Posted by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

>Is your son dyslexic? I was slightly dyslexic as a child and its a
>possibility I learned to read upside down then, however I was one of the
>ones able to sort it out on my own and now read like a house afire. My
>brother was only dyslexic with numbers, wouldn't you know now he's an
>engineer.

No, he has an expressive language disorder/central auditory processing
deficit. Primary way it displays itself now is difficulty in writing;
earlier and pre-speech therapy it displayed itself in inability to
express himself clearly--quite often he couldn't think of the words
for what he wanted to say. It sounds very superficial, but believe
me, it isn't, not to the degree he has it. Before he started speech
therapy in kindergarten he literally spoke in telegraphic
terms--subject, verb, object. No connector words, no adjectives,
nothing.

His learning system is visual/spatial instead of
auditory/temporal--ie, he thinks in pictures rather than thinking in
words he hears. He can look at a blueprint or assembly plan and
picture it clearly in his head, where most of us can't. It was very
problematic when he was younger because he would get very frustrated
because he couldn't make other kids understand him--and he had
articulation problems, to boot. He was teased heavily because of his
articulation problems, and when he got flustered and upset because he
couldn't think of words to respond to his teasers, they got after him
even more.

But he reads very well and always has (we have read to him since he
was 2 years old and we still read to him at bedtime); which has been a
befuddlement to those diagnosing him because usually reading
difficulties accompany this syndrome. I remember when his highly
experienced, old timer first grade teacher (it was her last year at
this school) looked at me and commented: "I thought he was crying
because he was babyish, and then I realized he was frustrated. He
really had me fooled for a while because other kids I've seen with
this problem don't read like he does."

It's somewhat related to autism but it's not autism; there's some
discussion about whether it fits on the autistic continuum or not.
Some autism techniques work with him (and horseback riding helps,
something about the way autistic children and children with speech
issues interact with horses as well as the muscles exercised during
riding is therapeutic). Speech disorders and dyslexia run in my
family, along with allergies and asthma (and some theories have found
a link between allergies/asthma and speech disorders).

Another issue is that he did not spend a lot of time crawling, despite
my giving him plenty of opportunity to do so; neurologically crawling
helps wire some speech centers in the brain. But he was never wanting
to crawl and he walked early (although I walked early as well and
didn't have the same problem--although I did have math issues).

jrw

Follow Ups:

• Re: expressive language disorder - Primary way it displays itself now is difficulty in writing shelley
• Hyperlexia refers to a child with a severe language disorder who reads early. Cindy

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