by Rachel Gargan

Created on: July 21, 2008

The experiences of Dyslexics have changed dramatically from one generation to the next. When my mother (from whom I got my dyslexia) went to school, her lack of ability in spelling, forgetting words mid sentence and confusion over left and right resulted in her being labelled as lazy and stupid. She kept her head down at school and tried to avoid any thing that showed her dyslexia when she left. It was embarrassing for her and she did not receive the help she needed.

Today my own experiences are very different. My dyslexia was luckily caught early. I still remember my father's explosion of anger at the dinner table when mum reported back from my year six parents evening that I was only just achieving the same level of maths and English as a year two student.

My Dad worked at the school I attended and being a teacher he knew how to turn my schooling around. I had no escape. He spoke to my teacher regularly and knew before I did what homework I would be getting so I could not hide it from him. He would often check it and make me rewrite it so it made sense! Many hours of frustrated argument often ensued as I tried to explain what I wanted my essay to say and he tried to explain that my essay actually said. When he read them back to me, I often had problems understanding them myself!

With my father's help my dyslexia began to become a lot less noticeable and I was able to achieve average grades at school. His help however was all informal and I was not formally diagnosed until I was at university. And there I found even more help, through technology and lecturers willing to copy notes for me or speak into my dictaphone. My dyslexia is no longer easy to spot. Only my driving instructor who always ends up shouting "No left! Left!" or any one who has read the first draft of my essays would know.

All in all my experience has been the complete opposite of my mother's. I have not seen dyslexia as something to hide and be embarrassed about, but as with many disabilities something to work around and to motivate me to work harder. My biggest difficulty at university was finishing books before they were due in, as a slow reader I struggled to finish reading them on time and had to get them out a week or two in advance! Holds were an absolute curse as the book to be returned earlier, thank God for photocopiers! Still the great thing about dyslexia is that it gives you a unique way of thinking that allows you to think out side the box and work around the problems it creates. For example, my mother can not tell left from right, but her sense of direction is brilliant. She recently guided me to my landlord's office Leicester on returning from university, which was hard to find and we had only been too once! She simply remembered all the landmarks on the route and followed them like a dot to dot! Not exactly the standard way of navigating!
In this respect Dyslexia could be viewed as gift, and arguably a curse at the same time! Now you ask how can you claim that not knowing left from right or forgetting words mind sentence is a gift? Well, dyslexic people are often gifted with average or higher intelligence and creative abilities. Look at Albert Einstein. It may make basic skills, like essay writing and even handwriting difficult but it does frequently result in a brilliantly fast mind and fantastic conversational skills and may be even an artist!

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