Any dyslexia success stories?

Parent Cafe
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<p>One of my dear friends has been a professor with a PhD for many decades. He is severely dyslexic and has a wonderful wife that helps edit his work that is published internationally and has formed the basis for lots of math and science curriculum worldwide. Their son-in-law is married to one of my best friends. He is also dyslexic and a brilliant inventor with a masters in physics. He runs an alternative energy company.</p>

<p>By the way, Orton-Gillingham is one of several techniques/methods that are very helpful in working with dyslexics. My sister is a special ed teacher & has had amazing results when she used this with children with varying degrees of dyslexia. I am not familiar with other techniques but dyslexia is far commoner than you might realize.</p>

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<p>One thing I learned is that there are a variety of methods to help dyslexics learn to read. I can’t even coun how many we tried the first couple years. If you go down that path, don’t get discouraged just try something else. Believe it or not it was Dr. Suess that got my son actually reading and not just memorizing text that was read to him. Hop on Pop will be forever dear to my heart. No one knows why Dr. Suess books “worked” or what about them “worked” but they did. Not colored filters, not published techniques, just Dr. Suess LOL. The most important take-away however is that really brilliant people have a high preponderance of dyslexia which is in and of itself very interesting.</p>

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<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>

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<p>It took me a while to get through all of your thoughtful and helpful replies. Thank you so very much. Some thoughts for each of you:</p>

<p>mathmom, to know of a dyslexic who went to Harvard and is now a doctor is most certainly an inspiration!</p>

<p>Singersmom07, yes, her mind is definitely way ahead of her reading. Your suggestion to try voice-recognition software sounds great; I’m going to see what’s available and talk with her teachers about using it on homework and such.</p>

<p>momofthreeboys, I think you understand perfectly what we’re going through; the similarities to your own situation are uncanny (or maybe they’re just a lot more common than I thought). My son read before kindergarten, too, and so dealing with dyslexia has been a tremendous adjustment.</p>

<p>ReadyToRoll, the Lindamood-Bell program sounds fantastic, but, alas, we are about 300 miles from the nearest center, so I will find whatever information I can about their methods and try to incorporate them into our efforts.</p>

<p>stradmom, getting her involved in marine biology now is a great idea. It’s the one subject that gets her excited about the idea of going to college one day. We have a nice zoo with an aquarium in our town, and we are going to approach them about some sort of volunteering or other involvement. I don’t know if they can accommodate a 10-year-old, but we’re going to try to works something out with them.</p>

<p>poetgrl, *The Gift of Dyslexia *will soon be part of our library. Thanks for suggesting it.</p>

<p>Lergnom, my daughter loved the list of famous dyslexics. Hearing that two of the stars of *Pirates of the Caribbean *and the voice of the Genie in *Aladdin *are dyslexic made her positively giddy. (To my surprise, she was pretty jazzed about Albert Einstein, too. I didn’t even know she knew who he was.)</p>

<p>goaliedad, we’ve started attending local presentations on dyslexia and similar issues, hoping that networking will lead us to useful resources. We are told, as you said, that the window of opportunity is beginning to close for addressing the issue at a fundamental level. As for kids making fun of her, we are already starting to see a bit of that in the fifth grade, but her independent streak seems to be insulating her from being anything other than bemused by it so far. We also practice what to say when people make fun. I told her that she should tell one kid in her class, “One day I’ll be able to read, but you’ll always be this ugly.” (That cracked her up. She knows she shouldn’t really say that, although I don’t think I’d mind if she did.)</p>

<p>siliconvalleymom, I did not know about the learning differences subforum. I will check it out; I’m sure there is a lot to learn there.</p>

<p>shawbridge, your post is almost too much encouragement to fully acknowledge. Being exhausted by hand-copying a paragraph and the page going blurry after 20 minutes of reading are well-known to us. We’ve found that reading glasses help a bit, as does taking frequent, short breaks.</p>

<p>member, your suggestion sounds like something that can be accomplished with flash cards. We’re trying to make better use of them to help her with sight-reading.</p>

<p>lastminutemom169, unfortunately we don’t have a special school for learning disabilities in or near our town as you do in Atlanta, but it sounds like a good reason to move there! We’re going to learn as much as we can about it. Maybe we can turn our own teachers on to some useful practices.</p>

<p>**lastminutemom169 **and poetgrl, we’re not well-to-do but recently made the decision to invest a lot more in our daughter’s education to get through her learning disability, so we are now looking for private resources to enlist in the fight. We don’t have anything yet, and our area is not well-stocked with specialists with private practices, but we are sure there is something out there.</p>

<p>HImom, Orton-Gillingham was not previously familiar to me, but I’m looking for some articles to find out more.</p>

<p>aibarr, again, so many encouraging stories in one post! And as for Sea Camp at Texas A&M Galveston…wow! I read her the description of Adventures in Marine Biology, and she just lit up. I think we’re putting $800 in next year’s budget for Sea Camp.</p>

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<p>m-s, there are a lot of resources out there. There was an absolutely superb website and bulletin board sponsored by the Schwab foundation for the parents of kids with disabilities for 10 years that alas is defunct. I learned a lot from it and from the parents on it. A company called greatschools.net has taken it over. Not nearly as good but all the archived conversations are there (including lots of information on things like how to get accommodations for the SATs). In addition, some of those parents have moved to a site called millermom (not sure who miller is, actually) – the link is [Learning</a> Disabilities (LDs), ADHD and Education Support, The<em>SAFE</em>Site - Home](<a href=“http://millermom.proboards.com/index.cgi]Learning”>Home | Learning Disabilities (LDs), ADHD and Education Support, The*SAFE*Site). There is another site from which I get emails ([Wrightslaw</a> Special Education Law and Advocacy](<a href=“http://www.wrightslaw.com%5DWrightslaw”>http://www.wrightslaw.com)) and a community spedpac in a Massachusetts town that has a nationally recognized yahoo group called conspedpac.</p>

<p>There are no magic bullets (or if there are, no one gave us any). But, you can learn a lot from the parents who know what is out there.</p>

<p>Oh, and in the small success piles, my son with the speech delay and dyslexia went 3-1 in a debate tournament against teams from Harvard, Penn and Brandeis. And, he and his co-author are close to completing their novel and at an author’s conference this weekend, a very good agent gave the co-author constructive verbal and then written feedback and appeared quite solicitous about representing them. You and your kid’s teachers have to make sure that you let her know she is smart and focus on what she is good at as well as her deficits. My son left elementary school and HS with very healthy self-esteem. He knows he is smart and is not embarrassed about being dyslexic. It is just part of who he is.</p>

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<p>m-s, there are a lot of resources out there. There was an absolutely superb website and bulletin board sponsored by the Schwab foundation for the parents of kids with disabilities for 10 years that alas is defunct. I learned a lot from it and from the parents on it. A company called greatschools.net has taken it over. Not nearly as good but all the archived conversations are there (including lots of information on things like how to get accommodations for the SATs). In addition, some of those parents have moved to a site called millermom (not sure who miller is, actually) – the link is [Learning</a> Disabilities (LDs), ADHD and Education Support, The<em>SAFE</em>Site - Home](<a href=“http://millermom.proboards.com/index.cgi]Learning”>Home | Learning Disabilities (LDs), ADHD and Education Support, The*SAFE*Site). There is another site from which I get emails ([Wrightslaw</a> Special Education Law and Advocacy](<a href=“http://www.wrightslaw.com%5DWrightslaw”>http://www.wrightslaw.com)) and a community spedpac in a Massachusetts town that has a nationally recognized yahoo group called conspedpac.</p>

<p>There are no magic bullets (or if there are, no one gave us any). But, you can learn a lot from the parents who know what is out there.</p>

<p>Oh, and in the small success piles, my son with the speech delay and dyslexia went 3-1 in a debate tournament against teams from Harvard, Penn, Princeton(?) and Brandeis. And, he and his co-author are close to completing their novel and at an author’s conference this weekend, a very good agent gave the co-author constructive verbal and then written feedback and appeared quite solicitous about representing them. You and your kid’s teachers have to make sure that you let her know she is smart and focus on what she is good at as well as her deficits. My son left elementary school and HS with very healthy self-esteem. He knows he is smart and is not embarrassed about being dyslexic. It is just part of who he is.</p>

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<p>mantori.suzuki, be prepared for resistance in schools to using adaptive technology. For some crazy reason they think a kid should struggle through it instead of getting the help they need. The same people who would not consider taking glasses away from a kid to make them better at seeing, will try to argue that adaptive technology is a “crutch”. Don’t believe them. It can make a world of difference to your daughter, allowing her to continue to learn content while moving more slowing through the physical aspect of reading. I had to use the glasses analogy a lot when arguing with the school. </p>

<p>BTW - the technology I am talking about was developed for people who are blind. But it works great for people who aren’t too.</p>

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<p>Parent of two dyslexics. One is a college jr. He did not learn to read till the middle of 4th grade even though he had been in “resource” since the beginning of 2nd grade. The problem was they kept using the same method that obviously was not working for him. He finally learned to read by using the Lindamood Bell method. We did not have a center near us at the time. We did have a tutor who specialized in the method. She was a former speech therapist who also had a teaching credential. She was a SAHM with a severe dyslexic son. She found the Lindamood Bell program and spent a summer out of town with her son. She was so impressed that she took the training program. For my son school was always a challenge. Reading becomes more difficult as the material gets longer as you go forward in school. We were able to get books on tape from Recording for the Blind. There is a form you fill out and have signed by someone at the school to qualify. The books are free but you buy the player. (at least you did at the time) not sure what the policy is now.
A good psychologist will also help you write up an appropriate IEP or 504. One thing that helped my son was that they allowed him to have copies of the teachers notes. They also shortened writing assignments, did not count spelling on in class assignments or exams. He also was exempt from spelling tests. All this documentation will also help when it comes time for you to get extra time on the SAT.
My son like your D did great in Math. This is what helped him get into college. He did end up in a major that requires little writing or memorization. He still struggles in college with GE courses that require a lot of reading and writing.
With my youngest we saw the signs much earlier. We started her with the Lindamood Bell reading program through the same private tutor. She went from not seeing any relationship between cat and hat to reading 200 page novels in two years. She developed a love of reading and it is her most favorite thing to do. She is now in high school and she has to work harder for her grades but she has good tools that she developed early on.
My SIL is also dyslexic. She struggled with school but was very bright. She is now a physical therapist. She had to work hard and use every available resource available to her. Her college years were spent in the tutoring center.
Also what helped both of my kids was finding the right schools for them. Both attended a private middle school that believed that all kids have gifts. They may not all be academic.
I would also concentrate on finding things she can have success with. For both my dyslexic kids it was around 5th grade that they went through a phase where they felt they were “dumb”. I remember the day my son came home from the first day of AP Calc and said that several kids he had known from elementary school were in the class. The response they gave him when he walked in was “how are you in this class?”
Good luck to your D.
Also look into the books by Mel Levine.</p>

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<p>OP: I have read CC almost daily since the beginning of my S Jr. year- I have gleaned so much information and insight from the advice/debates of many on this forum. My S was accepted to many top tier schools, and now is in his second yr at one of the top UC’s in So Cal because he LOVES to surf. I wanted him to pick a top LAC, but I digress- You may notice this is my first post. Never planned on posting- but I can’t let your cry for help and insight go unheeded. Almost every poster here has given you very good info, however any advice of waiting, or hoping DD (see- know the CC short hand!) develops coping skills, in my experience is NOT an option. Ever. Dyslexia is a funny one, because it shows up differently, and responds to different approaches. In fact until recently, when MRI imaging proved the brain of a Dyslexic operated differently, many professional, especially school personnel did not really believe it at all. Now, there is no dispute that a dyslexic uses different parts of the brain to read. How to best address it is still in dispute. That’s where you come in. I was told my S could not progress to 2 grd-he couldn’t read. I immediately took action because, 1) he was extremely smart in all ways 2) I remember the exact day I learned to read in 3rd grade and what if felt like 3) the pattern of other boys in our family. This was 1995 when the internet was really available and information was easily accessible. I was an “expert” in my son’s deficiency in about 4 months, picked out what looked like the most successful and documented treatment and took action right then. The school resisted, however, I got lucky with a new principle that was also dyslexic. The beginning of 2nd grade S only went to school until 10:30 then he went to the center for the remainder of the day. Took 6 WEEKS, of intensive therapy and he came out reading in the 95% that yr and never under the 97% any year after- STAR tested by the state every year. Lucky mandatory testing started that year. I then had to remediate math in 3rd and writing in 5th grade. Dyslexia has weird tentacles. Many areas of learning may be involved to various degrees. Advocated for an IEP and 504 every yr, but it was removed in 6th grd. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was easy for him or me. However, he understood his learning difference early on and never felt diminished by it. In 8th gd he was one of a handful of students to get the President’s award, signed by George himself. Needed to have over a 3.75 6-8 gr. AND test above the 85% in all categories of the State testing all three years. You should have seen S face when his name was announced. You should have seen the other parents/coaches face’s too! His was a silent struggle. Fast forward- Top CA public HS, Graduated High honors,8 AP’s with 4-5s, 2 college courses with A-(one from UCLA in Stem Cell research) NHS Pres. Varsity Lacrosse, and many other EC’s and many scholar athlete awards. SAT2- 700 Bio-m 680 USH, ACT 32, w/ 34 in read and 32 Eng. ACT because on practice test he score 220 pts higher than the UC equivalent for the SAT (see chart), also submit best score only. These are his real stats-He was accepted to all UC’s except Berkeley and back east rejected by Brown but accepted by Midd. He is loving college, loving it, and loves his classes. Every year of brain development is crucial. It takes total commitment and advocacy by at least one parent. And Everything Shawbridge has posted is right on- research every tool and website mentioned in those posts, scour the internet, and take action without the school. The school will dodge every solution that cost money, (special ed rights come into play here so they will not acknowledge disability) so it is on you. You too can have your own “success” story, but I want you to know it was the HARDEST thing I have ever had to do over an extended period of time, without hard evidence I was doing anything right! I held a trading position at a top bank and a single mother during all of his school years-I know hard work. Still the hardest but most rewarding thing I have dedicated myself to. It was worth it. (BTW, he went to the Lindamood-bell center in Berkeley in 1995, not saying that is YOUR solution, just info for you.) Good luck and best wishes. You will have your own success story-</p>

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<p>One more success story:
Carol Grieder is dyslexic and just won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.</p>

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<p>I am a 36 year old Dyslexic and returned to college after a 15 year break. The best advice I can give you is to get her a laptop now so that she can start to master it. I have found that the mac operating system works better for those of us that are visual learners, the system is much more graphically intuitive. Also she should learn to speak up for her rights now. A student in a wheelchair should have access to the rooms that their classes are in, a student that needs glasses isn’t asked to take them off at the door. Dyslexics need technology, time and other considerations. Lastly, and this is no joke, start watching all of the PBS programs you can with her. Most Dyslexics have developed a terrific memory, and programs like Nova and Nature can really help to create a foundation of knowledge. </p>

<p>The lingual educational establishment can be difficult, but I have learned that anger toward teacher who don’t understand isn’t productive. They will either get it or they won’t. I would recommend the video F.A.T. City, it helps other to understand what it is like to be a student with a learning disability. </p>

<p>Just a note of encouragement, I was one of those students that was passed through school because my teachers knew I was smart even though I didn’t complete my homework and fail most of my tests. It wasn’t until high school that I learned of my disability, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that technology could really meet my needs. I am now an honors student and enjoying school for the first time.</p>

<p>Best of luck.</p>

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<p>My Uncle, who would be in his late 90s was severely dyslexic at a time when kids were simply called “stupid”. He became a very successful attorney in New York city…a partner. He worked very slowly. It took him more hours to accomplish his work, but he did it. He was also an accomplished artist.</p>

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<p>As SVmom mentioned, Carol Greider, the Nobel Prize winner. I LOVED this story…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/13conv.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/13conv.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Did anyone mention a book titled, “Learning Outside the Lines” ?</p>

<p>One of the authors, Jonathan Mooney, has dyslexia and went to Brown University. He gave a talk to the special ed students at our HS a few years ago and I thought he was truly inspirational. Some of the kids did also.</p>

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<p>Wrightslaw has already been mentioned, but bears repeating. It’s an amazing source of information about special education law and advocacy. One of the founders, Pete Wright, is an attorney who represents children with special educational needs, and who himself struggled with learning disabilities including dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADHD. Pete has argued and won cases before the U. S. Supreme Court.
[Wrightslaw</a> - Our Mission & the Wrightslaw Story](<a href=“http://www.wrightslaw.com/us.htm#founders]Wrightslaw”>http://www.wrightslaw.com/us.htm#founders)</p>

<p>Wrightslaw books, especially Special Education Law and From Emotions to Advocacy, gave me the ammunition to keep schools from running roughshod over me at IEP meetings.</p>

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<p>m-s, just one additional piece of data. We have one more success to report. My son finished his first semester at a top-ranked LAC and received his grades: 3 A’s and and one A+. The latter was in one of his likely majors. [I don’t know what percentage of the class gets A’s and or A+'s – how bad the grade inflation is. He thought he would get an A+ in another class but didn’t. But, in the classes in which he had information, he did significantly better than many of his classmates. He got a 98, 99 and 100 on the three tests in the first course, and the median was something like 77.]</p>

<p>There is a cost to this. He worked very hard even though he chose a schedule that played to his strengths. He was exhausted by the end of the semester (not just tired, but bumping into walls tired) and just came home to rest and visit with friends. And, success of this sort requires sacrifices. I proposed that we take a one week ski vacation in the Canadian Rockies in March when his and my daughter’s vacation schedules overlap. He said, “I have a significant paper due at the end of term in one of my courses. I love skiing but skiing is usually not a relaxing vacation. There’s no time for work and I wouldn’t have energy for it. I’ll need to work on that paper over vacation.” So, planning, some sacrifice, and energy management are key if your child is like ours. There will be many more hills to climb, and significant bumps in the road still to cope with, but at least I can report a first semester success.</p>

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<p>I’m dyslexic and functioning fine. I love to read, but I’ve never been very good at it, or very fast. I have recently gotten much better at reading using some software that trains you to recognize and process words instead of sounding them out. I think it is called EyeQ? I agree with the person who said to get her a laptop, or a small netbook. I have a hard time writing by hand, but I have very few problems typing. I don’t know what the difference is, but I can spell most words without even thinking about it when I am typing, even though I have a hard time with them when I am writing.</p>