The Benefits of Dyslexia: a Psychologist’s Perspective ft. Linda Silverman, Ph.D

I just cannot recommend it enough. I'm in the middle of reading it, the revised version. I just adored their first version. It's terrific.

So, there are dyslexia specialists that you can go to. I would, this is my own, my own bias. It's not something everyone believes in. So, I have to use that caveat. I think it's okay to go to a dyslexia specialist in your area and get a diagnosis if you can. I don't necessarily support the usual remedial methods that they recommend. Now, the ID's do say that with practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, you can improve on your sound-symbol relationships.

But my experience has been that a more holistic view of reading seems to work better with the individuals that I've worked with. And as I've, as I mentioned in Upside Down Brilliance, I was familiar with the Davis Dyslexia Correction model. And there are two people in particular who are trained in that model. One is Crystal Punch, who lives in Denver, and co-wrote the book, Picture It, Teaching Visual Spatial Learners, with Betty Maxwell, who is our associate director.

And the other person that I think of the world of, and she's also trained in the Davis Dyslexia Correction model. And she's in Boca Raton and has 3D learners. And both Crystal and Mira work virtually. So it's possible to live anywhere and have either Crystal or Mira work with you virtually. Yeah, that's really good. That's really great. Actually, I want to get your book up here, too, while we're talking about it.

The Upside Down Brilliance, The Visual Spatial Learner. While we're talking about this, reframing, you know, dyslexia as this learning difference, this brain difference that has these, you know, good qualities to it, too, that really was helpful for our daughter, for example. I'm just wondering, do you have any more perspective on the visual, spatial strengths of dyslexic? Any even examples that you have of different students you've worked with?

I see it all the time, and I mention quite a few of them in the book. But these are individuals who inhabit 3D space. Now, Brock and Fernet Eide say that those with a particular type of dyslexia, who have what they call M strengths, do not do well on two-dimensional, like block design or the stimulus materials for visual puzzles or matrix reasoning that are all two-dimensional. They do much better with three-dimensional than two-dimensional spatial abilities.

So there are some people who have phenomenal relational abilities. I see some children who are phenomenally empathic. I see children who have incredible intuition. And I hope you won't think that I'm a crazy person, but I also see dyslexic children who have psychic ability. And I believe that it's their dyslexia that allows them to have these paranormal experiences because their left hemisphere isn't as noisy, and it doesn't shut out all of that information that is coming through the right hemisphere.

The right hemisphere is the powerful hemisphere of dyslexics. It's the powerful hemisphere for visual-spatial learners. It's the seat of creativity, of intuition, of big-picture thinkers, of visual-spatial abilities. So if you've got a very strong left hemisphere, and it's your left hemisphere that reads, and it tells time. In fact, that's the only part of your brain that can live in a time-based reality is your left hemisphere. If that hemisphere is very strong, which it is in non-dyslexics, it's also talking all the time.

It never shuts up. And it's blocking out, through its inner noise, its inner dialogue, it's blocking out what you need to be mindful, to be aware, to be connected to the universe. It really is, in many ways, a disservice to be too strong, having too strong of a left hemisphere. Dyslexic individuals don't have a very strong left hemisphere. They have a very strong right hemisphere. Yeah, it's really interesting to hear that.

And just, I mean, I think we can intuit from that how important dyslexic can be for our society, since we're a very left brain-oriented society. Incredibly important. Yeah. Incredibly important. Necessary. Important for the future of our planet. And a new book that has, it's not that new, but new to me, is a very big, thick book in tiny, tiny print, not dyslexic-friendly at all, called The Master and His Emissary. And that talks about the importance of the right hemisphere.

And that the left hemisphere has ruled the world for so long, and it's leading us to the brink of destruction as a species. And if the only way we will survive is to honor the right hemisphere, honor people who have strong right hemispheres, and let them be our leaders. The master, according to Ian McGilchrist, is the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is the emissary. And it's become a wicked emissary that's taken over and thinks it knows everything.

And then it doesn't, because it's not able to see the big picture.

Yeah. Well, I like this way that you, in your book, Upside Down Brilliance, and that the IEDs, as well, really are reframing dyslexia as... There's just so many positive aspects of it. And, you know, it's not to minimize the struggles that our dyslexic kids face in school. But I think it really helps to have this perspective of knowing that there are all these benefits. There are all these ways that dyslexic people are uniquely able to contribute to our society and to our world.

If they can just, if we can just help them with accommodations and whatever, get through school and get through the parts of this world that are not set up for their brains, that they can be, can do amazing things. Well, the first book on this was The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davids. And he said that genius occurs not in spite of disabilities, but because of them. And the IEDs said almost the same thing, that dyslexics, millions of dyslexics, are highly successful because of their dyslexia, not in spite of it.

And the second book before The Dyslexic Advantage came out was In the Mind's Eye by Thomas West, which you probably have in your library or know about. If you don't, it's a wonderful read, and it's all about how dyslexics change the world.

Sounds wonderful. It's just making me think, yeah, in general about all kinds of reframes, too. I wonder if you could say more about, because we're focusing mostly on dyslexia and giftedness here, but just to pull, you know, some other learning differences in here, too. What about, like, sensory processing order or ADHD, things like that? How do you, like, what's been your experience with those and how it interrelates with all of this?

That's a wonderful question. Thank you for asking. What I see, and you called it comorbidity in your question, I hate that term, comorbid, just sounds deafly. But what I see is that the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere need to be very well integrated. In order for the left eye and the right eye to be integrated enough to be able to read, and for the left ear and the right ear to be able to process together in a synchronous manner, and for the eye and the hand to be able to work together for writing.

So, what I recommend to parents very frequently is to go to an occupational therapist and to get the child's sensory systems evaluated to make sure that their left side of their body and the right side of the body are talking to each other. So, we do see a very strong overlap between dyslexia and sensory processing disorder. We also see a strong overlap between dyslexia and visual processing deficits and dyslexia and central auditory processing disorder and dyslexia and ADHD.

So, we can have children who come in who have all of the above, and the parents are like, okay, where do we start? And what I tell them to do is to start with occupational therapy, because if they can do the exercises and the therapy to get the left side of the body and the right side of the body integrated and working together, then you can build on that. And everything else goes from there.

The majority of occupational therapists work with children who are seven and under. So, if they have a child who's over that age, but who is clumsy, who doesn't like handwriting, who has not learned to ride a bike, then they might consider coming to Denver to the Star Institute, because they do work with children over seven, and they even work with teenagers and adults. There are not a whole lot of places that I know of that do, and Star Institute is a premier center for sensory processing disorder.

Lucy Miller founded it, and she wrote the book Sensational Kids, which I also recommend. So, I tell people, start with that. The next thing I tell them to do is go to ABLE Kids Foundation in Fort Collins, Colorado. I don't care where they live in the world. They can live in India. I'll still send them there. And that is an audiological center that has had tremendous success in reducing anxiety and increasing the timing of the two ears so that they work together.

They call the typical scenario that they see asynchronous timing so that one ear, the stimulus is traveling at a slower pace than the other ear, and when it gets into the central nervous system, it misses. So, for reading to take off, you have to have vision working. You have to have really good auditory timing and synchrony so that everything is coming together instead of going like this. I say vision last, even though vision is the most important for reading, because you can have vision therapy at 90, but you want to get sensory integration therapy as early as possible, and you want to get central auditory processing disorder, you want to get it evaluated and treated as early as possible, and then vision therapy will sit on those two interventions.

ADHD, again, we can do ADHD evaluations at any time in the person's life. You certainly don't want to put a child on medication before the age of six, unless that child is really impossible. But we prefer not even to identify them as ADHD until they're six. And at that point, you can determine if you've tried a whole lot of other interventions, and then you can see if you want to do an ADHD intervention.

But ADHD does correlate with dyslexia, and it does correlate with all of these other issues. Yeah, I think it's so important. What's being brought out here is that there can be all these nuances to look at and lots of different areas to examine. Like you said, I think it's important not to get overwhelmed and to know we can take it step by step, but also important to realize that many different things could be at play in the same child.

So, yes. I like the more holistic approaches, and I really am very fond of the Davis dyslexia correction model. Some people are not as comfortable with it because it sounds a little woo-woo. One of the things that Ron says is that when you orient, and he teaches you how to orient in that book, The Gift of Dyslexia, when you orient, you can keep the O's from rolling around and looking like donuts, and you can keep your P and your Q oriented the way you want them.

But you don't have to orient all the time. You can disorient. And when you disorient, which means you're not reading at that moment, you are much more open to your creativity. You're able to see things from different perspectives. So, his concept of orienting and disorienting, which is in The Gift of Dyslexia, is extremely helpful for the development of creativity. I just want to say that I hope that people who are listening will find someone to work with their children who understands their strengths and just helps them see that they have tremendous ability to contribute to society.

And it does not matter whether they ever develop phonemic awareness. They can learn to read without it. That sound-symbol relationship is not the only way you learn to read. So, there's the book Picture It by Betty Maxwell and Crystal Punch, which is a different way to learn to read, that's based more on that holistic model. And there are many books out there that will say, look at whole word. Don't just drive your child crazy with phonetics.

Yeah, it's really interesting to hear that perspective. I think it's good to keep open minds on what will work best for any individual child. Yeah, and I think it's so key to, you know, if we just, we've talked about this in previous episodes, if we just force our children to do remediation for hours and hours and phonics and stuff, it's going to, they're just going to get over. They're just going to kill their spirit.

Yeah. They need to know that to reach them is to honor their strengths. Teachers need to recognize their strengths. They need to know what their strengths are, and they need to follow their bliss. And they will make enormous contributions in the world of design, in photography, in media, in fashion, in being a surgeon, in being a pilot, being an architect. There is so much that they can do. Those are wonderful words to leave everyone with, I think, here.

So thank you so much for speaking with us today. We really appreciate it. I'm glad my computer participated and cooperated. Take care. Bye-bye.