Deslexia: Cope with It or Overcome It

Your child is starting their first day of school and what do you get, a phone call from the school stating that your child is not like the rest and your heart skips a beat. You find out that your child has a learning disability, better yet, they call it dyslexia. From there you go frantic and start to find a cure or at least why and how to deal with a learning disability that could label your child for the rest of his or her life.

So what is dyslexia? It comes from the Greek words dys "poor" and lexis "words" and effects 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. population, only 5 out of every 100 people with dyslexia are recognized and receive assistance.(A. Marshall, 2004) It is an inherited condition in which people with dyslexia have a larger right-hemisphere in their brains than those of normal readers which makes it extremely difficult to read, write, and spell, despite at least average intelligence. It is also accompanied by left-handedness somewhere in the family. http://www.dyslexia-parent.com However, the sooner the child is treated for dyslexia the more favorable the outcome and individuals with dyslexia will respond successfully to appropriate intervention. http://www.dys-add.com/define.html

Treatment for dyslexic children can have a positive effect to live a normal life as there are several methods or treatments that can be done for your child to overcome or cope with their learning disability.

Learning strategies to overcome dyslexia can make a big difference in the performance of a dyslexic child. www.dyslexia-parent.com

A multisensory method can really help: this involves teaching children to learn spellings, for example, not only by hearing and saying the sounds of the letters, but also by using their visual and tactile memories by writing the letters in the air, on the carpet, making them with plasticine or in very large handwriting on big sheets of paper. This gives the brain a visual and tactile memory of the word as well as the memory of hearing the sounds of the letters.

Dyslexic children have several strengths in three important areas like creativity, physical co-ordination and empathy with others. These children show examples of their creativity and imaginative in their drawings and their coordination skills in sports, games, and other activities which require physical coordination that non-dyslexic children find difficult to do. Unfortunately, the frustration and bullying that dyslexic children experience at school helps them to learn empathy with other children's experiences of difficulty.

"A child with dyslexia usually experiences frustration every day, and school provokes anxiety," says Jill Lauren, M.A., a learning specialist and author of That's Like Me! Stories about Amazing People with Learning Differences. There are three general categories of treatment programs for dyslexic children who are developmental,