<p>My husband is dyslexic. He’s now a college professor. Three degrees in music composition, a minor in physics, and a doctoral minor in conducting. He participates in seminars on LDs for the faculty, giving them the “other side” of what being learning disabled is like. He’s regularly known as the toughest professor in the department-- he expects a lot of himself, and he expects a lot of his students, and they adore him for it. He puts in a LOT of time to be a really great professor, and it shows.</p>
<p>His brother is much more severely dyslexic, and really hated school. His mom would drop him off at school and go to work, and he’d turn around and walk straight home. He joined the army for a few years after graduating from high school, became a sergeant before he was legally old enough to drink. Went back home, became a machinist, and is now going back to school to become an engineer. Really smart guy.</p>
<p>I know one girl who’s dysgraphic. She just earned an engineering degree with full scholarship from an amazing school and landed her dream job as a rocket scientist, and is having just a fantastic time with it.</p>
<p>We’re almost certain that my brother is dyslexic… As a first grader, he couldn’t do word searches to save his life, so he wrote computer programs to solve the puzzles for him. He’s always found ways to “cheat” (the pros call it “coping”) on the cursory exams they’ve given him to test for dyslexia, but he shows every single sign and has never really followed up with a neurologist. He’s working on his PhD in electrical engineering right now. His “coping” mechanisms as a kid blossomed into a really impressive set of skills, so that he can look at engineering and computing problems and just figure out new ways of looking at them. He’s absolutely brilliant at what he does, and it is, in large part, due to the fact that he thinks differently about things than the rest of us do. It completely flummoxes him in some areas (he registers as a complete idiot in the context of some tests they’ve given him, where he quite obviously is not an idiot), but in other areas, it’s given him just leaps and bounds of advantages. His brain is just different.</p>
<p>My brother was in handwriting therapy for years… Talk about an exercise in futility. He eventually got permission to type his classnotes, and now he types a mile a minute. Look for ways around the “conventional”. Who cares if you can’t write in cursive!? Nobody writes in cursive anymore! Instead of having your daughter bang her head against a wall trying to do some of the things that don’t work, see if she can find a different way that <em>does</em> work. Are any of her books on tape? Is she an auditory learner? The successful dyslexics that I know of try to find alternatives that work for them.</p>
<p>You just have to find your niche and then throw yourself into it. Surround yourself with supportive, non-judgmental people who have your best interests at heart. Know that it’s going to be tough, but that it’s also going to be OKAY! Your daughter will turn out wonderfully, and if she wants to be a marine biologist and is willing to put in the effort, she’ll do great!</p>
<p>(Sidebar: Look into SeaCamp at TAMU-Galveston. I went when I was in seventh grade (long, long, long ago…) and it was a ton of fun.)</p>