Brains wired for dyslexia

THE 10 Co Clare-based children who wrote Dyslexic Brains Learn Differently have varied interests.

One says: “Baking helps me relax”. Another confides: “I love rugby. I wear the number eight jersey.” A little girl says: “I can deliver baby lambs.”

All 10 have a few things in common. They’re very bright but dyslexic and they’re in the reading class at Ennis National School.

“The reading class is not for slow learners. It’s for children who show a large discrepancy between their potential and their performance,” says reading class teacher Fiona De Buitléir, whose class serves 10 to 13-year-old children from all over Clare. It’s one of 19 such classes in Ireland set up to help children with dyslexia.

A condition affecting up to 10% of our population, dyslexia impacts on a person’s ability to easily learn to read and spell. In some cases, it affects maths and arises from differences in the way the brain is ‘wired’. It runs in families.

The idea of a book by kids for kids was Joanne O’Brien’s, a mother of a girl in the reading class. The children tell their own stories of life with dyslexia.

“Compiling the book gave them a voice, the vocabulary to articulate their own dyslexia so they can explain to other children what it is,” explains De Buitléir.

“All through life, they’re going to have to explain to people: ‘I’m intelligent but I have severe dyslexia, which is why I need help with spelling or with filling this form’.

“The children really want people to know they’re not slow. They’ve been called ‘useless’ and ‘stupid’ by other children.”

The children are thrilled with the book, says De Buitléir. “They love reading their own story, even reading it aloud — not something kids with dyslexia would usually like doing. The book’s a resource for families of a newly-diagnosed child when the family has no idea what it means.

“The stories are stories of hope. They say, ‘Life isn’t over because you’ve been diagnosed with dyslexia’. One child thought she had a terrible disease. Now she says ‘I’ll always have it but I can manage it’.”

* Dyslexic Brains Learn Differently, €10, available from www.wowwee.ie.

* www.ennisns.ie