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A very frustrating day. My dyslexia (only found out about it this year) acted up today. I find that it’s worse on high stress days. It’s very mild to begin with only about the middle two letters of a word switch. No wonder I can’t spell. Usually not a big deal. But today, I was trying to print out the Merry book, from it’s various files, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it. It never occurred to me that doing shorter more logical names for files would bump up against the dyslexia. I couldn’t figure out why I would open a file and it did not contain what I was sure it should contain. I thought, well okay, it’s a stressful day, I’ll make notes. I carefully wrote down what was in each file and wrote the name of the file. Then I tried using my notes, and what I’d written down did not match the file I’d written down. In fact, if I’d acted on some of my notes, I would have deleted a file I needed, and kept a file of gibberish. I was switching one letter and one number, or misremembering which was which. One letter, and one number, and I simply could not see them correctly. I begin to see why algebra wasn’t my best subject in school. I finally had Jonathon come up and simply sit in front of both computers and look at the files, and write down what they were named, and even then, I could not read them correctly.
How did we fix this problem? We renamed the files. Made their names longer so the letters I switch will be further into the word, and not be the letter or number designator. The .doc is what did me in on the original file names. If .doc had not been there, I would have switched some of Merry’s name, and that I can spell, but the .doc made me switch the very letter/number combination that was crucial to the whole naming convention.
Strangely, it was blogger that made me realize I had dyslexia. Their spell checker puts the word that I’ve written just above the correct spelling. One day I thought the spell checker wasn’t working, because it kept trying to get me to replace a word with the same spelling it said was incorrect. I called Jonathon up, and he said, no, the e and the i were opposite. I could not see any difference between the two words. Even after it was pointed out for me. It looked identical to me. I’m a writer, a best selling writer. I have two college degrees one in English and one in biology. And no one ever figured out that I had a learning disability. Not even me.
I probably wouldn’t have thought dyslexia even then, except that we’d been going through testing with our daughter, Trinity. Yep, she’s got it, too, and it is the beginning and end of words that switch on her. That makes learning to read much harder than just switching a couple of letters in the middle of a word. She’s also very good at math, which I am not. She does not switch numbers, only letters. I switch both. Interesting.
It explains why I was one of the last kids to learn to read in first grade, but once I could read I jumped to harder books very quickly. I switch the middle letters of words, sometimes, longer words are easier for me to read than shorter words. Funny, my learning disability may be partially responsible for my early and extensive vocabulary.
Trinity’s father just called to tell me that he had his teacher parent conference and she has just gotten the best report card ever. Like A’s and B’s, except for one C. The tutoring is helping, and her school has been great. And she has lots of adults in her life that are pulling out all the stops to help her where no one helped some of us. But no one tested for anything when I was a child. You were bad at math, or couldn’t spell. It was just a skill you didn’t possess. It never occurred to anyone that it could be more than that. Yes, maybe we’re over testing our kids, and maybe some parents look for problems where there aren’t any, because there has to be a reason that there kid is not perfect, but when there is a real problem, catching it as early as possible is the key. Catching a child up before they get discouraged and just give up.
This is a long blog and it better post.