What Dyslexia is NOT

We often talk on this channel about various aspects of dyslexia, but what about what dyslexia is not?

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja and this is Dylexia Journey. Welcome. Today we want to talk about the topic of what dyslexia is not. So like I said in the intro, we often talk on this channel about what dyslexia is, you know, going into various aspects and people's experiences with it. And we've even addressed to some extent some misconceptions, but we wanted to be very specific this time in talking about a few things that dyslexia is not.

Yeah, so to start with, dyslexia is not just reading words backwards or reversing. letters or seeing words scrambled on the page. Now, sometimes you do hear about people who, you know, often dyslexic kids will write letters backwards. So they'll write a D instead of a B if we're talking about lowercase. but the sort of, classic conception of dyslexia in the mainstream, of it being either where everything's just scrambled up or where you're literally just reading backwards instead of forwards is really not the case for, for almost everyone who actually has dyslexia.

Well, I want to dig into this a little more because it's, I mean, we hear all the time when we're interviewing people and, you know, talking to various people about being dyslexic. And I'm sorry, you probably heard some of this too. We will hear people say that they scramble up where the, where they are on the page, for example, or maybe they, you know, write the beginning of the word first before the, no, sorry, at the end, you know, switch the beginning and the end of the word, like in terms of when they're trying to write it, something like that.

So it sounds like something like reading backwards or, or it being all scrambled up visually. Right. But I, so I think really the point here, it's not that those things don't happen. but the way I think of it is that not being dyslexic, it's almost like, I just can't understand what they mean by that. So it's like, it's more complicated, you could say, or more like about the processing of all the information than it being what we sort of imagined that could be.

If we're trying to like understand, oh, it's scrambled, oh, it's backwards. So it's not that some of those, those things don't happen that look like it could be that it's more that it's, it's more about the processing and how, you know, how that information is, is being interacted with in the brain. Right. And the way that I've heard it described, for example, by someone with dyslexia recently is, it's not like, like they said they can read individual letters.

They can read individual words. It's more like when they try to read quickly, it's sort of the processing of it all, but then it becomes difficult to, to parse sort of the individual words. And so I think when people say it becomes scrambled, they don't literally mean that they can't focus on a specific letter or a specific word. Right. And so it'll look different, I think, for different people, but also at different stages of learning to read probably, you know, how this type of thing would look.

But the main point is when people, when people just sort of categorize it very, very sort of simplistically as, you know, the letters are backwards or it's scrambled, without understanding sort of, there's more to it than that. I think that really is what dyslexia isn't. Exactly. The second thing that dyslexia isn't is a disease to be cured or fixed. and we've talked a little bit about this before, on this channel because it's, it's tricky again, because, you know, there is a diagnosis often that is done for it.

which one associates that word diagnosis with disease then, right. but it's again, really this sort of deeper, more complex thing than that. If we're talking about a kind of neurodiverse brain, we're talking about something that has positive characteristics and characteristics we consider more negative in terms of how schools and society are run and, you know, how learning usually takes place. so there are challenges certainly, but overall it's not that it is a disorder or something, you know, something like that.

Yeah. And to kind of emphasize, one of the places that you just made, it really is a whole brain difference, that is never going to, to change. Like someone with dyslexia isn't, is never going to change their brain to be like someone who doesn't have dyslexia or vice versa. Someone without dyslexia cannot change their brain to be like someone with dyslexia. Exactly. Which gets into that not being curable. Right. Like, yeah, right.

That doesn't mean that there aren't interventions to do to make learning happen more easily for all kinds of different reasons. There can be, you know, interventions and, and aspects that are worked on. but it's not being, it's something to be cured. It's not that kind of a thing. Right. Now, to be very clear, we don't mean that dyslexia cannot be remediated. So that's a very different thing. And what we, what we mean by that is that people with dyslexia can learn to read and can learn to read fluently.

but it's not, they will always have dyslexia. They will always have that underlying brain difference. and I think, you know, what's important to take from this though, even knowing that is that, that, you know, if you want to get resources and accommodations and things, you still have to go through the process of being identified. And, you know, sometimes that's called being diagnosed. and that interestingly though, right. It, you know, it's not done through a pediatrician.

it's done, through a special kind of, psychologist. So educational psychologist, at least in the United States. and so that's just important to keep in mind while, even though we're saying this, that, that there's a piece of it that feels more like that as one goes through the journey of being identified. Okay. So the third thing that it's important to emphasize that dyslexia is not, dyslexia is not an intellectual defect. so, there are people with dyslexia, who, so people with dyslexia score, I guess, kind of across all ranges of an IQ test, just like people without dyslexia.

It's not correlated with measures of intelligence, right? That is very important to understand. And probably one of the most common misconceptions out there. Right. And that's a little different from, you know, understanding that sometimes, you know, dyslexic people might be more likely to be good at art or something like that. Like that's also true that there's other kinds of gifts, giftings other than what we think of as academic intelligence and things that we test for in an IQ test.

But what we're saying here is that it's actually not even at all the same, you know, as not having a higher IQ. Right. And the reason, I mean, it's understandable why this confusion exists because so much of our educational system and so much of the ways that we talk about intelligence are related to reading and writing. And so if someone with dyslexia is given exams or intelligence tests that involve reading and writing, they might not score as high as their kind of innate intelligence would allow them to where they were given, you know, an equivalent test that did not involve that type of reading and writing.

Right. Exactly. So the kind of testing matters to whether or not they can potentially show what's really being tested in those kind of IQ tests. Right. And so this means that there are, you know, in school, there are going to be dyslexic kids across all ranges of classes. I mean, there's going to be dyslexic kids in special ed, there's going to be dyslexic kids in honors classes. I mean, it's, it's the same range.

Well, I mean, it may in practicality, you're like right now, especially with some people, a lot of people not being identified still look like the numbers are lower, but it's definitely possible. Like it, it really shouldn't be that way. It should be that it's more of an equal distribution. Yeah. Okay. So the fourth thing that dyslexia is not is rare. So estimates, are often around 20% of the population that actually is dyslexic.

I mean, it's not, it's not an exact measure. but often you'll see that as a one in five or 20% is, is kind of the, what, what is guessed for what the actual prevalence is. Now there's definitely a lot of cases, like I was mentioning that aren't identified. so that can be some of what looks different. There can also be a range of how the dyslexia presents as to how mild or severe it looks, you know, and that can be for a range of factors.

It can be because, you know, a kid maybe sort of came up with their own method and taught themselves to read a little more. And so therefore they didn't have as much of a deficit early on to get behind in school. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why, that can happen where someone isn't identified or, and, or it looks milder. but when, especially when I think this is easier to see when we think about the genetic aspect.

So it's very much like is genetic and you'll see patterns in families, that sometimes someone in a family like only is identified later and then it's considered a milder dyslexia, but there's other people in the family who have more severe dyslexia. And, you know, as far as I know, we haven't identified the genes for like really yet. So it's very possible that it's like multifactorial too, that it could be several different genes happening.

So who knows why, like, it's not always looking like it's as prevalent, but it really is. And so I think, I don't think that that is commonly out there, like still known that much. and the reason it's important is both that the general public understands that, but then also that people might consider having it or, you know, that someone they know has it like more easily. Yeah. And to add to that, so to make a mark on creative.

So if you're out there listening to this right now, you either have dyslexia yourself or know someone who has dyslexia, like it is very likely that you, know someone who has dyslexia, because as we said, approximately one out of five people have dyslexia. so our fifth and final point for today of what dyslexia is not, so dyslexia is not uniform. everyone who has dyslexia, is unique. And so everyone has slightly different things that they struggle with, slightly different things that they're good at.

just like people without dyslexia. it doesn't show up the same way in any two people. so one person with dyslexia might, not learn to read until like 12. Another person with dyslexia might learn to read when they're five. there's no, there's no consistency of, of that kind of, course, how, how well people or, kids do in school, et cetera. And, you know, some of that is also can be because of other, you know, aspects of neurodiversity.

Like some, it's not uncommon for someone who's dyslexic to also have ADHD. So there can be, there's so many other things going on, right. And someone's brain and in their life and their experiences that it's just naturally going to affect something like being dyslexic, which is so like pervasive in terms of how learning and, and information processing, happen. but that's, I think why there's so much variety really in terms of how it looks.

But of course there are consistent patterns that allow us to identify someone who is dyslexic. yeah, and one thing I wanted to add to that, to what Sonja just said is that, we don't know whether these differences are, you know, more genetic or more environmental or a combination of both most likely. but that the fact remains that people do exhibit it very differently. Right. So hopefully that was helpful. You know, these in a sense are some potential misconceptions around being dyslexic.

so we just wanted to address those in this video. And if we forgot any, or if you notice any in your own life or the dyslexic person, you know, we'd love to hear about them in the comments. Thank you for watching. Thanks.