Dyslexia = Lembap?!

We were having light conversation over breakfast as usual, my friends and me, at one of our favourite foodcourts in KL. It started off with Balqis (name of a TV show) review and somehow led to a Hindustani movie review. The Hindustani movie review caught my attention the most and was discussed heatedly amongst us afterwards. The movie was about a dyslexic child and his challenges as a person with dyslexia.

Dysgraphia? Dyscalculia?

Ill handwriting. Severe atrocius writing skills. Difficulty to write.

Those are the definations I got when I Googled for 'dysgraphia'. Somebody pointed out to me that Nadia's symptoms may not be dyslexia. It could be other type of phonological processing problem. Suspects includes dysgraphia and dyscalculia. There are also dyslexia dysgraphia, dyslexia dyscalculia and othe types and degree of dyslexia, waiting to join the bandwagon. I don't want to go and write into depth about each types of the disabilities. My knowledge about dylexia or other phonological processing problem is too little for me to elaborate in this entry.

Whatever the name is, Nadia does have an obvious phonological processing problem. I haven't got a clue what exactly it is. Weeks ago I'm very positive that it was dyslexia. Now it could be anything from dysgraphia to any other phonological processing disabilities. I am still clueless about the exact name of Nadia's disability. Nevertheless, I will share with you the methods and approaches I used and experimented whilst educating Nadia in here (and future entries). Maybe some of it may benefit you. I do hope a lot will benefit me :)

Last Sunday & Monday was yet another full 'rest days' for me at home. Sunday were spent for painting, learning mathematics (addition) and play the 'rice' game. Monday was another craft-day, creating huge numbers by sticking grains on paper. I discovered Kindergarten Resources for Phonics Practice and let Nadia played with some of the games available in the links listed there. I also downloaded heaps of printable colourful easy phonic-practice short stories which were composed and posted by teachers all around the world. All of them share one obvious passion, promoting language education through phonetics knowledge.

Painting is an activity Nadia will never get tired of. Nadia LOVES to paint. She loves to draw too (though she's not as good as me when I was her age, hehe). I can see that she likes paper-folding-art (origami), like building paper boats and paper planes. Maybe I should learn how to do origami after this :)

Nadia loves the 'rice' game too. This game requires a bowl of rice, a piece of paper (with colour is preferred) and lots of patience (because of the mess effect after!). All you have to do is to pour the grain onto the paper and then write anything on the grain. It can be letters or numbers or words. Nadia and me always form letters and numbers she normally gets confuse easily. These include letters like 'b', 'd', 'p', 'q', 's', numbers such as '2', '3', '5', '6', '7' and '9'. The effetiveness of the game and her mirror-imaged handwriting? 50%-60% success. She gets 's' correct, '2', '3', '5' and '6' right all the time now.

For letters 'b' and 'd' I used the 'b'e'd' method. Thanks to a lot of parent-teacher websites available online, information about dyslexia and tips on teaching them come very handy and easily retrieved. Now, everytime Nadia come across letter 'b' and 'd', she will immediately raised her right and left hands, forming letter 'b' with her left and 'd' with her right.



This helps her a lot in remembering the letters. It has also made her gain her confidence while doing her reading exercise with me. Success rate: 80-95%. What I have to do now is to be more creative in creating or start searching for other tips on helping her to remember letter 'p' and 'q'. There is no such word as 'p'u'q' right? If there is, I would surely make Nadia remember THAT word so she doesn't confuse the two again in future!

Till then, see you guys again in the next entry :)

Dyslexia

It is not a disease and yet the name is quite scary. In Malaysia, dyslexia falls under the Learning Disabilities (LD) category, which groups it along with other LD counterparts such as deafness, blindness, autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and special kids with cerebral palsy. There are only 30 schools in Malaysia which have DyslexiaProgram in their system, a sad number of 3 from Kuala Lumpur and a shame number of 2 from Selangor. Main involvement from Special Education Unit (Unit Pendidikan Khas) is crucial to ensure unbiased education is properly given to a dyslexic child.

Do you know that based on various surveys done in many parts of the world, it is found that one (1) out of ten (10) to twenty (20) people is dyslexic? The degree of dyslexia may vary from severe to extremely mild. Some don't even know that they are dyslexic before they participate in the survey.

There are many types of dyslexia. Traumatic dyslexia (caused by trauma / injury of the brain), primary dyslexia (hereditary) and secondary dyslexia (caused by hormonal changes and will subside as the child matures) to name a few. Many times dyslexic children were misunderstood as slow learners, suffered visual or hearing problems and even misinterpreted as mentally retardeds. Dyslexic children always perceived as if they have brain impairment. On contrary, what they have is the impairment of brain's ABILITY to decipher or translate visuals from the eyes or sounds from the ears into LANGUAGE in their brain. Due to the stereotyped assumption by the public (teachers and parents included), these poor children were isolated in slow learners class, flunked their tests and labelled as stupidheads.

Now you may ask, why I suddenly write so much about dyslexia? Because I am too. I am dyslexic. It's mild dyslexia, happens only when it comes to numbers. Phone numbers, account numbers, any set of numbers more than two digits. Memorising is not a problem but writing or copying is. I always mix it up. Remember what I said about dyslexia is hereditary?

These are the symptoms my girl showed few months back (and some still do now):

1. Reversed numbers and letters (writing). Eg: 'b' written as 'd' and 'd' as 'b'

2. Gets confused very easily with letters like 'b' and 'd', or 'p' and 'q' (both reading & writing)

3. Her atrocious handwriting *omg*

4. Jumbled the words in one sentence (writing). Eg:
The sentence: Gus is a big bad bug.
She wrote: Gusi sadigdabb ug.

5. Gets distracted very easily

All symptoms fits to dyslexia. My girl is dyslexic. In my humble opinion, the severity is not that bad yet, but it is alarming. Am I worried? YES I AM. I searched a lot of methods of teaching to aid and blossom dyslexic children's learning abilities. Dylexic children are non-logical thinkers. They are sensitive, creative and always think in three dimensional. Our standardized education school system is based on logical thinking standpoint and thus provide with one correct logical answer for every question asked. If one give another answer, it is considered as WRONG. That's why dyslexic children are left neglected at schools. That's why they are slow leaners. They have became the victim just because they think differently.

So right now it's up to me to support her and manage her dyslexia. I have to be more involved in her learning process; be it reading, writing, counting, EVERYTHING.

My Nadia is a smart kid. This is not a biased opinion. She picks up English fast, has improved her handwriting A LOT in such a short time (yes, you can scratch no.3 and no.4 from the list above), faces no difficultiy in memorising school rhymes and mixes well with other kids at her school (dyslexic children always have self-esteem problem, but not Nadia). She loves to read (managed to read short vowels stories with tremendous improvement), she loves word-spelling game, and she's good at mathematics too. I have conducted different methods and approaches in teaching Nadia lately. She seems to be able to connect and remember so much easier when I adopt multiple sensory application while teaching her. Imagination and creativity is the key. But sometimes, I can't help to be stern with her. Poor child, selalu kena marah dengan mama :(

Well, I promise myself to take it easy. It's not about forcing her to be the best. It's about ensuring Nadia to get the same as other kids in her school gets. I have to discover more out-of-the-box methods to teach her. As it is, I am very happy with her progress. Learning is so much fun now and she looks forward to do her homework everytime (yes, I give her daily homework to stimulate her writing, counting and reading skills). She even asked me to listen to her readings EVERYNIGHT.

I take these as good signs. Heck, I take these as GREAT developments.

Hopefully our journey (Nadia and me) will be more colourful and wonderful in days to come :)