The broken down definition of dyslexia is interpreted into ‘dys’ – meaning difficulty and ‘lexia’ meaning words, simply put, difficulty with words. This, in a way, gives a negative perspective on dyslexia. It also makes society look adversely upon dyslexia and people who suffer from it. But what exactly is dyslexia? It is a specific kind of reading difficulty.
Dyslexic symptoms can shut down the brain when the victim is nervous, or forced to work under the gun. Other symptoms include: difficulty lerning foreign language, difficulty in auditory processing, poor testing skills difficulty completing tests.
The rest are difficulty in remembering people’s names and songs titles, difficulty telling jokes or memorising scripts, great difficulty in school even though they are smart.
Despite average to above average intelligence, children with dyslexia have difficulty learning to “decode” or read words by associating sounds and letters or letter combinations. They have difficulty recognising common” sight words”, or frequently occurring words that most readers recognise instantly. Victims of this disorder also encounter difficulty learning how to spell. In addition to the outlined notable problems, a recent research has shown that dyslexia cases show difficulty in rhyming and breaking words down into individual sounds as well as hearing the fine distinction among individual sounds or phonemes of language
A key sign of dyslexia in children is trouble decoding words. They  tend to lose the ability to match letters to sounds and then use the skill to read words accurately and fluently. This is obvious given the child’s natural disposition to struggling with basic language skill called phonemic awareness. Sadly, dyslexia is seen as a disease,  a misconception that has caused quite a lot of victims to be bullied into low self esteem, anxiety, depression, aggression, anti social behaviour and even suicide. All these overt negative expressions of an inward feeling, triggered by a misconceived  impression of a folk, prevent an eventual attainment of full potentials by the folk.
Although it could be an indisputable fact that the moment the ability to match letters and their combination with the sound they make begins to pose problem, every other learning step becomes harder ,  yet, one still finds it hard to be convinced on how that could really constitute a justifiable ground for the dyslexic to be stigmatized.
Surprisingly,  these difficulties that the dyslexic have to contend with, do not in any way  have any connection to their overall intelligence. Studies revealed that while people with dyslexia may be slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities. This is why in current  society, professionals try to steer away from describing a child as dyslexic, as this is how labeling can start to manifest.
Instead, educational professionals refer to these children as ‘children with specific learning difficulties.’ This phrase hopefully completely replaces the term dyslexic. Little wonder  Warnock & Brahm. (2010), posits that health professionals want to eradicate this problem as this is how children and young people are stigmatised in schools because they are defined as a certain label. Come to think of it, in relation to a disability, a label can promote a sense of helplessness.
For children  diagnosed  of dyslexia, they can feel embarrassed about their indifference to their peers. Like Reid (2011) stated, “an indifference at school can lead to bullying as other pupils would  think that  there is something wrong with that child”. Thompson (2009), corroborates this when he said, “they are described as having a deeply discrediting attribute or mark of social disgrace”. In Mcdonald (2019),  the writer expressed a corelation between dyslexia and crime.
His introduction of a social model approach implies that this correlation is in a social rather than medical context. The society could well be getting it wrong should it fail to show love and patience towards this set of persons instead of stigmatizing them. The world today celebrates entrepreneurs, authors, and leaders who are dyslexic.
Adult dyslexic who learn to read well likely organise the brain circuitory for reading in different ways than normal readers by building alternative reading pathways.
No two dyslexics have exactly the same experience and dyslexia isn’t hopeless therefore, it is not in our hands to write off  any,  who knows, if given the adequate support, the weak today could become strong tomorrow.
Jim-George is a student of Eastern Polytechnic,  Port Harcourt.