Dyslexics and children doing poorly in school are easily distracted and do loose focus during learning tasks! When they are very uncomfortable (confused, frustrated, defeated, blank), their mind looks for a way to have a “mental health break!” The resulting diverting behaviors are not the problem. They are symptoms, which are like fire alarms indicating the effects of the stress experienced by the child. Let’s dig under these symptoms and look for the root causes, instead of taking steps to erase the symptoms (turn off the alarm).
Three conditions go hand-in-hand to make the dyslexic vulnerable to distraction and lack of focus while reading: confusion, the wandering of the mind’s eye, and Brain Dis-integration (these last 2 topics will be discussed at another time). The build up of stress due to confusion generated while reading causes frustration, stimulates the mind’s eye to wander in an attempt to find a solution for what is not understood, and tends to dis-integrate needed brain function and thinking.
The cause of these symptoms in 3-D learners: Confusion is triggered when the 3-D thinking child reads abstract words that have no inherent sensory meaning. He stumbles inconsistently while reading abstract words (like “a, and, the, when, he, for, what) and symbols (like punctuation marks and flat letters of the alphabet). His irregularity in being able to recognize the “small, abstract, stumble” words is what makes it so confusing for parents to understand what is happening in their child. Sometimes he remembers (has them in his short term memory because he just was corrected and heard them, perhaps) some abstract words and other times the same words make no sense to him, and can even appear invisible on the page (he skips over them). Abstract words can actually look to the reader like blank spots on the page between words he does see and understand!
All 270 of the written abstract words, all written letters and all punctuation symbols must be mastered 3-dimensionally by these students in order to give these words and symbols meaning. In contrast to abstract words, “tree” is a concrete word that can be experienced and recognized as something growing in your yard. There is a physical experience of tree that gives the written word meaning – makes it “concrete”. However, the abstract word “a” refers to nothing concrete that can be directly experienced. For a written abstract word or symbol to become “visible” (comprehendible) to dyslexics, the 3-D learner must experience, at the same time, all three parts of the word or symbol. In order to be experienced and understood by the dyslexic, an abstract word must provide a 3-dimensional experience of:
What the word looks like,
What the word sounds like, and
What the word means.
Then, the 3-D learner can focus on learning to read, and learning to read with comprehension. Confusion is reduced and no longer creates stress to the level that the reader needs to take a mental health break all the time. The result is a less distracted, more focused person!
Sincerely,
Bill Allen
About Me
- Reading Tools
- I am a 55 year old dyslexic and, over the past 13 years, I have helped hundreds of children and adults to overcome their reading and writing challenges. Since I am dyslexic myself, I know what works and what doesn’t work. The dyslexic thinks in a very high percentage of 3 dimensional thought. The English language is written in a 2 dimensional format. There begins the problem. Most parents that I’ve worked with have come to the conclusion that phonics is not the answer, and they are correct. That’s why my company and I developed The Learning to Read Program, a 13-volume at-home study solution guaranteed to improve reading skills one full grade level in 30 days or the purchase price is refunded. We believe the self esteem improvement created by the reading successes unleashes the natural “big picture” thinking similar to fellow dyslexic “outside the box” thinkers such as Einstein, Charles Schwab and Walt Disney.
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