Appleton man’s battle with dyspraxia

2:00pm Saturday 12th November 2011 in News

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THIS week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week.

Jonathan Levy, a 20-year-old living in Appleton, whose interests include football, politics and showbiz, has a mild form of the condition. This is his story…

“I HAVE a mild form of dyspraxia, a neurological condition which can make even the simplest tasks a struggle.

“Dyspraxia is thought to affect up to 10 per cent of the population and can run in families. Males are three times more likely to be affected than females.

“I’ve always been slower than most in reaching milestones such as learning to ride a bike.

“Upon reaching school age I avoided games, was unable to tie my shoelaces and stood out with my ‘chicken scratch’ handwriting.

“English and foreign languages were two of my strongest subjects but I struggled greatly with maths, science and anything practical.

“I got through GCSE maths with a D but despite private tuition and resits was unable to advance to a C. I still vow that one day I will.

“I enjoy socialising and have good friends but many people with dyspraxia have poor social skills and struggle to keep up with their peers.

“Teenage life can be particularly challenging as the high school language and chatter is often fast, witty and difficult to keep up with.

“This can be the time when friends desert you and bullying may creep in, as it becomes obvious that you are different.

“With awareness in autism and dyslexia increasing, I describe dyspraxia as the ‘forgotten cousin’.

“Dyspraxia overlaps with both conditions due to the implications it has for skills like reading and writing. Dyspraxia though, has its own symptoms.

“Children often encounter late development in motor skills like standing and walking then later, difficulties in running and catching a ball. I certainly encountered these difficulties.

“Adults may experience communication and motor difficulties such as learning to drive but, as with many medical conditions, it can affect different people in different ways.

“There is no known cause of dyspraxia nor is there a cure but when facing challenges such as following oral instructions or using office equipment I tell myself that I will succeed, I’ll just have to work much harder.

“My condition hasn’t stopped from me succeeding in exams and entering employment so I’m proud of what I can do and never talk myself down. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is probably the most famous dyspraxic.”

l Dyspraxia Awareness Week runs until Saturday. if you think you or your child may have dyspraxia, visit dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk

Appleton man’s battle with dyspraxia

2:00pm Saturday 12th November 2011

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(1)

THIS week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week.

Jonathan Levy, a 20-year-old living in Appleton, whose interests include football, politics and showbiz, has a mild form of the condition. This is his story…

“I HAVE a mild form of dyspraxia, a neurological condition which can make even the simplest tasks a struggle.

“Dyspraxia is thought to affect up to 10 per cent of the population and can run in families. Males are three times more likely to be affected than females.

“I’ve always been slower than most in reaching milestones such as learning to ride a bike.

“Upon reaching school age I avoided games, was unable to tie my shoelaces and stood out with my ‘chicken scratch’ handwriting.

“English and foreign languages were two of my strongest subjects but I struggled greatly with maths, science and anything practical.

“I got through GCSE maths with a D but despite private tuition and resits was unable to advance to a C. I still vow that one day I will.

“I enjoy socialising and have good friends but many people with dyspraxia have poor social skills and struggle to keep up with their peers.

“Teenage life can be particularly challenging as the high school language and chatter is often fast, witty and difficult to keep up with.

“This can be the time when friends desert you and bullying may creep in, as it becomes obvious that you are different.

“With awareness in autism and dyslexia increasing, I describe dyspraxia as the ‘forgotten cousin’.

“Dyspraxia overlaps with both conditions due to the implications it has for skills like reading and writing. Dyspraxia though, has its own symptoms.

“Children often encounter late development in motor skills like standing and walking then later, difficulties in running and catching a ball. I certainly encountered these difficulties.

“Adults may experience communication and motor difficulties such as learning to drive but, as with many medical conditions, it can affect different people in different ways.

“There is no known cause of dyspraxia nor is there a cure but when facing challenges such as following oral instructions or using office equipment I tell myself that I will succeed, I’ll just have to work much harder.

“My condition hasn’t stopped from me succeeding in exams and entering employment so I’m proud of what I can do and never talk myself down. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is probably the most famous dyspraxic.”

l Dyspraxia Awareness Week runs until Saturday. If you think you or your child may have dyspraxia, visit dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk

Hi, I just wanted to know most of the symptoms in ADHD, and I just have a few questions about it!
– How long does it last for?
– Are you born with it?
– How can this be treated?
– Does it affect a lot of things you do?
– Does it get worse?
– Can it get better?
– And how?
– How can the doctors tell I have ADHD?
– Can you still produce high grades, but struggle?
– Are people with ADHD only distruptive?
– Can you have ADHD but seem calm?

Are you asking these questions because you have ADHD?I dont know how long it lasts,Your born with it.by med. yes it can affect you.I dont know if it gets worse.No it does not get better.yes they can tell.I doubt it but it can.not sure,yea! I? do you have ADHD?

The cause of adhd, is a lack of healthy fats.

take krill oil to fix it, or hemp seed products.

if you can eat fish, if you worry about adhd, then kill it at the source, with healthy fats.

More than 60 miles north of the flashy beach casinos of Biloxi, MS, you come to a place where the earth turns to reddish clay and the lush green fields are stripped of their timber. It’s a place where locals struggle with high unemployment in the most poverty stricken state in the country. The lifespan of an African American born today in Mississippi is the same as an average American in 1960.

A year ago when the BP well blew and spewed millions of gallons of oil daily into the Gulf, local residents near the tiny town of Lucedale jumped at the chance to take jobs to clean up the coast. After all, a $12 an hour job was good money in these parts. and everyone wanted to do their part to defend the coast. But soon they say they realized things were not what they had been promised; training sessions were cut, and respirators were nowhere to be found even though they were described in training manuals.

Former oil clean up workers from Lucedale, MS         all photos: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

“I got no hazmat training and they said it wasn’t safe to wear respirators,” says Lucedale resident Jason Odom. “They gave us our training cards but we never got the training.”

That was the consensus of others attending a “teach-in” last week near a community center outside of Lucedale organized by Exxon Valdez clean up expert Riki Ott and other organizers along the Gulf coast. Workers who toiled in 100 degree temps and thick Louisiana crude last summer joined up with commercial fishermen and other coastal residents who complain of serious health problems they blame on exposure to the oil and dispersants.  

Riki says they all have common symptoms that people share across the Gulf, from the Florida panhandle to the Texas border, all areas impacted by BP oil. Riki, who has written a book on the Exxon disaster called Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, has organized countless meetings in the region to explain the common health prooblems  experienced after the Exxon Valdez spill. and she says the same problems are apprearing in the Gulf.

“I’m trying to educate people about what we went through in Alaska,” she says. “We all need to stand up together and we’ve got to keep on fighting the powers that don’t want to hear this.”

Riki Ott shares information with residents of Lucedale, MS

Nearly all their stories had the same theme. People worked hard, were not given proper training and equipment, and were told that if they complained they would be fired. so, they say, they worked and didn’t complain. But that was last summer. now, many say they are sick and no one has paid their medical bills.

Take the case of Lucedale resident Janet Hennessey. a mother of 4 and grandmother of 2, she says she worked at BP’s boat decontamination facility in Pascagoula. Boats from BP’s Vessel of Opportunity program would be brought in to be cleaned from the tar like oil that stained the ships, some carrying heavily oiled boom and containers of crude that oozed into every boat cavity from top to bottom.

“It made me sick,” Janet says. “I often would have to stop while driving to work and vomit on the side of the road. we had to clean up the oil and maggots and algae would be all over the place. There were hundreds of people working there. and we never saw a respirator.”

Janet says she still feels sick and she fears that the oil she brought home on her clothes may have contributed to health problems her granddaughter now experiences.

Janet Hennessey of Lucedale, MS                              

Roosevelt Love is another who says he got minimal training and virtually no protective gear. and he says he’s still suffering because of it and his doctor is concerned about continuing heart palpitations and breathing problems since he worked on the clean up.

“We worked 12 hours a day seven days a week picking up boom and cleaning up oil. I saw people who passed out from working out there. But we were told not to complain or talk to the press about it or we would be fired. You started to feel like you were being used.”

Ronzie Thomas was an oil clean up supervisor making $15 dollars an hour. He says he got little safety training and never was allowed to use a respirator, even though he says he was working in 100 degree heat and choking on toxic fumes. He still complains of headaches, a sore throat and memory loss.

“The oil would get all over us and we all had the same symptoms, rashes, respiratory problems and coughs. We’ve all been to the doctor but nobody ever paid for our medical expenses.”

Former BP oil clean up supervisor Ronzie Williams of Lucedale, MS

Before the anniversary of the BP oil well blowout, Ronzie and four others were bused to Washington to attend the massive Power Shift conference, a gathering of 10,000 youths from around the country. He says they were well received and got national media attention. But since their return to Mississippi, the local press has been silent. No stories about their medical problems or their recent national exposure.

“It’s shameful that turtles and dolphins get more press than people here,” Ronzie says. “But our cause is just, our sickness is real, and we will be heard.”

As nightfall descended on this rural Mississippi gathering, crickets chirped and barbque grills smoked. Residents forgot their painful experiences and new friendships were made. They enjoyed the company of people who shared a common vision, a mission to tell the world about the human costs of this oil disaster. They seemed a world apart from their troubles in the Gulf.

But 50 miles away on the coast, tar balls continued to wash in, a constant reminder that the troubles of last summer are far from over.

at what time you are selling by the harms plus symptoms of an enlarged prostate, before kindly prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), it seems comparable every person is swift to hint at a bit new to the job representing you to take. enhance this supplement to your diet. appraise this new to the job medication. It’s the complete re tallying things.

There is an added option: removing positive foods commencing your diet. though a fit diet cannot heal an enlarged prostate, the appropriate keep upright of foods bottle reduce the outbreaks of BPH symptoms.

During his identifiable struggle together with symptoms of BPH, R. Rosenthal began to footstep his food intake. by means of this process, he exposed a guide of symptom flare-ups subsequent the burning up of selected foods. Rosenthal began to inquiries these foods in addition to bring into being with the intention of tyramines moreover additional vaso-active amines triggered his symptoms.

Because vaso-active amines come to mind unaffectedly in foods, Rosenthal bring into being with the intention of the paramount street to reduce his symptoms was to reduce his intake of foods in the midst of the amines. He plus exposed with the intention of monosodium glutamate, extra usually acknowledged because MSG, which is new to countless foods all through the manufacturing process, may possibly trigger his BPH symptoms.

Rosenthal at that moment compiled a file of foods to avoid in enjoin to reduce symptom flare-ups of kindly prostatic hyperplasia symptoms. He was talented to crack these foods hooked on a number of categories, including: dairy, fruits, vegetables, proteins, fermented foods, beverages, soups, then sauces.

Once Rosenthal indifferent fact foods commencing his diet, he was skilled to manipulation the outburst of his symptoms. while mentioned before, a adjustment in diet cannot heal an enlarged prostate, except it bottle achieve source of revenue in the midst of an enlarged prostate extra bearable.

1. Foods That Promote Healthy Prostate Function
2. Advanced Prostate Cancer Symptoms – how to Reduce Its Symptoms
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For Kathy Kresin and her six-year-old son, David, every day is filled with new experiences, and new challenges.

“It’s day to day, and you have to take every little baby step and appreciate it, and you do appreciate things more,” said Kresin.

David is diagnosed with Autism. “For David, the biggest struggle has been verbal communication, and that’s the red flag that we first noticed when he was young,” she said. “At 18-months he didn’t have any language at all.”

Pediatrician Dr. David Kaufman with Children’s Physicians, says because there is no known cause, plenty of theories exist for why a child is autistic.

One strong belief by some, vaccines can lead to the disorder.

“From our standpoint again, there is no controversy nor debate, vaccines do not cause autism and they did not cause autism previously,” said Dr. Kaufman, whose opinions are consistent with the Center for Disease Control.

He says another rumor, with no medical proof, is that having children too close together can spur the disorder. “We think more than likely there’s a stronger genetic disorder then there would be to a birth order or closeness of births in a family.”

What is important, screening early in children, like David, who may exhibit symptoms.

Doctors say as soon as soon as a child is diagnosed with Autism, therapy should begin. for David, that meant occupational, physical, and speech therapy, and now he even uses an i-Pad to communicate with his kindergarten class.

He uses pictures to form sentences on a $189 iPad app. It’s called Proloquo2go, and is much more budget-friendly than the $8,000 device used in the past.

There is no cure for Autism, but some patients do improve over time. Kresin says appreciation for any break throughs is key. “For the most part, if you look for it, you can find a lot of joy and a lot of happiness in our day.” her days with David are filled with hope.

Kresin has a blog where she shares her experiences, in hope of being a resource for other families dealing with Autism. to read her entries, click here.

There are also other support groups, like the Autism Society of Nebraska. there is an Omaha chapter that holds fun events monthly.

Another organization is Parent Training and Information-Nebraska. they help families of children with all different disabilities, including autism.

Sharon Orduna works for the organization and also has a daughter with the disorder. “It’s just a lot of unknowns, but there’s so much hope now, and so much more that we have today that we didn’t have 10 or 12 years ago, so many more resources, these kids can succeed, they can live independent lives,” said Orduna. “They can go on to college, we are seeing it, and that’s one of the things here at PTI that we are committed to doing, is supporting families so they can see that their child succeeds.”

Orduna says getting support is key. “One of the things that we can do here at PTI, is direct families to some support groups out there,” she said. “I just think it is just paramount that families link arms with other families who actually are walking in their shoes, I think it’s just so important.”

The PTI-Nebraska Director, Glenda Davis said finding good information can be difficult for parents, and knowing where to turn will help. “When you’re faced with a child who has autism, or any disability, it’s just a whole different world out there, so what we do, is try to provide the families with the knowledge they need to have, the resources they need to do the possible best for their children.”

There is also other opportunities for families with special needs children, like a “sensory friendly” movie at AMC Oakview 24 Theaters. they have a movie on one Saturday a month, where the lights are left dimly on, the sound is lower, and children are allowed to move around freely. the cost is regular price. This month, the movie is “Gnomeo and Juliet” and will air February 12th at 10 a.m.

There is also a push for Autism awareness by another organization, Autism Speak. the group is aiming to get individuals and businesses involved in an annual project called “Light it up Blue” where landmarks are lit with a blue light for awareness. the event takes place on April 1 and 2. for more information click here.

“when I was in grade school, and I’d sit down to do my school work, the amount of effort it would take me to do one math problem or read one paragraph felt like an eternity,” said the 17-year-old junior at Shoals Christian Academy in Florence. “But all that was before we had a name for it.”

After years of testing for everything from food allergies to attention deficit disorder, Stephen finally learned it was dyslexia that had hindered his academic progress.

He’s not alone. Estimates are that as high as 15 percent of school children in the United States have a severe form of dyslexia, which is a neurological disorder that impairs the brain’s ability to process information, particularly reading, spelling and writing. in Alabama, 20,000 students struggle with dyslexia, and often, these children aren’t diagnosed until it’s too late to totally reverse the effects of the

Officials at the federal, state and local levels say they’re meeting these students’ needs without giving them an added burden of being labeled as

Parents, however, say the schools don’t do enough to ensure their dyslexic children find success.

Alexa Posny, assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services for the U.S. Department of Education, said a label of dyslexia isn’t important to actually treating the disorder in the classroom.

“when we think of a child with a disability, we don’t need another category, and it’s not that I don’t believe dyslexia isn’t one of them,” she said. “to me, it’s irrelevant. if a child has a disability and needs support and services, we need to provide that.”

Melissa Edmonds, Stephen’s mom, knew long before he was diagnosed with dyslexia that something wasn’t right. Finding someone to put a name to the problem was another matter.

“we were all relieved when we knew what it was,” she said. “we felt like we could do something then.”

Edmonds didn’t just help her child cope with his dyslexia. She’s being trained in the Orton Gillingham method of learning, a method used by educators to help those with dyslexia.

“we were driving back and forth to (a specialist) in Decatur a few times a week,” Edmonds said. “I joke about having lost a car in all this, but we did because we put so many miles on one. how many parents can afford to do that, or would go to that kind of trouble? It’s not been easy.”

In schools, educators are taught to identify students who fall behind. when that happens, a problem-solving team steps in to initiate a more intensive, individualized approach to the student’s needs. if that fails to solve the issue, the student is then placed on an individual education plan to help overcome the problem.

Nowhere in all of this is the actual problem named.

Edmonds said that’s where the disconnect between educators and parents comes into play.

With her training in place, she has begun tutoring local students who have dyslexia.

“I’ve had parents come to me in tears and tell me that a teacher said there was no such thing as dyslexia,” she said. “when that happens, you know there’s a problem because the numbers are there. I’ve had teachers tell me they’ve not seen a dyslexic student in years. It’s not because there aren’t any; it’s because the teacher hasn’t identified any.”

While the education model has shifted the emphasis from categorizing learning disabilities to treating the group, Posny said stories such as Edmonds’ illustrate problems exist.

“Early on, we spent a lot of dollars providing assistance and how to do that effectively, and lately, a lot of time has been on response intervention,” she said. “It sounds like we may need to go back and look at diagnostics.”

Putting the focus back on how teachers are trained at the college and university level is one way to help alleviate the problem, said Mabry Whetstone, director for special education services for the Alabama State Department of Education.

“The core element that’s missing here is that dyslexia is primarily a general education issue, and it needs to be dealt with through general education,” he said. “There needs to be more opportunities for training general education teachers around dyslexia to help prevent dyslexia from ever becoming serious enough to qualify for being in special education.”

Vicky Hulsey, an associate professor of elementary education at the University of North Alabama, said

literacy and reading are the core elements in the

“if you have a child with dyslexia, it doesn’t mean he can’t master the content of the curricula; it means they need alternative ways to reinforce that content beyond the written word,” she said.

Some schools locally “work beautifully, while others still function as though its the 1950s,” Hulsey said.

At the heart of the matter for special education coordinators on the front lines, including David Jones at Sheffield, are resources.

“we do what’s asked of us with the resources we have, which are limited,” he said. “if we had unlimited amounts of money, there’d be no end to how we could help, but that’s just not how it is.”

Jones estimates there are an average of three students in the system at any given time who have been independently identified and diagnosed with dyslexia. At that point, he said, a system is in place to help them succeed.

“But I see that number growing,” Jones said. “Like autism, dyslexia is a hot-button issue. As parents become more educated and as pediatricians make referrals to early intervention programs, we’re only going to see more and more students with this.”

Where the money will come from to help those students is unclear.

Were the resources for meeting the needs of dyslexic children in place, Marcia Ramsey believes her facility, the Greengate School

in Huntsville, would be

“Children’s needs are not being met in public schools for one reason or another,” she said. “My perspective is that public school teachers are doing their darnedest; they’re not actively trying to sabotage it.”

Ramsey founded Greengate in 2002 because, like Edmonds, her son struggled in the public school system. She recalls the nights he’d cry over his school work, unable to complete the assignments. After being trained in the Orton Gillingham method, Ramsey began working with her son as well as other children who were identified with the problem.

Now, 37 students come to Greengate for tutoring each week from as far away as Blountsville, near Birmingham, and even Mississippi.

At a cost of between $60 and $120 a week, she said it can be cost prohibitive for some families.

“we understand we’re not within everyone’s reach, and that distresses us,” Ramsey said. “But we also know this is the method that works and what makes people come to us.”

Since 2002, parents have had the benefit of receiving free testing for dyslexia from the Scottish Rite Association.

Jerry Vurfitt, the foundation president for the organization, said dyslexia is often pushed aside in public schools because it’s fraught with legal connotations.

“by law, once a student has been identified with dyslexia, schools are legally bound to deal with it, so they’re reluctant to stick their necks out,” he said. “They kind of say, ‘Okay. what do we do now? and we have no way to deal with it anyway.’ They admit, basically, that the car is on fire, but they don’t have a fire extinguisher.”

Because his testing service is free, parents often seek the help of the association. At Greengate, the cost is $425.

But experts agree that catching dyslexia on time

is critical, especially if the goal is to alleviate the symptoms.

Scottish Rite won’t test a child until after he reaches the age of 7 and has been through half of the first grade.

Hulsey said that’s too late.

“we know that, if a preschooler is having significant language delays and it’s not treated, it will (develop to) an almost full-blown learning disability by the third grade.”

Suzanne Nester saw the delays early on in her third child, Livi.

“She just wasn’t getting it, and she was struggling,” Nester said. “I knew something was wrong; I just didn’t know what.”

Nester contacted Greengate and got Livi tested. The test confirmed that Livi,

who was 6 at the time, had dyslexia.

“I was relieved at that point because we finally had an answer,” she said. “Now, I could do something about it.”

Nester contacted Edmonds, and now Livi receives an hour of tutoring at school during the same hour her classmates spend reading.

Nester and Edmonds have gone a step further and are in the process of organizing a nonprofit organization, Dyslexia Shoals, that will serve as a resource for parents who are struggling with their dyslexic children. The center is expected to be housed in St. Florian and offer tutoring later this year.

At the state level, changes also are in the works.

Vurfitt said he has worked with Whetstone at the state level in order to incorporate the Orton Gillingham method throughout the curriculum, and about 40 teachers statewide have been certified.

Still, the gaps persist, and despite the state’s offer to pay for teachers to undergo training, too few teachers have taken up on the offer, Whetstone said.

“We’d hoped to train as many as 400 this summer at the sessions, but less than 30 have signed up,” he said. “It’s intensive, but that just means we have to be willing to work with the teachers where they are — in the classroom.”

Michelle Rupe Eubanks can be reached at 256-740-5745 or .

You’ve heard the common refrain, ‘Oh, I’m so bad at maths!’ But for up to eight per cent of us, a condition called dyscalculia means numbers are a serious struggle, with serious consequences. Scientists are now revealing its biological basis, and in Australia there’s a push for it to be seen as a legitimate and unique disability.

Natasha Mitchell: well, the full force of 2011 is with us, isn’t it, what a tumultuous start to this la Nina year for so many of us here in Australia, in Brazil, in Sri Lanka. It’s hard to comprehend the scale of it all. Natasha Mitchell on board, welcome to a year of fresh shows on the rich life of the mind. And comprehending the scale of things is in fact something we’re looking into today, but in a totally different context. How’s your head for numbers?

Numeracy skills are on the nose in Australia. a 2008 COAG report concluded that half of us, yes half, don’t have the skills needed to meet the complex demands of work and life in a modern economy. It’s a common refrain isn’t it, you’ve heard it ‘I’m crap at maths’ of course that can be for many reasons: how it’s handled in the classroom, lack of opportunity, or perhaps because our parents have transferred their own fear of maths to us. But as you’ll hear today, some of us legitimately be able to blame our brain or biology. Learning difficulties are genuine.

We’re more familiar with dyslexia, that difficulty with processing words, but it seems that up to 8% of us struggle with numbers, arithmetic and calculations because of a legitimate condition called dyscalculia, a condition that’s flown under the radar for too long. Corinne Podger is on the case.

Lucie: I do lots of French activities with my dad, create movies with my dolls, dance, I write stories with my computer all the time and would print it out and my mum takes it to work and shows a man who does lots of scripts and he says she could become a script writer. I’m not trying to brag or anything but I love writing stories, I love to read and I’m reading a really good book at the moment that my dad got me and I really enjoy reading.

Corinne Podger: Lucie is 9, she’s articulate and quick-witted and fluent in the French, English and Italian which is spoken at home. Her parents Astrid and Xavier are both school teachers. they want her to learn, and she likes school. But Lucy is receiving tuition for learning difficulties at an organisation called SPELD, Specific Learning Difficulties, Victoria and here’s why.

Can you tell the time right now?

Lucie: I can read slightly the Roman numerals: 35 (pause) 35 — no I know it’s 35 but I just can’t read because it’s something to go to, no I don’t know. I know it’s something 35.

Corinne Podger: And what time is it Xavier?

Xavier: 7.30 yes. Lucy’s maths difficulties we found that out when she was in prep and she’s been struggling since, and she’s not getting it unfortunately, and I don’t know why and how, it’s just very frustrating at times.

Astrid: Her writing was always very good; it’s the maths that has been the issue. we sometimes have the struggle at school with making people understand that it’s not because Lucy doesn’t want to do it, or can’t be bothered; it’s because she really cannot do it. She’s unable to retain a lot of the information.

Xavier: Lucie is in a way lucky that we are teachers because we are able to identify and try to remedy, but if you are an average parent and you don’t know what’s going on you know you think the kid just needs to work harder and then you put pressure on them and it’s just not working.

Corinne Podger: Lucie has difficulties with auditory processing, a mismatch between ear and brain. But that doesn’t fully explain why she can’t process numbers as well as other kids her age. She can count and she’s memorised her times tables but anything involving calculation, multiplying, dividing, telling the time, getting change at the shops, quantities and amounts is a mystery. Now she’s being tested by Professor Bob Reeve, a developmental psychologist at the mathematical cognition laboratory at the University of Melbourne. he believes Lucie is a classic dyscalculic — so what is it?

Bob Reeve: Some people refer to this as number blindness. what we actually see specific to number is that once they’ve learned a concept such as simple addition they don’t transfer or use that knowledge to study similar ideas like subtraction. whereas the person who has been poorly taught or who has poor education still has a basic idea of numeracy concepts. It really seems as if people with dyscalculia don’t see the concepts — they can learn by rote to do certain things but it appears not to transfer, or generalise to similar problems and tasks.

It is often co-morbid with other problems such as dyslexia, sometimes it’s very separate from dyslexia. I think the general agreement now is that there is a pure form that is not associated with other learning difficulties. we suspect that it is genetic, or at least a neurological problem in some respects.

Brian Butterworth: usually they’ve always been bad at maths right from the word go. Very often they will have somebody else in the family who’s bad at maths though not always. Secondly, they don’t respond to normal instruction very well. so the kid who’s missed some classes and is falling behind, that kid can be brought up to speed with the appropriate additional help. whereas a dyscalculic, he won’t be able to catch up. so the dyscalculic needs very specialised interventions in the same way that dyslexics need specialised interventions to help them to learn to read.

Corinne Podger: One of the world’s great maths evangelists, cognitive neuroscientist Professor Brian Butterworth from University College London, author of books like The Mathematical Brain. He’s collaborated with Bob Reeve and is a leading light in dyscalculia research.

Brian Butterworth: there are two things that we know about and we don’t know an awful lot at this stage. One is there’s an abnormality in the parietal lobes, and the parietal lobes are the critical areas representing numerical magnitude in the brain. so knowing that five-ness is bigger that four-ness, that’s a parietal lobe function, and we know there’s abnormality in the critical little bit of the parietal lobe that represents number magnitude. Elizabeth Isaacs at the Institute of Child Health and her colleagues have found that there’s less grey matter in that little bit of brain in her dyscalculics than there were in her control group.

Another group in Stanford, led by Vinod Menon, have found that the connections between this part of the parietal lobe and other parts of the brain are different in dyscalculics. The other thing that’s now known is that the activity in these areas is different in dyscalculics than in matched controls. so we think that both structure and functioning are different in dyscalculics. And of course there is a problem about causal relationships here. so if you don’t do much maths because you’re dyscalculic does that reduce the grey matter density in the relevant bit of brain? does it change the way in which connectivity is set up? does it change the pattern of activation, or is it the other way around, that you start off with different grey matter density and this leads to dyscalculia? These are things that we’re only now beginning to investigate because only now have we got information about brain abnormalities in these dyscalculate learners.

Corinne Podger: The first person with dyscalculia that you came across, a woman called Kathy. how did she process numbers?

Brian Butterworth: well she processed them really badly so if you asked her what 9 + 6 was she would have great difficulty doing that, and yet she was able to program computers, she was able to run a small software business. But for her it was really, really difficult. And we asked her to describe her mental picture of numbers and that was really, really strange, because what she would do was she would say well I have this mental picture and I’ll draw it out for you of what the numbers look like. And she would go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then I put the next lot of numbers which are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 and then I put the next lot of numbers which are 10, 11, 12 and so on up to 20. so she was representing 5 twice in her mental picture and she was representing 10 twice and 20 twice so that when she tried to count through in the way that, say, an early learner would count through she got things wrong. so she had a very, very abnormal mental representation.

Corinne Podger: what do we know about the causes of dyscalculia, is it inherited?

Brian Butterworth: we think it’s inherited in a lot of cases, we don’t know if it’s inherited in all cases. we know it’s inherited from twin studies, so if one identical twin has it the other identical twin is very likely to have it. we also know that it persists into adulthood. there was a study done by Ruth Shalev in Tel Aviv which showed that of the dyscalculics that she tested at age 11, most of them were dyscalculic at the age of 17, and almost all of them were still very poor at arithmetic. so it’s something you’re most likely born with though it may not be heritable in some of those cases, and it persists. And we’ve been doing studies of lots of what we call high functioning dyscalculics who are dyscalculate even though they are very successful in their work, and they are very intelligent and they’ve had all the advantages.

Corinne Podger: Someone who’s had all of the advantages is Professor Paul Moorcraft, with a distinguished career in the military and international affairs. he now heads up the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis in London and we spoke on a crummy phone line as he headed off to oversee Sudan’s independence referendum. Paul was diagnosed dyscalculic by Professor Butterworth a few years ago.

Paul Moorcraft: It’s partly if somebody dictates a number to me over the phone, for example, I can’t remember for more than two or three numbers. And when I physically write them down I will inadvertently transpose them. I have trouble reading train timetables. to actually explain what it is it’s difficult to do, I just cannot understand maths. It’s not a phobia, it’s not a psychological thing, it is a physical inability even no matter how hard I try, and even though I’m a professor, I cannot write down numbers and I have a spatial awareness problem when it comes to numbers. if you talk to me about dimensions of something. I have trouble visualising that.

I worked in the Ministry of Defence and I had a safe, and there were documents, and then you weren’t supposed to write the numbers down for security reasons. And I used to add up with my fingers which is a bit embarrassing if you’re in senior meetings in Whitehall in London. so I hid it for many, many years.

Corinne Podger: And there would be a lot of people listening to this thinking ah, that sounds like me, I’m dyscalculic. But you found that it’s not very common.

Brian Butterworth: It’s about as common as dyslexia. so it’s somewhere between 3% and 6% those are the best prevalence estimates that we have at the moment. so that means 1 child in each class is probably going to be dyscalculic on average. And if you look, for example, at the economic consequences of this, they are actually rather serious. if you could just get the bottom 10% of arithmetic learners up to the minimum OECD level, which isn’t very high then you would increase GDP growth by quite a lot. so for example in England if we could get the 10% half of those would be dyscalculic up to the minimum level that would increase our GDP growth by .44%. Now that doesn’t sound very much but if you know that GDP growth in the UK is say 2% and that additional .44% is actually a 25% increase in GDP growth.

So I think one of the things that’s really important going forward is to find effective ways of getting dyscalculics up to at least a reasonable level of competence at arithmetic, and that’s one of the things that we’re currently trying to do.

Corinne Podger: You’ve designed a test for dyscalculia which I understand is used in schools in Britain — now how does it work?

Brian Butterworth: we wanted a test which as far as possible didn’t depend upon your educational experiences. so if you have a standard arithmetic test then if you’ve been to a good school you’re going to be better at it on the whole than if you’ve been to a bad school. so we wanted something that was very simple and something which targeted these simple functions in the parietal lobe. so the critical tests in our screener for dyscalculia is how quickly and accurately you could innumerate objects in a display, how quickly you could say that are 5 objects there. And how quickly and how accurately you can compare two numbers, how quickly you can say that 5 is bigger than 3.

And we find this is highly predictive of your ability to do arithmetic, it distinguishes between kids who are bad at arithmetic because they’re dyscalculic and therefore would be bad on these innumeration and comparisons tests from kids who are bad at arithmetic but are not bad on those two tests. And what we say in the screener notes is that if you’re bad at arithmetic but good a innumeration and comparison, then you not dyscalculic, there’s another reason for why you’re bad at arithmetic and the teacher or the educational psychologist then as to try and find out what it is that’s gone wrong in your particular education.

Corinne Podger: Dyslexic kids are being picked up earlier and earlier but what about dyscalculia? well you can’t screen for it before age 6 but Bob Reeve and colleagues are working on spotting infants, even babies, who can’t process numeric information years before they encounter maths.

Bob Reeve: We’ve started to go back pretty much to infancy to look at the precursors of number. And they’re not going to look like what you think of as number, as in counting. so we see them as quantity, the recognition of very small sets of number. The most obvious one that people look at is approximate number, whether children can discriminate between sort of two sets of numbers, or infants can discriminate between two sets of numbers.

Corinne Podger: two sets of things.

Bob Reeve: two sets of things, two sets of objects, two sets of dots, two sets of lines. The idea is that the closer the two sets are together the more difficult it is to discriminate between them and so the ability to discriminate between similar sets is termed ‘approximate number’ and in some sense it’s seen as a precursor for the development of ‘symbolic number’ or of what we might think of as Arabic number. And the idea is that these very basic forms of quantity discrimination support or scaffold the later forms of number. if those early bases are not there then it is very difficult to scaffold or associate these later forms with what we might think of as the cultural development of number — addition, subtraction and counting and so on.

Corinne Podger: These sound like abstract difficulties but research worldwide indicates that they point to dyscalculia. so are there interventions and can they work? well it’s early days.

Bob Reeve: we don’t have an intervention science at this particular point in time and we don’t know if it can be remedied and certain people argue, and it’s a very negative argument, that because it is likely that pure dyscalculia is a brain difficulty, you may not be able to teach it in the same way as you teach other things for that particular group of people.

Brian Butterworth: we know it’s lifelong for some people; we don’t know if they would have still been dyscalculic if they’d had the appropriate intervention. we think that the way to help them is to strengthen what we call basic number concepts. so getting them to do plenty of practice with innumeration, with counting, with comparing numbers and doing very simple addition and subtraction, so they have a feel for numbers which the rest of us take for granted but which they find very difficult to achieve.

Corinne Podger: Difficult but not impossible, as you’re about to hear here on All in the Mind on ABC Radio National going global on Radio Australia and on podcast, I’m Corinne Podger.

Mary Delahunty: most people have automaticity with a lot of these things but people with dyscalculia have to learn the steps, they just don’t have it automatically. they often resort to very primitive methods of calculating or adding or subtracting or whatever they do. because they haven’t developed any strategies for moving on from just doing a one-by-one count.

Corinne Podger: Mary Delahunty is a special education mathematics teacher in Melbourne. Her approach is to fix number concepts in her students’ minds firmly enough so they are not always struggling with the basics. She also helps them to find work-arounds so they can survive in our numeric world.

Mary Delahunty: Just to give you an example of one little boy that I’ve worked with for over 12 months. he was about 9 or 10 at the time and his parents contacted me quite distraught, they had two reports from psychologists that he would never get anywhere with his mathematics and there was no point worrying about it. he was able to count but just, counting by 1s and then he’d go back and when he needed to calculate he would go back and then he’d count the first bit, then he’d count the second bit and then he’d count the whole lot.

Corinne Podger: so perhaps at the age of 9 his development in mathematics was of a much younger child?

Mary Delahunty: I would say he was probably operating as a preschool student, that we would expect to be able to sort and sequence at that time. I used a multi-sensory approach so that every time they touched something they could sort of feel this was a multiple of something, this was another bit to add on. we used buttons to work our additions, and he could go back and check, so after a while he got the idea that he could hold that number, that quantity, in his mind. That led him to be able to actually use his memory rather than overload it to hold a concept in his mind of what a number looked like and what the quantity was.

Corinne Podger: Mary’s put together a goodie box of beads, beans, blocks and seeds to give numbers shape, substance and, hopefully, meaning.

Mary Delahunty: It turns on the senses, it helps to print the image in your mind. When you feel something you can often transfer that into the image of what it looks like, what it feels like. we have icy pole sticks, I have magnetic marbles so we can make groups of things so you can chain and unchain them. we made bean sticks to count by tens… And so…sometimes they’re on that same continuum as all the other students but they need that many more exposures to something before they actually can take it in and hold it in their memory.

Our working memory is really important, because what we’ve implanted in our mind we don’t have to go back and redo, we’re not using our memory to overload what we do so we can move on. so it’s very important that we actually can form those images.

Corinne Podger: There’s also problems sometimes with understanding time, which comes down to numbers but it includes concepts like after and before.

Mary Delahunty: Dealing with time, what I get the children or the students to do first of all stick gum nuts, stick anything on around the clock so that when they go past the 12 they can shut their eyes, touch it. most of our counting around the clock is by 5s or by 10s, or going halfway up the hill and halfway down the hill. so what I get them to do is I actually get them to make a continuous length. so we make our clock with a tape and then we spread it out along the ground, you can double it and make a hill out of it so we are going up the hill and down the hill. Once we’ve learned to count by 5s we can do it with a clock, we roll it back up and put it back into the circular shape so they can see it.

Corinne Podger: Is there a level beyond which people with dyscalculia can’t progress in the sense that somebody who’s blind isn’t going to be able to see?

Mary Delahunty: we can’t cure some of these things. we can improve how they do it but we can also give them shortcuts. we know that we can use talking calculators to help support students, so that when problems are presented they can listen to it being stated first, that helps them to process it in their mind and to get the information correct. or remember a pattern for something that helps short circuit what you need to do to be able to calculate.

Corinne Podger: Mary Delahunty’s gum nut arsenal — it sounds like it’s working wonders. Professor Brian Butterworth wants to know the extent to which dyscalculia might be overcome. He’s designed online classes so that dyscalculic children can do basic maths tasks over and over again. He’s found it does improve arithmetic ability and wants to find out if it also boosts brain function.

Brian Butterworth: It’s been done for dyslexia, and we know that with the right kinds of intervention patterns of activation in the relevant parts of the reading brain change. And one of the interesting things in the dyslexia literature is that the changes are towards making brain activity more normal. Now it wasn’t obvious that that was going to be the outcome. One possibility is that the dyslexic reading brain would find a different way of doing effective reading from the rest of us. But what in fact they found was that the dyslexic brain became more like the normal brain after the intervention.

So one of the things that we’re interested in with dyscalculia is whether intervention makes the dyscalculic brain more normal, or whether the intervention just helps the dyscalculic learner find a different way of doing the same task.

Corinne Podger: There’s been quite a vigorous debate about whether dyscalculia, the neurological difficulty with numbers and maths, is entirely distinct from dyslexia, a difficulty with words and language. has that debate been settled?

Brian Butterworth: I think it has but other people don’t agree with me about this. The problem is that kids who have dyslexia often have dyscalculia, and kids who have dyscalculia often have dyslexia. But not all of them do. so you find kids who are just dyscalculic and kids who are just dyslexic. And if you look at the parts of the brain that are involved in reading, they scarcely overlap at all with the parts of the brain that are involved in arithmetic. That’s one reason for thinking that they are distinct. we are beginning to understand better the kinds of genes that are involved in dyslexia, and they don’t seem to be genes that are involved in dyscalculia. so again, at the genetic level, there seems to be a difference.

But it might be that there’s some common cause for both dyslexia and dyscalculia, we don’t know that yet and that seems entirely possible. what I think to me is clear but to many people in the dyslexia business is not clear, is that dyslexia doesn’t cause dyscalculia. so the fact that you’re not very good at reading of course is going to handicap you in lessons, but in itself it doesn’t actually affect your ability to represent numbers in the brain.

Corinne Podger: Dyscalculia can be a lifelong disability but, like dyslexia, it’s not recognised as such by Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act which is deliberately broad in an attempt to be inclusive. But it leaves schools with no clear guide on who to prioritise for extra help. last year the National Dyslexia Working Party urged the federal government to create a new disability category, that of specific learning difficulties. The recommendation was made with dyslexia in mind but working party member Dr Nola Firth from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute says it could also cover dyscalculia, echoing moves abroad.

Nola Firth: In say America and Canada and the UK the words ‘specific learning disabilities’ are actually in the disability discrimination legislation. But here they’re not. because we haven’t got it specifically stated in law as specific learning disabilities, it’s not so well understood here. perhaps if I can talk a little bit about the history — there was an inquiry in the 70s in the Senate as to whether the ‘specific learning difficulties’ it was called at that stage existed. And, in our country unfortunately, we decided that it was due to bad teaching. It didn’t exist. whereas at a similar time in America, Canada and the United Kingdom, they came to a different conclusion. And they were in fact right and we were wrong.

It was done with the best of intentions but I think as a result of that we’ve lagged behind here. In all those countries all teachers have a mandatory requirement of education in dyslexia and dyscalculia — it’s specific learning disabilities so it covers both. It’s important so that people who have had an informed diagnosis know that they are entitled to reasonable adjustments, which are the words that are used. right throughout their lives. It starts in kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, tertiary education and then workplace, so that they can reach their true potential which in fact might be very high. People can be gifted and have either of these conditions.

Bob Reeve: there is still a strong belief that you can teach all children anything but if you have a subgroup of atypical children, as in dyscalculia, who may need special exposure to teaching practice, we should know about that, we should actually do something about it. we now have to convince policymakers and educators of the value of this.

Brian Butterworth: There’s a circular problem with recognition. In order to get it recognised by education authorities including government you need to be able to have a way of reliably identifying it and I think we’ve got that. you also need to have a way of reliably helping the kids who have that problem, and I think we’re on the way to that. But until we’ve got those two elements in place, parents are not going to say I want my child to be identified as having this particular problem and to get this kind of help for that problem. And without the parents getting active about it governments aren’t going to get active about it. And if you look at the history of dyslexia it’s because the parents of dyslexic individuals were very vocal that governments recognised it..

So what we need is for the current government, in the UK and presumably in Australia as well, to recognise that this is a problem where you can identify the individuals, you can help the individuals and that actually it makes economic sense to put in place programs to identify and help dyscalculic learners.

Astrid: we don’t expect for her to become a scientist or to work in that field but we feel it’s important for her to have enough maths to get her through school and to get her through life. you know just the everyday maths of working out your interest rate, counting back change, all the basic things that we use in everyday life.

Lucie: my teachers, it might help them know that I don’t know, like it’s not that I don’t want to listen, like she’s explaining on the board and I say I don’t understand and then they say you’re not listening. It will help them know well OK she really does not understand.

Natasha Mitchell: Lucie with her mum Astrid and before them, Professor Brian Butterworth, Associate Professor Bob Reeve and Dr Nola Firth, speaking to producer Corinne Podger. Details and oodles of extra resources about dyscalculia on our website as ever, abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind. And on my blog extra audio including an extended interview with Brian — if there’s a man that makes numbers sexy he’s the one.

And more on efforts to have dyscalculia recognised in the next edition of the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association — we’ll have to see how that goes.

So I want to hear about your experiences as a parent, or as a person challenged by numbers, or not, perhaps you’re a maths whizz. Love your stories, particularly on our Audioboo pilot channel, look for ‘speak your mind’ on the website and follow the instructions. or there’s the comments board on this week’s page too.

Thanks to studio engineer Carey Dell, I’m Natasha Mitchell, more heady talk next week. Bye for now.

Radio National often provides links to external websites to complement program information. While producers have taken care with all selections, we can neither endorse nor take final responsibility for the content of those sites.

Celebrity designer Ty Pennington is known for inspiring people with remodeled dream homes and providing tips for functional, stylish decor.

He is also one of millions of Americans who struggle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). other stars like game show host Howie Mandel and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps have also wrestled with the condition throughout their lives.

But for every person at the top of their game who successfully manages their ADHD, there are countless others who aren’t able to. in fact, some with the condition may find themselves at the bottom of society — in prison.

The same mental process evident in people with ADHD may also be associated with a tendency to criminal behavior, some experts say. while the link between the two is not well understood, some researchers are calling for more attention to this problem. Otherwise, there may be high costs to society, they say.

“If ADHD is left untreated, there is a serious risk that long-term problems will maintain substance use, consolidate antisocial attitudes and lifestyles and reduce the potential for rehabilitation,” wrote researchers Susan Young and Emily Goodwin in an editorial last month in the journal Expert Reviews of Neurotherapeutics.

“Given that ADHD is a treatable condition with interventions available … the enormity of this problem and its associated costs are too great to bear,” the researchers said.

ADHD in prisons

ADHD is characterized by impulsive behavior, hyperactivity and inattention, making it difficult to function at home, school or other settings. in the United States, about 5.4 million children ages 4 to 17 were diagnosed with ADHD, and about 66 percent of those children were receiving treatment, as of 2007, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Treatments for the condition include behavioral counseling, parent and/or school training and medications like the stimulant drugs Ritalin, Adderall and Vyvanse.

Boys suffer from the condition at higher rate than girls — 13.2 percent of boys have it, compared with 5.6 percent of girls, according to the CDC.

Recent studies of adult prisoners have shown that not only is ADHD more prevalent among those in prisons than in the general population, but also that within prisons, it’s those with ADHD who seem to cause the most trouble, Goodwin and Young said.

Offenders with ADHD commit more violent acts and have higher levels of substance abuse than other prisoners, according to a study published in June in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. the study also found that having ADHD symptoms were the strongest predictor, followed by alcohol dependence, for violent behavior among the prisoners.

And the trouble may start early. Children with ADHD symptoms have a greater likelihood of committing criminal acts than other children, according to a 2009 study in the Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics led by Jason Fletcher, an assistant professor of public health at the Yale University School of Public Health.

What makes some people with ADHD more prone to crime

There is no certainty that an adult with ADHD will engage in criminal acts, Fletcher said.

“Many people with ADHD do not commit crimes, so it is not deterministic,” he  said.

However, ADHD does seem to be a risk factor for committing violent acts, Fletcher said.  in addition, for some adults with the condition, environmental triggers such as poverty could lead to similar criminal conduct among family members.

“Risky behaviors, including criminal behaviors, do seem to be associated within [families of people with ADHD],” Fletcher told MyHealthNewsDaily. “But the cause is unclear.”

It may be that criminal behavior is more common among those with ADHD because they tend to have other personality disorders along with the condition. Oppositional deviant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder are conditions often associated with ADHD, said Susan Smalley, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center there. People with conduct disorder may have antisocial behaviors, including criminal behaviors, she said.

In fact, several studies suggest that adults with ADHD who also have other conditions such as conduct disorder have a higher risk of criminal actions. Researchers at King’s College London found that ADHD offenders were also more likely than others to have antisocial personality disorder, in which a person manipulates or violates the rights of others, according to a study published in October in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics.

What can be done for those prone to follow this path

Smalley and other researchers have suggested that expanding access to health care services for those with ADHD and other mental disorders would help.

Also, intervening when kids are young may be a key, Smalley said. It is important to accurately diagnose ADHD and then use a “strength-based” approach to treating it: Build on the child’s strengths, while treating the challenging aspects of the condition.

It is critical, she said, to recognize that just like everyone else, people with ADHD have strengths and weaknesses. “I believe this moves the challenge of ADHD into the community more, so that we work on ways to shift our educational systems, etc., to better deal with the large variety of learning styles among our children.”

Fletcher and his colleagues recommend the use of intervention programs and evaluations for steering susceptible individuals away from crime.

“I think the need to increase access to treatments for those with ADHD symptoms would be a valuable policy goal,” he said. “Access can come through schools, typically. But some schools might not have the resources to assist all children with ADHD symptoms.”

Many children with the condition function normally most of the time, but experience high levels of impulsiveness sporadically, Fletcher said. ” Treatments can be very effective if they are followed as prescribed and augmented with parental supervision and support.”

Pass it on: Left untreated, ADHD may increase a person’s tendency to criminal behavior.

• In US, 1 in 5 Teens have serious Mental Disorder
• Kids’ Maturity May Play a Role in ADHD Diagnoses
• Top 10 Mysterious Diseases

MyHealthNewsDaily Copyright © 2010. all rights reserved.

Rumors and misinformation leads many to believe there are many various types of dyslexia. There are not. according to the bodies that govern dyslexia, there’s only one. And for more types of dyslexia tips, continue reading.

There are not different types of dyslexia. There are but, specific symptoms, but if a person does not have most of the symptoms, they are not dyslexic. therefore, if Daniel is a poor speller but doesn’t have issues decoding words, he doesn’t have dyslexia. he just can’t spell. he may suffer from sequential memory disorder, but he doesn’t qualify as dyslexic.

Because of having dyslexia, a child may test poorly in other areas, but those areas are not symptoms of dyslexia. There is only one various type of dyslexia, difficulty in diagnosis is caused by the fact that it has many symptoms. There is only one type of dyslexia, but it has many symptoms.

If a child or adult has dyslexia, he will have difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition, will be a poor speller and have difficulty decoding words. Dyslexics may score poorly on comprehension tests, but that is by virtue of decoding, accuracy and fluency difficulties. Dyslexics struggle with decoding words, phonics, oral language, decoding and fluency. They may furthermore have poor vocabularies because they miss new words owing to decoding problems.

A professional evaluation needs to involve the child’s educational background, school attendance, intellectual ability, oral development and parental involvement. If dyslexia is the outcome, then an educational program needs to be established starting at the child’s reading level. For more types of dyslexia tips, I would like to invite you to go to Help-Hub++++++Types Of Dyslexia Children

Are there different types of dyslexia? No. There is only one type of dyslexia according to the International Dyslexia Association. For types of dyslexia insider tips to help you research, plan and finding, keep reading.

There are not different types of dyslexia. There are however, specific symptoms, but if a person does not have most of the symptoms, they are not dyslexic. a person who has dyslexia will not be a good speller, will have problems decoding words and will have issues with word recognition. a person with poor spelling habits will not necessarily be dyslexic. That person may just be a poor speller. Poor spelling may be a symptom of sequential memory disorder, but not dyslexia.

Struggles with comprehension tests are not comprehension problems, but rather a byproduct of the decoding issues. There are not different types of dyslexia. Testing poorly is not a sign of dyslexia but day after day a byproduct of the difficulties. Poor grades are not a symptom of dyslexia, but instead may be a byproduct of the difficulties dyslexics face.

Not all dyslexics have comprehension problems, thus it is not a symptom. Over and over a poor vocabulary is not infrequently wrongly attributed to dyslexia. For someone to be considered dyslexic, they will struggle with word recognition, decoding, spelling, phonological processing, oral language, accuracy and fluency.

The evaluation needs to examine the child’s background, school attendance, intellectual ability and oral development. If dyslexia is the outcome, then an educational program needs to be established starting at the child’s reading level. Get more types of dyslexia info by continuing to Help-Hub.com

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