Is Dyslexia even Real?

Question

Hello,

I have had this debate with many of my friends and I am not sure at all whether Dyslexia is actually a real thing.

So, dyslexia means that they find it hard to read and write, but a few years ago a child that cannot do this would just be called "thick", "stupid" or "bad at it"... not dyslexic.

If someone can't do something... they just can't do it. Not that they should be ridiculed for it, but we could go in to details for reasons why people can't do other things and give them a name, but there is no need!

Say for instance that a child is bad at football, should there be a special name that means this? EG. 'Footlexic' Why not just say, "He's bad at playing football"?

Answer 1

dyslexia is not just about having a hard time reading or writing. It's about seeing something different than it is - where your mind inverts the order of things when you read or write. This makes reading and writing very difficult, but one that suffers from it can be taught ways to live with it and deal with it better than to do nothing about it.

Answer 2

Yes, I think it is real. My friend who is now 20 yrs old was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 10. He says that when reading, the letters did not make sense to him and he could see the same word several times and it always looked different to him. He laboured really hard with a special eduction teacher and finally learned to read when he was 14! Now he is an honours university student studying History, so he is not thick at all. He has almost all of his textbooks on tape and listens to them as his reading speed is still slow. Even now when I read his writing, letters are often reversed or sometimes jumbled, but the content is intelligent and clear.

Answer 3

Oh, it's real all right! When I was a kid, I never heard the name. so I called it 'dancing numbers'. I could do math problems, understand the principles completely, then turn in the work only to get an F grade. Looking at it again, I could see that it was indeed wrong, with numbers in new places where I KNEW they didn't belong. And I had no clue how this could have happened. Only much later did I discover the reason for this weird phenomenon.

Mary D, you just scared me. I read your dyslexic sentence perfectly the first time. Guess I learned how to compensate...

Answer 4

Is this a real question? research dyslexia and then you will know. I had to do a project on this and yes it's a real thing. Words to them a jumbled around making it difficult to read. It's like a kid playing football with no hands...yea he's going to be bad at it but maybe if he was able to get prosthetics he'd be good at the game. imagine having to read something that looked like this:

Drea mr. persidnet,
I have dylseixai. It si hrda fro me to reda waht souhld i od?

took you longer to read and understand didn't it? dyslexia can be overcome but it takes hard work.

Answer 5

We label things so we will know how to treat it. When we use the label Dyslexia then we know how to treat the symptoms. The difference between a drunk and an alcoholic is that the word Alcoholic is used to start working on a plan of recovery. So when you say "he's stupid" I get an image of someone who is willingly ignorant. When you say he is dyslexic I think of someone who gets numbers and letters backwards sometime.

Answer 6

I don't really know much about dyslexia, but it's different from not being to play football. If you're bad at football, you can keep on training and you'll end up being not that bad. With dyslexia, it's different because there is something in your brain that makes you incapable of reading if you don't get help. Your brain can't process the letters you're reading. It's really different.

Answer 7

It would pay for you to read on Dyslexia. You obviously have made an uninformed opinion. That never comes out sounding intelligent. My cousin is Dyslexic. He's a very intelligent man. He wears a special pair of glasses that have lenses that make it possible for him to see numbers and letters correctly. It was a blessing to him.

Answer 8

Doubtful. I've known a few of people with it, and everyone of them used it as an excuse for being an idiot.
They'd claim dyslexia whenever they did things that anyone with the least amount of common sense would know better, didn't know basic facts, or made an *** of themselves in public.

Answer 9

It is real. I have a touch of it myself. I sometimes transpose numbers. I will see it as something different than what it really is. Say if I am writing a column of numbers and come across 4,589 I might write it down as 4,859. It is just how your eyes see the numbers and letters. One eye will get ahead of the other and confuse your brain on what you are actually seeing.

Answer 10

Dyslexia is very real.

It is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

Adopted by the IDA Board of Directors, Nov. 12, 2002. This Definition is also used by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

* Studies show that individuals with dyslexia process information in a different area of the brain than do non-dyslexics.

* Many people who are dyslexic are of average to above average intelligence.