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Ep. 31: How it feels as a teenager with dyslexia. Plus dyslexia tips from an expert
192 Plays3 years ago
Today Helen Wills talks to teacher and tuition coach Jemma about her experiences of undiagnosed dyslexia through her teenage years.
Also on the podcast is Karen Hautz, a learning coach who provides counselling and skills-based coaching for adults and teenagers with dyslexia. She gives some wonderful tips about how to understand and support someone with dyslexia,
Jemma was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 19, but spent her school years struggling to understand why everything felt so much harder for her to achieve than it did for her friends.
We talk about the strategies she taught herself to get through school – and they worked! She got 9A*s and 2As at GCSE.
But she found the less structured learning at university difficult to cope with until she got her diagnosis, and finally learned techniques to manage her dyslexia.
Karen's message
Dyslexic people are often particularly good at being able to see the 'big picture' in any situation. They may demonstrate lateral thinking and problem solving. They may make creative leaps of thought which gives them an innovative approach to a subject. Some demonstrate strong visualisation skills. Others are imaginative and inventive in their approach to their work. Others again show entrepreneurial flair.
Understanding dyslexia
Helen Wills says:
I absolutely loved discovering more about how dyslexic people think and work, and there are so many tips in the conversation for families who might be worrying about a child with dyslexia, or indeed an adult in the process of diagnosis.
More support with dyslexia
Useful books on dyslexia
- The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis
- The Gift of Learning by Ron Davis (with reference to ADHD, dyspraxia & dyscalculia)
- The Illustrated Guide to Dyslexia and Its Amazing People by Kathy Iwanczak
- Dyslexia is my Superpower (Most of the Time) by Margaret Rooke
- Creative, Successful, Dyslexic: 23 High Achievers Share Their Stories edited by Margaret Rooke
- The Dyslexia, ADHD, and DCD-Friendly Study Skills Guide: Tips and Strategies for Exam Success Paperback by Ann-Marie McNicholas
Websites that help with dyslexia
Where to find Jemma and Karen
Jemma Zoe Smith graduated from Oriel College at Oxford University in 2013, having studied her BSc and Master’s degree in Biochemistry. She returned to Oxford University in 2017 to gain her teacher training qualification.She now runs tuition agency The Education Hotel. Instagram.
Karen Hautz provides counselling support and skills-based coaching for adults and teenagers with dyslexia, autism and AD(H)D online and at her London office and works closely with parents and liaises with schools also.
Find out more about Karen’s work at www.dyslexia-achievement.com or call her for a free, informal 20 minute telephone chat on 07391698517
More teenage parenting tips from Helen Wills:
There are lots more episodes of the Teenage Kicks po
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I remember it really, really clearly. There was a story competition and my story was great, but it wasn't good enough. And so I remember looking at all of the other people's works on the wall, being like, I wish I could do that. Welcome back to the Teenage Kicks podcast, where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager.
Exploring Dyslexia: Personal and Expert Insights
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult experience in their teenage years, but who came out the other side in a good place and went on to make a real success of their life. This week I've got a super interesting conversation about something that affects up to 20% of the population. Dyslexia.
00:00:48
Speaker
This episode is slightly different to my usual format in that I have Gemma Smith, who has a diagnosis of dyslexia and offers her perspective of what it was like to grow up with, and Karen Houts, an expert learning counsellor who coaches adults and teenagers in strategies to manage dyslexia, as well as ADHD and autism.
Gemma's Journey with Dyslexia
00:01:10
Speaker
Karen has some fascinating things to say about how creative people with dyslexia often are. I had no idea that 40% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia. Gemma is also a teacher and owner of Tuition Agency, the Education Hotel. She was diagnosed at the age of 19, but she spent her school years struggling to understand why everything felt so much harder for her to achieve than it did for her friends.
00:01:39
Speaker
We talk about the strategies she taught herself to get through school. And they worked. She got nine A stars and two A's at GCSE, but she found the less structured learning at university difficult to cope with until she got her diagnosis and finally learned techniques to manage her dyslexia.
00:01:59
Speaker
I absolutely loved discovering more about how dyslexic people think and work and there are so many tips in the conversation for families who might be worrying about a child with dyslexia or indeed an adult in the process of diagnosis. Gemma, I just want to read something that you said to me in your email when you first approached me about talking to me about dyslexia on the podcast.
00:02:27
Speaker
You said, at primary school, I struggled but was a teacher's pet and very good at verbally communicating but poor at writing. I remember still having handwriting lessons aged nine and I still couldn't produce anything good enough to go on the wall.
00:02:45
Speaker
And I'm having goosebumps just reading that because my son struggled with his handwriting and as a boy always got told, oh, it's fine, he's a boy, he'll catch up, put him on monkey bars to strengthen his wrists. And still he would come home and nothing, he improved, but nothing was ever good enough to go on the wall. And I just have a picture in my head of that child desperate to get something on the wall and just not able to and the frustration
School Challenges and Coping Mechanisms
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I was told it will get better you're left-handed so that was the the excuse that I was told and I remember I remember going in during lunch times with the English teacher to work on handwriting and I remember it really really clearly that there was a kind of like story competition and my story was great, but it wasn't good enough because the presentation wasn't there and so I remember remember looking and
00:03:43
Speaker
looking at all of the other people's works on the wall and being like I wish I could do that because and obviously you know now looking back at it in adults it's something that really I think school should have done it wasn't necessarily about the neatest but it would be nice to to have that up there but yeah so it was something that stopped with me to this day. Yeah
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah I mean I guess yes they should have put it up there anyway, irrespective. What happened for my son eventually was that they scribed for him and his story went on the wall in that way so at least he could feel proud of his story because that they kept saying to me has probably the best vocabulary in the class. He is very expressive, he's very intelligent
00:04:29
Speaker
it just isn't coming out in the time. And he was sat next to the girl who was probably the A student who used to come home and say, Becky can write three whole pages and I can only manage a paragraph in the time given. Was that how it felt for you? Yeah, for me, it wasn't a timing thing. It was a checking thing. So I would write and write and write, but it would be
00:04:53
Speaker
illegible or it would kind of in a fairly typical way of dissecting, I would miss out certain words or I would join the ends of words with the starts of others. So if I had to write because I might miss out the essay and join it onto the next word,
00:05:13
Speaker
And everyone said, oh, you're not getting your finger spaces right. And it wasn't that. It was that my mind was working a little bit too fast. That's the way I've had it explained. And then the end of one word would end up from the start of the next word. But obviously, when you come to type, that's not something that's an issue. My typing speed's pretty fast, and therefore it can keep up mostly with what I do. But when I'm writing, it still happens.
00:05:36
Speaker
So it's still a point where if I'm going to hand write something, I'll, I'll rush it and then I'll end up putting stuff on the end. And also if I get, if I get stressed about filling things in, like filling forms in, it's my worst nightmare because I have to really think about the spelling or really think about exactly what needs to go on. And if I don't do it in a completely silent environment, I can't fill a form out, which makes going to the doctors and all those things a bit annoying.
00:06:05
Speaker
Is it partly a concentration issue or is it just that you have to concentrate to use the skills that you've learned because you have a diagnosis now, you're 29 and you have a diagnosis of dyslexia. So it just helps if you're able to concentrate because you then can use the tools you've learned.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah for me it's as long as it's silent I can I can focus a lot more on what I'm writing so each dyslexic person is slightly different and it's a big spectrum and the common features that most dyslexics are known for isn't really I suppose what I showed in my early life so reading was fine as long as it was fiction
00:06:51
Speaker
I have pretty good vocabulary. All of those types of things that people would typically put as dyslexic, I'm all right with. But for me, especially when it's under pressure, I struggle with spelling, I'll struggle with vocab, I'll struggle with all the typical things, but I have to be put under quite a lot of pressure to show that.
00:07:08
Speaker
So for me, early school, I mean, I probably breezed through most of the primary stuff just because I had some really great coping techniques but I didn't know they were coping techniques at the time. There would be things that I would do that would help in terms of spelling. I would really, really learn spellings.
00:07:27
Speaker
and associate them like business, you get on the bus to go do business. It was one of the ways that we learned it and my parents went over it and over it with me. So I never showed up as typically dyslexic.
Understanding Dyslexia: Perspectives and Impacts
00:07:40
Speaker
But I think if you put me under quite a lot of pressure, it's quite obvious that I am. Right. I'm going to ask you Karen here now, does everything that Gemma is describing, does this sound typical from your experiences?
00:07:57
Speaker
Yes and no in as much as it is a very broad spectrum, as Gemma said. So, whilst there are some common characteristics of dyslexia, then you still, when I work with people, you take it profile by profile of each child's or adult's abilities. And one of the things, and I wonder how this was for you, Gemma, that we view it as a different way of thinking and learning, in fact,
00:08:21
Speaker
So dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence that's really important for anyone who thinks they may be dyslexic who have been diagnosed to know. But we do think differently and let me give you an example that I wonder for you Helen that when you think you have like an internal dialogue of words going on in your head
00:08:41
Speaker
Whereas other people think in a very visual way, or they might think in a very sensory way. So we don't all think alike. And yet if we think one way, we think, and I think a dominant way of thinking is in a verbal way, so we think in words. But I would suggest that people on this broad dyslexic spectrum think in a more multi-sensory way, a non-verbal way.
00:09:03
Speaker
And that would explain why a lot of difficulty with writing. So some kids I work with are very expressive and can describe something really well. And if you put them down in front of a piece of paper, they can't even begin to write. It's not even the spelling. It's like they're seeing pictures and they have to translate those pictures into the words to create a sequence of things that they want to say. So there's problems with sequencing and even
00:09:30
Speaker
I would say written expression separate to verbal expression. So the writing process has an awful lot going on, of which spelling is just one part, grammar is one part, the mechanics of handwriting is another part, and the actual expression, the choice and sequence of words is another, that whole creative written expression. So just to give an insight.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's brilliant. The way I had a bit of a light bulb moment there. And Gemma, you'll tell me if I'm right, the way you're describing it to me, I'm a foreign languages student. That's my degree. The way you're describing it sounds like the visual, what you're seeing is a different language, or what you're thinking is a different language to what you're writing. And you said you have to translate. Am I kind of along the right lines, Gemma? Yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
I think in pictures, definitely. Or in feelings, which is a bit of an odd way to describe it. But yeah, I don't see, I suppose, words in the same way that others do. But I suppose, yeah, the translation stuff is hard because often, if I'm up and speaking in front of somebody, I can describe something really, really well. But just as Karen said, when it comes to writing it,
00:10:48
Speaker
suddenly it's as though it's quite hard to put it down and I actually was kind of saying about the sequencing thing. I remember when maybe when I was a bit younger but sometimes the sequencing of the words so if you've you've got a sentence it might end up a little bit jumbled but again that for me was
00:11:09
Speaker
they were seen as bad handwriting or it was seen as you know you're you're not getting the spaces in the right places and all of that so yeah it is it's a different way of thinking that's the easiest way of saying it. So I want to explore that a little bit more because obviously Teenage Kicks it's a podcast about mental health and so you've just said that
00:11:31
Speaker
the way it was being described to you the problems you were having with writing was more of a functional thing and it was more about you were just behind other children the same stage as you. I still had those pencil grips when I was in year six and most people have finished with those when they're in year one so that's quite embarrassing. Did you have that whole thing where you get a pen license
00:12:00
Speaker
No, I don't think we had that in my school. I don't remember it. I hate that so much. These kids are desperate to get their pen license, which I assume is because that then says that their writing is good enough that they don't have to use a rubber to rub it out. And there's people who I saw somewhere in a Facebook group just last week that someone in year six
00:12:21
Speaker
This lady saying her son in year six still hadn't got his pen license and he was ready to go to secondary school and how distressed he was about this fact. Did you feel worse than other people?
00:12:34
Speaker
I was embarrassed about my writing, definitely. I was embarrassed that I still use the pencils with the with the grips on them and I mean in our school as well we used fountain pens and it's not good to mix a left-handed dyslexic person with a fountain pen because it just goes everywhere.
00:12:55
Speaker
So yeah that that was annoying but but on the counter side to that my science knowledge and my math knowledge which is what I ended up doing all the way through to university was high and therefore I wasn't I suppose I wasn't teased for it to the English but there was a big market difference between what I could do in math and what I could do in in English again even the writing aspect of
University Struggles and Adaptations
00:13:21
Speaker
math
00:13:21
Speaker
So you move into year five, year six, you get those word problem type math and they made us copy them out. And I couldn't get through enough questions in the lesson to be in the top group because I couldn't copy it down quick enough.
00:13:37
Speaker
and I couldn't copy it down neat enough and I kept making mistakes when I copied it down. So it was all in the actual kind of written verbal stuff as opposed to the actual math. I could do the math fine but it was just it held me back in that regard as well. Right, right. So you weren't teased about it also. This didn't affect you socially with your friendship groups? No.
00:14:02
Speaker
Not then, no. I think probably a bit later when I was diagnosed it did, but not in my primary years. Right, so you weren't diagnosed until you were early 20s, is that right? Yeah, about 19. So you've gone all the way through your diagnosis.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, really late. So we talk about how that transpired, but you'd gone all the way through secondary school. And I just want to go back to a point that Karen made that having dyslexia is no reflection on your intelligence, on how smart you are, because you got nine A stars and two A's at GCSE. Is that right? Yeah. How did you do that? Given that English was something that presumably you weren't in
00:14:49
Speaker
top sets for because of your writing. I can see why science and maths would have been your thing. How did you achieve that apart from the fact that quite clearly
00:15:01
Speaker
You're smart. Um, so I'm, I'm mental dyslexic students now, and I try and say to them that it's not a reflection. And for some of it, I broke learnt. I started my revision for GCSEs the day we started GCSEs, which no one else did. And I had friends, friends still say that to me now, you know, why did you start so early? But I knew that if I could get it into my long-term memory, it would stay there.
00:15:28
Speaker
And I'd never have to remember it again. And then I could focus on all of the other stuff that I had to do, especially with English. So English literature, you've got to remember large amounts of quotes and analysis. And I started with that really early on. And I, instead of reading the books, I bought the audio tapes and I went through the audio tapes and I went through that that way. And I looked at every analysis book and just memorized bits.
00:15:58
Speaker
So in a way, the GCSEs, I memorized the syllabus, which took a fair amount of time, which is why I started it quite early. And I mean, the actual writing of it, the reason the two A's are there is one of them was religious studies, and that's an essay-based subject. And I ran out of time because of not being able to write the essays. So therefore I had all the information,
00:16:24
Speaker
and I did what my teacher had told us to do if we ever run out of time just wrote in bullet points and managed to score highly enough to get the A but it's just the essay writing that I struggled with so therefore I front-loaded and really memorised everything that I had to memorise about every single subject and it took a lot of time but it did mean that I came up with good grades and I thought that's what everybody did
00:16:54
Speaker
I suppose until I was diagnosed, because when I had friends saying, oh, we're not doing this revision, why are you doing this? Why aren't you hanging out after school? Why are you going back and doing all this memory stuff? I was like, oh, well, they must be cleverer than me. Maybe they just get it and I don't. And so therefore I'm going to go home and I'm going to memorize it and I'm going to learn.
00:17:20
Speaker
So you didn't really have an inkling that there was anything wrong, it's just that you knew for yourself that you would need to do quite a lot of work to get the revision in.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'd taken the grammar school exams, I took the 11 plus and I knew that in terms of that I'd started early and my parents didn't know I was just like sick, my dad is probably just like sick but he's never been tested and so they just they went with what they know which was okay if you work hard and work a lot then
00:17:50
Speaker
then it will get there but I can see now that it would have been would have been much better had I been diagnosed because I would have known a lot more coping strategies and ways to do it instead of what I did which was just memorise and rote learn it. Right, but you were clearly smart enough to know that you needed to do that work and just put it in so you're an A student at heart so you mentioned that everyone else wasn't doing all of that work did you have
00:18:16
Speaker
Was there any stigma around that? Did you have the hot? I remember growing up being called a SWAT simply because I handed in my homework on time. Yeah. But did you have that? I was lucky. I went to an academic grammar. So some of that was was not there. But I also one of the big things that I struggle with is organization. So I
00:18:39
Speaker
I mean even now around me there are piles of paper because I haven't sorted out what I need to do and I had a folder for every single subject in GCSE and I was like forward and back to the locker, getting the folder, get the folder out, write all the notes in the folder, make sure it's there.
00:18:57
Speaker
and then file it away when you get home and I got a bit of stick for that because most people at that point were just writing in a book and I was here with all these folders but it was it was the way that I knew that I could get organized for it and therefore it worked for me.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, Karen, is it quite common? Is that common for people to feel like they're maybe a bit disorganized if they're dyslexic? Yes, so I work with adults, so I work with people with dyslexia across all age groups and so the types of challenges and things that people want to work on change depending where they are in their lives
00:19:32
Speaker
And I would say a common thing actually in every age are organizational skills. It's wonderful that Gemma did find a way to help herself and develop these strategies for herself. But often they do have to be learned. We can't take for granted that we know how to either manage time and organize things.
00:19:53
Speaker
and how to set small achievable goals. So one thing that's common with the people I work with is that often they have the big picture. I want to study geography, let's say, or topic, but not know how to break it into small achievable chunks. And that's where feelings of overwhelm may come. So there are all kinds of things that accompany being dyslexic, feeling overwhelmed, procrastination, and that tie in with the lack of ability to be organized.
00:20:21
Speaker
I think I'm dyslexic. Well, if we had a list of dyslexic characteristics, absolutely, everyone is dyslexic to some extent. So honestly, if we had all the list, you would be able to pick out some. And I think what matters, what makes people when they are identified as dyslexic is that there are so many things that are a barrier to achieving their potential in the environment that we've set up. So this is why I want to just make a quick point if I may.
00:20:50
Speaker
We talked about thinking styles and it was so helpful to hear Gemma say that she thinks with senses, feelings and pictures. And yet the majority of people who are not dyslexic think in words. Our whole educational system is geared around word thinkers.
00:21:05
Speaker
And teachers even now get next to no training on people who think differently or what it's like to have ADD or dyslexia. So in that sense, very few of them are equipped to understand and get in the reality of the dyslexic person's thinking style.
00:21:22
Speaker
So I think it's important to know that we all might have some dyslexic characteristics, that school doesn't understand it. And so that, and as parents, we need to really make sure we understand dyslexia as well as possible so that we can
00:21:40
Speaker
be empathetic with our children and support them to the best degree. And to know that those characteristics extend beyond reading and writing and go towards organizational skills, time management skills, having a sense of time, attention to detail, focusing skills. Now I sound like I'm talking about the negative aspects of being dyslexic, but of course with that come other wonderful attributes with this thinking style and I'm sure Gemma can comment.
00:22:06
Speaker
which include seeing the big picture, thinking imaginatively, creatively, thinking out of the box. It's interesting that the City University did research which showed that 40% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic because they think in a more entrepreneurial way and see the big picture.
00:22:25
Speaker
But getting back to just one last comment about mental health, I think where being dyslexic can have an impact on anyone's mental health is not being dyslexic in and of its own right. I've worked with many people, young and old, who are dyslexic and feel emotionally well. But where it can have an impact on our emotional well-being
00:22:47
Speaker
is if being dyslexic gets in the way of us achieving our goals. So if I am never achieving success in English essay writing, but also not allowed for your success in any area of my life, then that can have a fear, you know, where I might start to feel anxious or depressed or have an emotional response to a lack of achievement. So it's very important for everyone to have Eris
00:23:13
Speaker
where they feel successful, that we help them do that. So there's a balance always. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm interested in how that was for you, Gemma. Obviously, it didn't affect your studies in terms of the end result. It affected your studies in terms of the volume of work that you felt you needed, well, that you did need to do to get there. Did that have an impact on how you felt about yourself, your life, or were you quite laid back about all of that?
00:23:42
Speaker
So all of the procrastination, all of the disorganisation, all of that hit me in university and that was, that was the difference I think for me, it kind of suddenly became quite apparent. How, when I was in school going through GCSEs, going through A levels, there's a syllabus, there's something that you can answer and therefore you can memorise it and
00:24:07
Speaker
I chose to do sciences and maths for A levels and they are very short answer questions and they are very specific. And actually I did have a teacher in sick form who looked at my way of working and my disorganisation because I still wasn't great with timekeeping or organisation despite all the many folders and said you probably need to get a test.
00:24:28
Speaker
But I, I held off of it because it's expensive to be tested and therefore I didn't do it. And when I got to university, I said to them, I think I might be dyslexic and it kind of, it was start a term and it kind of got washed away, but it very,
00:24:47
Speaker
very quickly became apparent when I started doing biochemistry because I suddenly moved from A levels where you've got very short answer questions to you know Oxford biochemistry
Coping Strategies and Support Systems
00:25:00
Speaker
is a fully essay based subject so there is no exam that isn't essay based and so we started essay writing and I couldn't keep up with the reading because all of the words were too similar so
00:25:13
Speaker
I realised that one of the ways that I was coping previously was if I'd come across a complicated word, I'd kind of look at the start and the end of it and it would be called something else in my head. So for example, oestrogen, which is a female hormone in my head is called oestrogen. And it doesn't make a difference because it starts with the same stuff and ends with the same stuff. But when you've got several hormones that all look the same and they all start with O or E and end with Jun,
00:25:41
Speaker
suddenly the whole way of working just falls apart and that's what happened. Pretty much two or three weeks into Oxford all of those coping mechanisms just didn't work or it seemed to not work so I procrastinated far too much. I was doing things at 2am and I don't work well at 2am. I was rushing everything which meant I spelled everything wrong
00:26:06
Speaker
And I wasn't properly looking at what I was doing. And then when I was writing essays, I could no longer do, I hadn't done them for years because I'd shied away from essay subjects for A levels. But I also wrote my essays in little blocks.
00:26:22
Speaker
so I would start writing and then I would be like oh I need to put this idea in so I'd put one little star in the corner and by the time you got to the end of the essay I'd written 10 different stars because my ideas had jumped all over the place and as Karen said the big picture was there and I knew what I wanted to say
00:26:39
Speaker
I just couldn't get it in the order that I needed to get it into. So my tutors, my tutors at Oxford were great. They realised very, very soon on. And I think towards the end of my first year, they said, we need to send you for a dyslexia test because we're pretty sure that you are. And that was one of the best things, one of the best things about Oxford is that that small tutorial system. And I worked with, I had, there was two of us and one tutor, so they could very clearly see that
00:27:08
Speaker
I knew what I was talking about just when I came to write it. It wasn't the same person basically writing the essay. It seemed as though I had just kind of vomited a load of words out on the page sometimes and it was all over different orders and and I really really struggled with it and that's when all of the all of the kind of mental health stuff started kicking in because
00:27:34
Speaker
For a start I was at Top University and a lot of people struggle when they first of all start at Oxford. It's something that's not often mentioned but a lot of people feel as though they shouldn't be there. That imposter syndrome is really, really common and not only did I have that, I then also had this, not only did I think I'm not meant to be there, I suddenly thought well I don't know if I can actually do this because whatever I'm doing doesn't seem to work
00:28:01
Speaker
And that led to more and more procrastination. Yeah. Okay, Carol, I'm just going to ask you, is Gemma's story familiar to you in that people can struggle their way through school and do okay or do quite well and then end up
00:28:16
Speaker
struggling further down in adult life or young adult life? So it's not unusual, but most of the, and I work a lot with young adults and of course, adults. And as I said, the issues and goals change as the age changes. But most of the young people I work with are having a much tougher time in school, because often it affects reading. I think Gemma mentioned that it seemed to trouble her less with reading. So
00:28:45
Speaker
that can be a big part reading comprehension. And something that's not mentioned a lot, but that in parallel with dyslexia are difficulties with maths. It's something called dyscalculia. So I'll just talk about that briefly. It's just for parents or for people to understand that there is a reason why one might find maths difficult and it's not just, oh, everyone finds maths difficult.
00:29:11
Speaker
So if there are reading problems associated with dyslexia, then as Gemma mentioned, word problems become difficult. But we also work with people where their conceptual understanding of maths is difficult. And that's often why parents often wonder, why can't my child learn time stables? And this can be a huge area of frustration, not ever being able to master time stables. That road learning doesn't work because the conceptual understanding
00:29:39
Speaker
of maths is not there either and we call that dyscalculia and funnily enough Robbie Williams of all people has been talking about it openly in the press so and I was working I've worked with 20 euros who come up with coping strategies for the times tables because they've never mastered the times tables but they have mastered creating the whole times tables grid
Education and Awareness: Supporting Dyslexics
00:30:01
Speaker
in their exam time and use that to help them in their math calculations so I just like that because it's broader you know just so it does vary there are people who struggle all the way through school or people like Gemma who are diagnosed later what I would say is with the adults I've worked with who've gone to university universities in general seem hugely supportive it's like a different ball game it's like primary school is the toughest time to be dyslexic it gets a bit
00:30:31
Speaker
easier around GCSE's A levels even in spite of the stresses there and then university there's far more understanding and so I would say wherever one may go there is usually an opportunity to have assessed and to get money for assistive technology.
00:30:47
Speaker
So if you get to third level education, it will get better. But it's tough all the way along. That's not to take away. It's still something that needs understanding and it is challenging. Yeah. Karen, what would you say if somebody suspects that their child is dyslexic at any age or maybe it's different in primary school to secondary school?
00:31:10
Speaker
How would you tell them to address it? What's their best course of action to get help?
00:31:18
Speaker
So it is challenging to go through the school route, perhaps depending on the nature of the dyslexic experience for that individual student. Sometimes it can be so apparent that schools are in a position that they must support it. And so there may be assessment available then through the school, or else as Gemma mentioned, private assessment.
00:31:42
Speaker
through an educational psychologist is available. I think it's always in one's interests as a parent to read up on the subject and be familiar with the characteristics and there's lots online and perhaps in the show notes we can add some resources there. It's definitely important to keep an open mind, especially when for your young person, whatever age, you can rule out obvious contributing reasons
00:32:08
Speaker
why someone may be struggling at school. So if you can rule out anything you need to do with vision or with hearing or resources to learn or environmental things, if one can rule out many obvious contributing factors, then it is worth exploring. And also, it does run in families. And there may be a lot of undiagnosed dyslexia within the family. And often when I work with families, then it's, oh, my uncle, or a cousin, or a father. It tends to turn up.
00:32:37
Speaker
Because as we said, it's just a different way of thinking and learning. And depending on one's circumstances, it may or may not have been diagnosed, but it does run in families. And I think once one spots it, one can see patterns throughout the family. Right. And actually, when you say it's just a different way of learning, I guess schools are not particularly well set up for catering to various different styles of learning. And there are a ton of those, let's face it.
00:33:05
Speaker
Do you think, and Karen you've said that universities seem much better equipped, do you think that's how it is Gemma? Because Gemma works in education as well. Gemma runs her own tutoring business. Do you see that, that it's schools where they are?
00:33:21
Speaker
looking for an end goal. Often when I'm when I'm mentoring dyslexic students I will say to them let's go over different ways of revising and they would have never seen it at school and actually that's probably the reason I did okay in school is because my I remember my school doing quite a lot on that so we did quite a lot on different ways to revise different ways to learn
00:33:43
Speaker
It was probably around the time of VARC learning, which is now disproved, but the idea is that you are a visual and auditory reading or a kinesthetic learner. It's not quite quite that simple. They've found out since. But I think my school quite liked the idea of introducing these different methods. So I knew that I could do this revision different ways. But when I talk to students nowadays and the students I mentor, the students I tutor,
00:34:09
Speaker
And I say to them, have you considered, you know, one of my students at the moment, we're doing chemistry. Chemistry has a lot of different colours for ions. Instead, have you considered using different coloured pencils? And they just haven't considered that way of learning. All they think of is
00:34:25
Speaker
OK, look, cover, write, check. But that doesn't work for everybody. It really doesn't work for some people. And people like me just cannot do that. So for me, if I need to learn something very quickly, again, when I was younger, I read an article in a magazine about card counters.
00:34:45
Speaker
They memorize very large amounts of cards and there's memory championships all over it. And they do it through some memory journeys or memory palaces, which is kind of popularized now by Sherlock Holmes. But I took the same idea for my GCSEs and I had a physical route that I took round my house and it had different coloured posters and my mother got really annoyed because it was all over the house, but it helped.
00:35:11
Speaker
And all of that stuff, interestingly, when I went to university, I found I couldn't do those types of ways because the amount of information was more or because it was more complex. Actually, I just needed to tweak them. But I suppose when I was diagnosed with dyslexia, the thing for me was I'd felt so comfortable in using these techniques. So for somebody to come along and go, oh, you're dyslexic. And that means this, this, this, this, and this.
00:35:41
Speaker
I became convinced I couldn't do half the things that I could. So actually in terms of mental health, one of the big things that I say to the students I mentor and to students that might be listening or parents that might be listening is there isn't something you can't do because when I was diagnosed
00:36:02
Speaker
loads of people told me I couldn't do stuff and I listened to them. I started mimicking them. I said I can't do essays. I can't write essays. I can write essays just in a different way. You know I can't learn all of this because it's too complicated words. My techniques that I'd come up with in school were fine. They just needed tweaking. I can't do this. I don't have enough time to do this. I can't manage my time. All of these things which seem as typical dyslexic traits but
00:36:31
Speaker
But it was just that I suppose I listened a lot to the internet, which wasn't a great idea. And when people were saying to me that I couldn't do stuff, I believed that instead of looking previously as I had done in different ways that I could do it,
00:36:47
Speaker
I think that's something that's really for me where the anxiety came in and where the issues around learning. I actually, I rusticated so I stepped down for a year from university. I took a year out because I panicked basically.
00:37:07
Speaker
I was diagnosed, I suddenly went from I can do this to I can't do this and I had the support of university by far and they were behind me and I got assistive technology and I got a specialist dyslexia advisor and she helped me work with timetables and they were
00:37:28
Speaker
they were doing everything that they could to help me but it was me and my mindset because I just I believed I couldn't do it for a while and by the time I got round to saying yeah I can do this just in a different way it was too late so I had to take that year out and in that year out I relearned a lot of the techniques that I'd used through school and then I
00:37:49
Speaker
kind of jumped back in and picked up again. So for me, mental health wise, it did impact being diagnosed. I almost saw it as a, I don't know, it was almost overnight to the point that I just went from yes I can do this to no I can't do it.
00:38:09
Speaker
That is quite interesting listening to you because I would say that as Karen was describing children who are struggling getting a diagnosis must surely help them to progress whereas for you because you had coped so well
00:38:26
Speaker
It meant you went backwards a step. Karen, you're wanting to say? No, so I just want to comment on what you and Gemma have said.
Adapting Teaching Methods for Dyslexic Learners
00:38:35
Speaker
So a diagnosis can be a relief because it's an explanation. Now I know why I'm finding it hard.
00:38:41
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not stupid. I just learned. I do things differently. But the problem is with those around us, parents and educators, so please, educators, take note. There's this quotation that should be repeated and remembered. If a child cannot learn the way that we teach, we must teach them the way that they learn. So we must accept the can-do attitude, that they can do things. If they're not doing something, how can we present it differently? And I do impress this upon parents a lot.
00:39:10
Speaker
So just to address those things. That's a lovely quote. Yeah, I like that. Yes, and it's so valuable, any parents listening, what Gemma said, that we always say to the child, you can do something, we just have to figure out a way that makes sense or where you can achieve it. Yeah, I guess once upon a time. We're putting all the pressure on the children to change or the young people to change, but it's the environment, it's us around them, we need to change. Yeah.
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I guess once upon a time dyslexia wouldn't have been identified as a thing and therefore it was just a kid who maybe wasn't that clever. Generations of people being made to think they're thick. Most people were dyslexic in their 30s, 40s, 50s at least. Perfect word Karen, I was looking for stupid and didn't want to say it out loud on the podcast and you said thick. My first client was 50.
00:40:02
Speaker
Amazing. So in my work as a counsellor now, I sometimes do trauma counselling for adults who were made to feel stupid at school. I had one man with depression and he was tearful about feeling a lack of self-confidence in all of his life and he has from his 50s has an incident from when he was eight being made to be allowed in class even though he'd asked the teacher not to make him do that because he struggled. Now I'm sure many adults have those anecdotes so he does wonder.
00:40:29
Speaker
That's how school used to be, wasn't it? It was quite archaic and quite draconian. So how did it turn? How did you turn it around, Gemma? Or how was it turned around for you? So just before I answer that, I suppose it's worth saying, for me, there was no SCN in my school when I was in primary. I don't remember it. There was speech therapy.
00:40:48
Speaker
there was nothing else. I mentioned my dad's probably dyslexic. He left school when he was 14 because all that they made him do was was farm work basically. They had an on-site farm and they went down and did that but he's very good at maths and was just never noticed. So there are definitely points where even now
00:41:11
Speaker
it's much it's much better there's much more provision but often sometimes when you speak to to students and I deal with when I mentor I deal with either late primary or secondary school kids and and they'll say I don't think my teacher knows how I learn or how I revise they're telling me I have to do it this way and I don't know how to do it this way
00:41:32
Speaker
But in terms of, I suppose in terms of me, that year off was really important to me. I am so thankful to my university tutors, Max especially, who was like my main tutor, who when I came to take the exams the first time and I sat down with him and I said I don't think I can do it because I don't think I know enough.
00:41:56
Speaker
And he knew that I'd been diagnosed. He'd had individual lessons with me, one-to-one, on essay structure, on how to use mind maps. He was amazing. And he'd put so much time into helping me get ready. So when I turned around and said, I don't think I can do it, I expected him to just go, no, you can do it. And he said, look, you can even go in. And if you try the first one and it's not good, then you can go.
00:42:25
Speaker
But if you need to go now, so I did. And I went home for the year. And my grandparents thought I'd never go back. They thought I'd given up on it. And even when I was diagnosed, my mum said that you can't be dyslexic, you're clever. Which again is one of those really common misdemeanors.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah so and it was it was interesting to be back for the year and say to my parents that it's not that I don't know the stuff it's that I'm really struggling to get it all organized and I had when I was diagnosed I'd been given a dictaphone to record lectures and
00:43:06
Speaker
You have to get permission in Oxford and there's a load of hoops you have to jump through to be able to record but they're getting better. They're a little bit archaic in the kind of community but I had all my lectures recorded so I went through every single lecture.
00:43:21
Speaker
for the two years and redid it and did it at my pace, which was what was needed in the end. I needed to be able to go back and to do it and to do it my way and to make the notes the way that I needed to do them and to do the revision the way that I needed to do it.
00:43:37
Speaker
But I just hadn't, when I was diagnosed, because I'd kind of stuck my head in the sand and said, that's it, I'm dyslexic, I can't do it. I hadn't worked with it. I had all these lecture notes that I was doing, I was going through the motions, but I wasn't really using them.
00:43:52
Speaker
in the way that when I took the year out I did and I realised that the techniques that I'd used in secondary school do work. I just needed to apply them differently and I just needed to give it time and work with it instead of just giving up which is kind of what I did and I did for a while at university just so I can't do it and starts
00:44:18
Speaker
start believing the internet and unfortunately it's not a not a great place better now but even even when I was 18 which is 10 years ago it wasn't a great place to find solutions when I googled dyslexia I found a lot of a lot of worry and not a lot of solutions so it took a little while to kind of pull yourself back out and go I can do it just just in my way
Embracing Dyslexia: Strengths and Community Support
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah so I'm gonna ask both of you because I'm conscious of time and we can carry on talking afterwards but for the for the recording what your best tip would be to a teenager Karen's already spoken to us about
00:44:58
Speaker
for parents making sure that children get a diagnosis going through the school or going privately and Karen I will put your details as well as Gemma's into the show notes for anybody who wants to have consultation and get advice on a more individual basis.
00:45:14
Speaker
but I'll ask both of you Gemma if you go first on for a tip for a teenager who is either you can choose either isn't diagnosed yet and is struggling or is diagnosed and you might want to answer this one and has that whole stigma of a diagnosis because I totally get that as well as Karen says it can be a relief or it can label you as something that you don't want to be labeled as. What would your best tip be?
00:45:44
Speaker
I tell all my students that I mentor, not just the dyslexic ones, you do you, which means don't ignore of what everyone else is doing. If it works for you, you stick with it because if it works for you, there's a reason that you've come up with it. So you do you. And that can be, that can be for everything. That can be from peer pressure. That can be for being diagnosed with a, with an SCN. So a learning difficulty. You do it your way.
00:46:10
Speaker
because ultimately your way is the way that it works. And there is within that, obviously, there are professionals who will suggest things, but ultimately, if you find something that works for you, you do you. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:26
Speaker
Perfect. Karen, what would you say? So we've talked, I think, a lot about how being dyslexic can make life challenging, especially in school. But I think it's really important for any individual to be really in touch with the things they're good at, to have a real sense of where I'm good.
00:46:43
Speaker
or where my achievements are, or where my talents are, in whatever field they may be. And to really acknowledge that and say, but I know I'm good at this, whether it's music, school, areas of academic. There are lots of successful authors who are dyslexic. They can't spell or do grammar, but they are good storytellers. So whatever it is in your life, large or small, it is really important to acknowledge to yourself, I know I'm good at this. So that's like what Gemma said, do you?
00:47:10
Speaker
The other thing is to normalize it for yourself because now what is good about our social media and news or information sharing, many, many celebrities are talking about their dyslexic experience. So it's more than just Jamie Oliver and Richard Branson and Tom Cruise, but more younger people who might resonate more with younger people, you know, more
00:47:35
Speaker
immediately identifiable people who talk about being dyslexic. And that's important because that normalizes it. You know, remember that at least between 10 and 20% of the population are experiencing dyslexic characteristics, are dyslexic, so you're not alone. So normalize it for yourself, seek out role models in the greater community and know your own talents and give yourself credit for what you're good at.
00:48:02
Speaker
to see the other side and and in fact a lot of people are talking about the gift of dyslexia that is the approach in which I'm trained the gift of dyslexia or the dyslexic advantage and get in touch with these things. There's two sides to every coin isn't there and it's always looking in fact I have an Instagram post almost ready to go out about exactly that there are all of us all of us are struggling with something that we don't like about ourselves or that impedes us in some way
00:48:32
Speaker
and that we have to work around so doesn't impede us just is harder to harder to progress with but then all of us equally have something that other people don't necessarily have that is amazing and I find that in all of these episodes of the podcast as well and social media is as you say an amazing place to find your tribe find your community find the people who resonate with you and therefore hopefully inspire you
00:48:58
Speaker
Gemma, do you have a social media tribe that you turn to? Yeah, so there are there are dyslexia groups on Facebook that I am part of. And I think that's, to echo Karen, the good thing about seeing other people is seeing the spectrum. So seeing that, because when I think I was diagnosed, a lot of people said that you can't be dyslexic if you did well in your GCSEs, if you can read a book.
00:49:27
Speaker
if you can do this. So it's quite nice to be able to see other people who have similar issues and similar struggles who can also share how they work around it and how they work with it, what kind of strategies they use and seeing those different areas because as we said it is a spectrum and there are things that are more common and things that are less common.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah, brilliant. Gemma, where can people find you if they'd like to connect? Are you active on social media? Yes, so the easiest way is probably to go through my company, which is the Education Hotel, and anything through there does come through to me. But yeah, I'm also on Instagram as a top travel tutor, because actually in my job I do quite a lot of residential tuition all around the place, and so that's a way to reach out.
Connecting with Experts and Conclusion
00:50:17
Speaker
Okay I'll put those links in the show notes and Karen just a final note on where people can find you for coaching or tuition. What's your business and where can people connect with you? So my business is called Dyslexic Achievement and I have a website, Instagram account, Facebook, LinkedIn, the usual suspects.
00:50:38
Speaker
Following your good example, actually, I'm quite a late adopter of social media with a lot of help from my teenage kids. But anyway, through my name, Karen House will usually help people to find me across all the media.
00:50:51
Speaker
Okay, again, I will put all of those links in the show notes and people, I've loved talking to Gemma and I know that Karen has, I have a huge amount of respect for the work that Karen does as well. So do go find them, do go follow them if you think you might like to talk about this further.
00:51:09
Speaker
Karen and Gemma, it's been fantastic talking to you. Gemma, thank you so much for your honesty and for reaching out to talk about dyslexia. I do think that this is, well, as Karen's reiterated, 10 to 20% of people with some form of dyslexic tendency are going to find this useful and interesting. Lots and lots of kids in school and parents worrying may well find this podcast episode and find it so reassuring. So thank you both.
00:51:39
Speaker
I had a real mix of heartstring moments with Gemma describing how tough she found her school years and massive inspiration for what she's since gone on to achieve.
00:51:51
Speaker
And I absolutely loved learning from Karen about the upsides of dyslexia. Things like creativity and an ability to think outside the box. I think it's so easy to focus on the problems that something can bring to a person without necessarily considering all the amazing things that might come along with a difficult diagnosis.
00:52:13
Speaker
There are a whole heap of resources in the show notes so when you finish listening do go and check some of those out and visit Karen and Gemma's websites and social links if you found what they've said helpful. I really hope you find something that's useful to your family. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the podcast please hit the subscribe button and if you think this episode might help someone else that you know please do share it with them.
00:52:43
Speaker
There are lots more episodes of the Teenage Kicks podcast. Do have a browse and see if I've covered anything else you might find useful. And if you have a suggestion of something you'd like to see talked about on the podcast, please do email me on teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or send me a message on Instagram or Twitter at I am Helen Wills.
00:53:06
Speaker
I love to hear from my listeners and I'm always keen to hear how I can help more families cope with what can be some of the most complicated, but also the most wonderful years of parenting. Bye for now and see you next week.