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Dealing with Dyslexia
Diagnosing the Disorder
By Sue Poremba
"As a child, I was called dumb. I was called lazy. And that was just by some of my teachers. You can imagine the names that the kids in the school yard added to that list ... No, I'm not dumb or lazy. I'm dyslexic," Robert Frank writes in his book The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child (Rodale, 2004).
Frank realized something wasn't quite right when he was in second or third grade. He was lucky enough to have a teacher who recognized that he needed some extra help, though he spent most of his education "just faking it" – a mechanism used by many dyslexic children.
Over the years, he learned how to compensate for his difficulties with reading and writing. Fighting his way through college and graduate school, he was finally diagnosed as dyslexic. Today, he is an assistant professor of psychology at Oakton Community College and a family therapist.
His story is also extraordinary because he made it so far academically. Approximately 50 percent of children with dyslexia end up dropping out of school.
Dyslexia is a neurological disorder that affects the way the brain processes information. There are three types of dyslexia: visual, auditory and a combination of the two. Visual dyslexia is the way people see words, numbers and figures. Auditory dyslexia is the way words are processed after they are heard.
"Dyslexia is a global term that simply cannot describe every child with the disorder," says Michele Mazzocco, a research scientist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. For example, while dyslexia is most commonly associated with reading, Mazzocco's research indicates that dyslexia might have a math correlation as well.
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