The gift or the curse of words

My husband, Steve, mixes up his words. It’s a problem of his. I’ve learnt how to translate what he’s saying. Others are not so fortunate. We were at an African restaurant one evening. It was very elegant, decked out in an African theme, leopard print on the chairs, pictures of lions and giraffes decorating the walls. The waiters were stunning tall young African men and women.

Steve likes to try different drinks and he saw on the menu a cocktail called a Drunken Elephant (it probably had gin in it). I stuck with the tried and true and chose a White Russian. One of the elegant waiters soon came by to take our order.

‘What would you like to drink, sir?’ the young man asked Steve.

Steve looked at me, then at the menu, paused and said, ‘I’ll have a drunken African!’ The waiter was taken aback not knowing how to take this potential insult; I gasped and said, ‘Oh he means “Drunken Elephant”!’

The waiter looked at Steve a little perplexed, then at me. Steve added, ‘I’ll have a Drunken Australian too!’

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This is one of only a few moments of miscommunication that I experience living with someone with dyslexia.

The condition is defined as a disorder than involves difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols, but does not affect general intelligence.

According to the Australian Dyslexia Association, dyslexia is estimated to affect some 10% of the Australian population. Children who are diagnosed early are usually diagnosed with ‘learning difficulties’ and placed in special classes. These children (and the adults they become) just learn differently and need to be taught differently. They generally have superior intelligence and creativity. The sad thing is that as a coping mechanism, many pretend to be less intelligent than they are.

I’ve read that having the condition can be similar to losing one of your senses — when that happens, the other sense becomes particularly acute. The visually impaired person has acute hearing. A person with dyslexia who has problems reading and writing often turns to sport, creative arts or can become their own boss and develop into successful entrepreneurs.

Many famous people have the ‘gift’ of dyslexia:
Jim Carrey, Kiera Knightley, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, John Lennon, Richard Branson, Agatha Christie, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg — you’ll notice many are in creative fields.

How is dyslexia identified?

It’s normally picked up in childhood when a child shows an unexplained difficulty in reading despite having the necessary skills such as intelligence and verbal ability.

What are the characteristics?

A child may display the following:

Difficulty with oral and written language
Difficulty manipulating sounds
Slow laboured reading with many mistakes
Unable to spell (try spelling the word ‘dyslexia’)
Difficulty with multi-syllabic vocabulary
Limited reading comprehension due to weak word recognition
Oral language skills are often stronger than written language skills

Other symptoms might be:

Difficulty naming colours and letters rapidly
Weak memory
Easily distracted
Not achieving in tests
Inconsistent school work

If the condition is ignored, it can cause low self-esteem and lack of confidence which can lead to anti-social behaviour.

Steve has told me of the feelings of isolation he experienced at school. It was only through hard work and determination that enabled him to become the school athletics champion, and later in life, an award-winning designer.

Steven Spielberg was diagnosed with dyslexia in 2007. He is quoted as saying ‘it was like the last puzzle part in a tremendous mystery that I’ve kept to myself all these years’. As a child he learned to read two years later than his peers, was teased and dreaded school.

Kiera Knightley was diagnosed at six and received careful tutoring and professional help which allowed her to master the condition.

Hans Albert Einstein, on his father, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all time: ‘He told me that his teachers reported that … he was mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.’

Richard Branson, founder of a whole series of Virgin enterprises: ‘At the age of eight I still couldn’t read. I was soon being beaten once or twice a week for doing poor class work or confusing the date of the Battle of Hastings.’

Over many years suffering from the condition, my husband Steve developed several strategies that he just picked up along the way. Once he had been diagnosed with the condition, he always kept a dictionary nearby. He would pick out the words he knew he would need for certain jobs and keep a glossary of these words at the back of his diary for easy access. He always used spellcheck on the computer. It would also help having friends who could spell.

If your child, or someone you know, shows any of these characteristics, they should be assessed by a professional. Dyslexia does not go away, you cannot outgrow it. But you can develop strategies to improve its management with professional instruction.

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Back at dinner at the African restaurant and we still had our main courses to order.

I don’t want to tell you what Steve did to the word ‘spatchcock’.