Can Dyslexia Make You Tired? 5 Tips to Help

Can dyslexia make you tired? In today's video, we're going to talk about why this might be true, along with what it might look like in your child and some tips for handling it.

Does dyslexia make you tired? It seems like sometimes the answer is actually yes. And the reason is that for someone who has dyslexia, for them to do academic work or non-academic work that involves reading or writing, takes more mental focus, they have to be more on, more mentally focused than someone without dyslexia does, in order to read the same amount of content or do the same amount of academic work. And so that sort of hyper focus and hyper concentration that they need does seem to, anecdotally at least, make someone with dyslexia more tired, more exhausted at the end of the school day or after doing homework or other school work.

I think it can look both like physical exhaustion, but also in the sense of being sort of mentally drained, which doesn't always feel exactly the same. So it can also be more of a being mentally drained kind of a way of being fatigued. So if someone is tired, someone with dyslexia is either mentally or physically tired or sick or just sort of drained in some way, there seems to be a strong difference between their ability to focus on academic work compared to when they are fully rested and not mentally drained.

We've definitely noticed this in our daughter that when she is not mentally drained, sort of well rested, ready to go on work, she is able to focus better and to get through the work as compared to after maybe after a long day at school where she had some tests during the day and has been doing work for a while. I think that really her performance on the work can really start to suffer and it's a really obvious difference and really obvious switch and you can tell like really when she starts to need a break or has just had too much for the day, like it's just been too much.

And I think this is really probably true for everyone. I mean, obviously none of us perform as well when we're exhausted as when we're fully rested, but I think the reason that this is somewhat specific to dyslexia is because of that extra concentration that is required when you have dyslexia in order to decipher the words or to perform the written work. And I think we just don't, those of us without dyslexia, I think don't often realize just how much effort that is and how difficult that is to concentrate and to really concentrate.

And so those of us without dyslexia, if we get a little tired, you know, maybe our work suffers a little bit, but because we don't have the problem of dyslexia, we can still read, you know, maybe we're reading at 10% reduced capacity or something, but that's, that shows up for someone without dyslexia a lot, maybe a lot less dramatically than it does for someone with dyslexia. Right. And let's talk a little more about how it might show up because sometimes it's, it's pretty clear that someone's tired, that your child might be tired, let's say after school or after doing some homework or doing some, anything that might take more focus, particularly academic work.

But sometimes it doesn't always look exactly like that. And I think parents have experienced this in other circumstances as well, of course, but it could look, for example, like resistance to doing the work. So resistance either to doing the homework at all or to continuing or the kind of resistance where the homework sitting right there in front of them, but there don't seem to be doing it. And so sometimes it can look like resistance.

Sometimes it can look just like a lack of focus, like they're just not able to focus and concentrate on the work. It can look like. And an interesting point about it is that sometimes it can actually look like they have gone a little backwards in their learning or something, like sometimes dramatically, like it could be suddenly that something that seemed really simple for them before, that they seem like they understood, they're not understanding.

And I think sometimes it's easy to get confused and say, oh, no, you just, you know this before and think that it's more a different kind of issue, whether it's confidence or thinking they need to just remember or something like that. But it's often in those cases more of an issue of focus just because they're so tired. Yeah, I think that's a really key point. That's something that I've observed as well is the difference.

It's not just a difference in the observed effect of being tired when you're trying to work and when you're dyslexic. Like it's not just a difference in like speed of performance. It can actually be literally something that they were able to do an hour ago. They're not now able to do. Right. Should we go into the tips? Yeah. Okay. So we have a few ideas for how you can approach this whole issue.

It's not entirely solvable, of course, but there's always things that we can try. One of them is to try to do work earlier in the day if at all possible. That can be tricky partly because sometimes because of the tiredness of school, for example, our daughter tends to need a break after school before she would start to do homework. So it gets to be later in the day. And so then her actual physical tiredness just from it being later in the day will play in as well as she's doing the homework.

Yes. And to sort of add on to that, if it's not possible to do it earlier in the day, which often it isn't when it's nightly homework for school, I think breaks can be key here. So Sonja already mentioned taking a break after school and not jumping right into the work, then maybe work for a focused, even if it's just 10 minutes, 20 minutes, if they can focus for that amount of time and then take another break.

I think chopping it up like that can be quite effective. Right. And I think it's also important to talk maybe about rote work here and potential accommodations. So do you want to say a little more about our work specifically? And then I'm going to mention a tip that is an accommodation that can be done for it. Sure. Yeah, I think one thing that we've noticed with our daughter and also that I think is fairly common with people with dyslexia is that rote work, particularly repetitive work, it's really hard for that to sustain their attention.

And so if they're already a little bit tired or mentally exhausted, then when the work starts to get repetitive, it just goes downhill very quickly. So examples of this are math problems where, you know, maybe they understand the concept, but now they have to do 10 problems that are more or less the same. I think, you know, it's difficult for anyone to sustain attention on repetitive work like that. But again, it's particularly difficult for dyslexic people because of the increased mental focus that is required for them in order to do the reading and writing that's involved in any of this kind of work.

Right. And so one actual accommodation that's fairly usual, I believe, for people, for dyslexic people, is to have a lightened load of repetitive problems, for example, in math. And it's a balance, of course, between making sure enough of them have been done that they fully understand it. But often they would understand it just with a few problems. And then you have to assess that with your individual child and their conceptual knowledge, of course.

But they can have a smaller workload and, you know, already the homework's taking them longer. So there's another issue there, too, which is that they need that potentially because the homework load is longer for them than for other kids. But it can also be really important for this issue of focus with rote work as well. Yeah. So I think I guess that tip could be summarized in summarized as a try to reduce the amount of repetitive and rote work that your child is required to do.

Right. So another tip is to try as much as you can, as best you can to keep the work engaging. Sometimes that's the content itself. Of course, we hope that it's engaging, but sometimes little tweaks that are just how your child best stays engaged can be helpful. Like, for example, our daughter likes to work with music on it, helps her concentrate. So anything like any little tweaks, like maybe with younger children, you're trying to help them make it more fun if you're helping them with the homework.

And for an older child, it could be something like music or just helping them really consciously think about what study habits help them to focus. And of course, that's a nice tip overall for learning, too. It is, definitely. And so our final tip is really a general tip, not not specific to the tiredness and the mental draining that's involved in dyslexia. And this tip is just to be understanding. It's challenging often with young children, older children, anyone when you're trying to help them get through a night of homework.

But as parents, as caregivers, we get worried about them and about how they're doing in school. And then we tend to get stressed and anxious about them getting their work done. And so maybe we tend to to push them to get it done or to say things like, well, you know, of course, you know how to do this. Like, you just showed me you know how to do this. And then it's easy sometimes to get a little frustrated.

And so I think just always keep in mind to be understanding about what they're going through. You know, just because you can focus still doesn't mean they can't. It's different for someone with dyslexia who's trying to work through all the reading and writing challenges there. Yeah. So let us know if you have any other tips in the comments below for how to deal with this challenge or how you've seen it show up.

It might even show up in some other unusual ways. And we'd also love it if you would like and subscribe and share this content. Yes. And if you're listening to this in podcast form, if you could leave us a rating and review. Thank you.