I read for pleasure at over 1,000 wpm. Which is why I did not know until my 40s that I was dyslexic. It was only when my niece was finally diagnosed and treated that I realized I was. I volunteered for this diary to share my experience in hopes it might be of benefit to others.
KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered.
Please join me below the fold.
When I was a child no one ever realized I was learning disabled. I taught myself to read words and music by the age of three. In elementary school I was part of a small group of kids who had our reading accelerated. I began 2nd grade reading at a 5th grade level or better, and in theory by the end of the year I was reading at 8th grade or higher, and continued to accelerate throughout school. Before I was out of elementary school, I had a card for the adult section of Larchmont Public Library. They had to tell me that I could not take out 5 books at 9 AM and try to return them at 3 PM, having read them all, because they had not yet filed the cards.
I learned to read a full orchestral score when I was about 9 or 10. I devoured newspapers, magazines, and the books in our house.
And until junior high school, I never had any trouble in school - learning came so easily to me that I skipped 6th grade after 4 weeks, without missing a beat.
But then I had to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah. I had to study Hebrew, and I struggled. I had picked up conversational French very easily, so my family did not understand why I struggled so much with Hebrew. Oh, I could use my ear for sounds to repeat phrases, but when confronted with the text on a page I struggled. There was some recognition that the different alphabet, and reading right to left, might be causing me some problems.
Except every now and then if given a siddur I would encounter a prayer that perhaps I could rip through, and not just because I remembered the sounds. I felt as if I were reading it.
My struggles in Hebrew began to affect me in school, in French and Latin in 9th and 10th grades. My parents began to believe that perhaps I just struggled with foreign languages, but there was no problem in conversational French, even in the classroom.
In college I tried Russian, and also struggled. And that began to affect my other courses. Also, I took a poke at Greek when I considered possibly exploring classical history, and that became so intimidating that I dropped the idea despite my fascination with the period and the literature which I had read only in translation.
When I was a child one was not considered dyslexic unless one were reading BELOW grade level, which clearly I was not. So how did I come to realize I was dyslexic when I was in my 40s?
My sister took her daughter, my niece, to a controversial figure, Dr. Harold Levinson, author of Smart, but Feeling Dumb. He was able to help her with her struggles with text. My sister suggested I read his book. And while I did not completely buy into his approach, which was and remains controversial, I remember what really caught my attention: it was when he wrote about a client who could read very quickly because he grabbed whole chunks of text at a glance and translated them in his mind.
And the light went on.
I read very quickly because I can grab chunks of text at a time, in part by using peripheral vision. Given some familiarity I can parse what is before me using what are extremely good pattern recognition skills, something I had used extensively when I debugged computer programs: I could look at a core dump and somehow see an anomaly fairly quickly.
And this began to make sense: using a Roman alphabet, with a vocabulary that was largely familiar, it was easy to take the chunks and reprocess them in my mind. But given an entirely alien alphabet - Greek, Hebrew, Slavic - I largely lacked the familiarity even to grasp the groups of letters making up words. I had to read such texts very slowly, a word at a time, translating as I went, and that frustrated me, because I was used to reading to so quickly.
Levinson talked about words jumping around on the page. I'm not sure I ever experienced that. What I did experience both in reading and in typing was relying upon the image in my mind rather than the image on the page. Thus, for example, i could reread something I had written and rather than seeing the obvious errors on the page, would read it as I had intended it, in my mind. That by the way is why I so often have errors in things I post - I simply do not see them, even as I reread, because of how I read. I have to force myself to slow down as if I were reading aloud, and then I am shocked at some of the obvious errors.
I don't necessarily have all the classic signs of dyslexia, but I have some. I do invert letters, but usually into recognizable words. It is not at all uncommon for me to mix up "form" and "from" to give one common example. That occurs not just in typing, but sometimes also in reading and in writing by hand.
My condition also explains in part my horrible handwriting. It is not that I cannot write neatly and clearly - hell, in junior high school I was probably the best forger in the school, able to copy the signature of the President (Eisenhower) and write entire excuse notes in the handwriting of either of my parents!. And I clearly do not lack control of the musculature of my hands - I was quite good at both piano and cello, and learned to sew by hand while in elementary school sufficiently to reattach a button, close a seam, and darn a sock. It is that I try to write as I think, in chunks, and there is no way my hands can keep up.
I have been clocked on an electric typewriter that could keep up with me at around 100 wpm. Manual typewriters were always frustrating, because I typed so fast (the piano skills coming into effect) that the letters would jam. I have increasingly found that I prefer to write on a computer because I can get the words out so much faster. Yet still, not as quickly as I can form the thoughts in my mind. Which frustrates me.
My condition sometimes comes out in conversation. I leave out pieces of thoughts because I see the whole thing in my mind and am jumping from one part of an extended passage to another. I have to slow myself down to make sure that what I say - as with what I write - has connections and continuity.
I struggled in high school. I was not in the top third of my class, although I did win National Merit and Regents Scholarships, and got admitted to highly prestigious Haverford - from which I was almost kicked out my first semester. In part I was immature, in part my problems came from being in a very dysfunctional (albeit loving) family, with both parents having trouble with alcohol. I still carry some of the scars from my own adolescence, which perhaps is why it is so important to me to continue to work with adolescents.
A slight side path, if you will allow me. The worst year of my growing up was 10th grade. I almost did not certify as a teacher when I student taught because half of my students were in 10th grade classes, and I had not yet made my piece with that part of my life. My supervising teachers at that high school decided not to block my certification because they knew I had done well in my middle school placement, and figured I wouldn't do harm as a middle school teacher. And now? The vast majority of my students are 10th graders.
We know much more about the range of learning disabilities than when i was a school student half a century ago. In the school in which I teach, we have run a program for gifted but learning disabled kids. I have encountered a few very much like me. I have others with other learning disabilities. Still, sometimes a learning disability is still misdiagnosed as an emotional problem, those observing not realizing that the emotional misbehavior they see is not the cause, but the result, often from frustration.
Perhaps had our understanding been better I would not have struggled when i encountered different alphabets, but would have realized how to apply the coping skills I had developed entirely on my own, adapting them as necessary, and finding a way to use my ability with sound to supplement and support where I was weak visually. My life would have been very different, i am sure.
Which I why I do not regret what happened to me. After all, pull one thread of the past an anything I now value in my life might never have happened. I live with my condition.
As I live with my tendency towards depression, having found ways to cope without being heavily medicated.
As I have learned to cope with a tendency towards anger.
I remain far form perfect (just kidding, I know that should be 'from' perfect).
Some people are not comfortable sharing their struggles. I have found my willingness to share mine has been of benefit to others, and has had the additional benefit of helping some understand "this strange creature" (as one of my former students once described me in a song) a little better, which has meant that I am thereby a bit less isolated.
So that's my tale. Maybe I don't fit the formal diagnosis of dyslexic. I do clearly have a reading disorder, for which I have over the years I have developed methods of coping that allow me to function so that most people never even know I have a problem. I do not wear a scarlet "D" to indicate my condition. But it is real.
I am differently abled. That is, I have developed mechanisms that most people do not have, because they have not needed to develop them. Hopefully that makes me a bit more sensitive to others who are differently abled.
That is my story, of my KosAbility.
What's yours?
Peace.