journey together.

The most common of all when a child is suspected of having some difficulty in their academic work, is the use of reversals and spellings. My mantra, “Catch them young. And remediate them immediately”. Well, it didn’t always work that way.

The story:
One such student, lets call her Lyla. Lyla was an adorable child. Full of mischief and fun. Lyla was 8, when her mother came to me one open day with her exam answer sheets. “Mam, I am telling you, she new everything. She answered all the questions orally at home. She has even written everything on the paper. But none of this makes sense. She is always making silly mistakes. She loses her marks for spellings…” Lyla’s mother rattled on. There was a long queue of parents waiting to meet me. I looked at them, no way they were going to wait for me patiently. I took the bundle of papers from helpless mother’s hands and assured her that I will give her a ...
... patient hearing. I requested her to come and see me later that afternoon.

“Earlier, I heard you say, she knew everything, she makes silly mistakes…” I began. I took the paper and showed it to her mother again. Pointing out at every word and reading it quite fluently to her. She was amazed at what she heard and very confused at what she saw. I explained her that our Lyla has written the paper using all reversals. For us to understand, her “w” had become “m”, y turned to h, b to d and d to b, at times even u became n. At times the word or the letter made complete sense. Thus, her mother was unable to understand. “Why is bed written correctly here but written as deb here?” She questioned. It was a good one-hour session of understanding and introduction to understand Lyla’s difficulties.

Working at a school which is inclusive but sets regulations to follow becomes tricky to manage the students with their academic timetable. Time slots were given to Lyla. Fortunately, Lyla was very sincere and she herself realized that something is amiss. We worked out a plan. A program to follow at home too was tailored. Her mother too was involved and she made it a point to follow up.

We did not label her yet. An informal assessment and therapy began. At this point, we found that she had poor concentration, speed of reading was slow, she took longer to write, copying from a green board was a task. Her mother did confess that she did find it difficult to follow too many instructions if given together. She said Lyla had good memory and was able to narrate a story of a movie in sequence which she found quite intriguing.

It was understood that Lyla had Visual processing challenges. A child might have trouble identifying how images are different (visual discrimination) or which direction they face (visual directionality).

A year later, we did a formal assessment and Lyla did have dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability. It is characterized by difficulties with reading, writing, and spelling, and is caused by differences in the parts of the brain that process language. It is commonly associated with letter reversals. It is important to note that Not all children with dyslexia use reversals.

If students have difficulty with directional knowledge, like left-right and up-down, as in b/d, p/q, h/y, n/u and even in numbers like 6/9, 36/ 63 students will struggle with letters and number sequencing leading to poor and inconsistent spelling, and difficulty doing mathematics.

The Therapy included:
Use colour to letter pairs. Example initially the letter b was always written in blue colour and letter d in red. Even the printed book was highlighted till the errors became negligible. Audio cues were used for writing eg. For b:lo -bat ball( b-is like the stick of bat first followed by ball)

Playing sorting and memory games was part of fun schedule.

Practice visualizing letters with closed eyes. Draw the shape in the air with their finger or using sensory materials like sand or clay tracing the letters in it.

Spotting the letters in various situations and places like bill boards, magazines, etc.

Parents were encouraged to put up posters at home to reinforce the letters of the alphabets.

As we progressed, focus and attention shifted to reading and spelling difficulties.

She benefited from a multi-sensory spelling programme, learning 2–3 words a day. Using visual pictures was helpful.

All’s well that ends well:
As she grew older, she learnt to overcome her difficulty. Use of mnemonics was quite interesting as she came up with using silly sentences (where the first letter of each word spells out the word you want to learn) which showed us her creative side.

Teach spelling rules later on, like how a “q” is always followed by a “u” and other simple rules were taught.

Grouping words and using different colors to highlight tricky parts of words, or write words in different colors made learning quicker. (colour coding) example- education, vacation, application.

It was essential to celebrate small victories and accomplishments, and focus less on correcting errors. Especially the use of colour red was discouraged in correcting errors.

Extra time was always considered for tasks that may take longer to complete. At the same time, she was encouraged to finish the task and compete to better her time score.

Lyla scored very well at her 10 grade board exams and in her 12th grade too. It would be interesting to know that Lyla got into commerce stream, she graduated, completed her management studies and is currently working abroad as a Vice President Associate in the Banking Sector.

This was possible with the knowledge base and experience of our most veteran psychologist, Kashmira Adil Kakalia(https://imperfect.co.in/kashmira-kakalia-full-profile/), who did a thorough pre-therapy analysis keeping her medical condition in mind. With consistent therapy delivered by learned psychologists at ImPerfect, Lyla now comes across as a normal human to one and all.

Have a Query? Talk to a specialist today(https://imperfect.co.in/contact-us/)!