What intervention program to consider for a dyslexic?

I have been asked which intervention program I put my daughter through.

The person that gave us hope for my daughter's dyslexia is Ronald Davis, an American. He was both dyslexic and autistic. Through 2 of his books, The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning, he opened my eyes to what dyslexia is, based on his personal experiences, and his explanations were so simple and logical that I took a chance with his program.

Ron sees dyslexia as a gift. He says that dyslexics are intelligent, imaginative and creative. They are predominately picture thinkers and have the ability to view things 3-dimensionally when they try to problem solve. However, their brains do not work very well with sounds and this is the reason why a common characteristic of dyslexia is difficulty with phonics. I know this very well because my attempts at teaching my daughter English using phonics, blending of sounds and rhyming met with varying degree of success. Because of this realization, I ruled out any program that purports to help a dyslexic to read using phonics.

However, this gift works well only with real objects and becomes a stumbling block when dyslexics encounter symbols such as alphabet, punctuation, sight words (eg. of, a, the, that, to), numeral, etc because they have no visual images. And these symbols form 75% of the text on a page. So can you imagine the mammoth task a child has to perform when he or she starts learning to read, write and spell?!

Whenever they encounter these symbols in a text, they get confused (because they produce blank pictures) and when they reach the threshold of their confusion, they get disoriented and their perceptions become distorted. Then symptoms of dyslexia begin to appear - some letters may reverse (like b and d, p and q, m and n), some letters or words may start moving, some words may disappear, or the letters and words may be reassembled into a different sequence. No wonder when I tried to teach my daughter the word 'bus', she could not recognize the word each time she looked at it. Although it is just a 3-letter word, to her, it looked different each time!

This led Ron to conclude that symptoms of dyslexia are actually symptoms of disorientation. To get rid of the symptoms, you get rid of the disorientation. This was the first clue that Ron discovered which led him to conduct experiments on himself to find orientation so that his perceptions (not just sight and sound, but also balance/movement and sense of time) were not distorted and he could see a text the way you and I are seeing, stable and two-dimensional. This became what is now known in his program as Orientation Counselling.

Initially he thought, that was it. Once the disorientation is fixed, the dyslexia is gone. But no. He soon realised that although he was able to achieve orientation and therefore accurate perception, he would encounter certain symbols and would disorient. Then it dawned on him that while orientation corrects perception, he needed to resolve the cause of disorientation. This was the second clue. He concluded that certain symbols were causing the disorientation and this varied from one dyslexic to another. Working with an Educational Psychologist, they came up with a program which he called Symbol Mastery where a dyslexic is taught how to master learning in a way that plays up to their strength. Once a symbol is mastered, it no longer triggered a disorientation. The cause is eliminated!

And true enough, by fixing the disorientation issue and teaching my daughter symbol mastery, she no longer encountered difficulties with reading, writing or spelling. Her dyslexia is corrected!

I hope you have a clearer picture of what your child goes through when he or she tries to read, write or spell. They are not being lazy when they try to negotiate or bargain with you for less homework. They cannot stand looking at texts for long periods as it is mentally exhausting. They are not stupid when they cannot recognize the same word. The word just does not look the same each time they look at it. They are not being naughty when they throw tantrums because that is the way they try to cope in order to avoid anything to do with reading, writing or spelling. Cut them some slack. Give them frequent breaks. Most important of all, find out more about this learning difficulty so that you can help them. It is not a crippling disability. It is a learning difficulty that can be overcome.