As therapist Rama Tandon talks about dyslexia in children with parents and teachers, she tells them how their little actions might help them detect the disability. By Team Viva
It all begins with the understanding that reading doesn’t come naturally to human beings. And when it comes to a child, at a tender age, facing difficulties while reading, s/he is often criticised for not putting the required efforts into it. Dyslexia does just that. It might not be looked at as a learning disability as it does not come into direct notice until diagnosed closely. And parents might not always understand or be ready to accept that. One of the major examples being the film, Taare Zameen Par (2007), where the protagonist, Ishaan Awasthi, struggles to read and write efficiently and when his teacher approaches his father, hinting him about he being dyslexic, there is a clear denial from his father as he says, ‘Aapko kya lagta hai mera baccha paagal hai?’ (What do you think my child is mentally sick?)
Dyslexia therapist Rama Tandon believes that since the disorder is not easily identifiable, it could be hard for the parents to accept that their child is dyslexic. “It comes to them as some mental disorder and the stigma attached to mental illness in the country does not let them only accept it. It might be a task for parents to accept it and help their kids improve the condition. And in some of the cases, where a child is adopted and the parents later discover that their child’s disability, it might get even harder for them to work upon it. Hence, these parents have to put more effort into their children than others,” says she as she conducts a workshop on Demystifying Dyslexia and Interventions for Young Children in Classroom for parents and teachers.
While acceptance is major, the first step to help improve the condition is identification, which involves several other steps. She says, “There are a few important areas one needs to look at to identify the disorder. First, how a child writes — dyslexic children are not able to write in lines, which signifies a lack of uniformity and the disability to follow a given pattern in them. Second, if you ask the child to write a paragraph in five lines, the child will try and squeeze it to write it in two or three. Third — the output. If the child with dyslexia is given a sequence of tasks, the child would not understand the sequence.”
However, children with dyslexia might have a higher IQ than the other regular children. And this segment is higher than the average. These children are usually very creative. “But the IQ of a child has nothing to do with his/her reading or writing,” she tells us. But compared to a regular child, a dyslexic child will have to put in a lot of effort to write a simple word. “Simple here implies a word, which would be easier for a normal child to pen. There is a pressure on dyslexic children every time they are reading or writing,” says she and goes on to add that it takes five times extra efforts for a child with dyslexia to read and write, “so we need to be patient.”
To explain this pressure to the parents and teachers, Rama, through a sentence of around 10 words, asks everyone to count the number of F in the paragraph within 15 seconds. Due to the short time limit, most of the people in the audience couldn’t tell the right number. She explains, “This happened because of the pressure you had. This is exactly what happens with these children when they are asked to read or write. While it’s already difficult for them to read or write, the pressure to do it faster leaves them doing none.”
Talking about the minimum age when dyslexia hits a person, Rama says that a child with the disability might get better with time but it never goes off completely. “It stays lifelong. When they grow up, they have problems in differentiating between directions like left and right while they are driving. They might also have problem in understanding time and differentiate between yesterday, today and tomorrow,” says she.
She talks about the estimation of space in young children and explains with an example, “In a classroom, if a dyslexic child is asked to sit on a bench, the child will come and sit in the middle rather than understanding that he should have sat on one side of the bench, so that it leaves space for someone else to sit. They do not understand the estimation of space, which is a red flag for parents or teachers to notice that there is something wrong.”
Similarly, during their teenage years, these kids face an issue with time management. “The concept is unclear to them. Parents might, at such times, discourage their own child so much that the child looses hope and instead of improving they stay the same,” says she.
Rama also enlightened the audience on Dyspraxia, which is a development disorder that affects the way one’s brain communicates with one’s body. The condition might appear to be similar to dyslexia, but requires differentiation.
As she ends the workshop, Rama shows us a few things such as a mini square-sized, white board that comes with a duster, so children with dyslexia could keep scribbling. It helps them to keep practice writing something or the other.