Adult Dyslexia –What You Need to Know About Learning Disability in Adults

Learning disability is a disorder in comprehending or using spoken or written language. Adult dyslexia is one form of learning disability in adults manifested in an individual in their difficulty in information processing. Dyslexics often have difficulty in reading, writing, spelling, performing mathematical calculations, remembering sequences, following given instructions, taking notes, organizing and time keeping. These are just some of the difficulties experienced by dyslexic people but the degree or severity of difficulties may vary from person to person.

Being dyslexic doesn’t mean they are stupid or dumb. Learning disability in adults is a condition that does not interfere with one’s ability to think intelligently or to understand complicated ideas. In fact, there are geniuses who have dyslexia.  Albert Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell are only two of the famous people included in the list of famous dyslexics.  Their minds work differently but  that does not mean that they are lesser of a person than those who are not dyslexic.

There is no cure for learning disability in adults or adult dyslexia but early detection is important because it is a treatable condition. Dyslexics can learn strategies on how to cope and live with their difficulties to make their lives better and fulfilling. Although they have difficulties in reading and writing they have the gifts and abilities to excel on things that average people cannot excel. Many dyslexics are creative or have special talent on art, music, engineering, graphics, electronics, mechanical and other fields. Many dyslexics were able to excel in their chosen field like medicine, law, engineering etc. Dyslexics can often accomplish complicated tasks but have difficulties on simple tasks like reading, spelling, taking instructions, organizing things and time keeping.

Of course dyslexics need to learn to live with people without dyslexia and cope with their difficulties. Although they have positive gifts, it is important to address the negative side of dyslexia to help them cope with their difficulties. Unfortunately many adult dyslexics are unaware that they are suffering from dyslexia or they haven’t had a proper diagnosis. They know that they have difficulties in reading and writing but they do not know it is dyslexia. When they are unbelievably good on complicated things like physics or science, they just believe they have the knack for it. Some dyslexics hide their difficulties and avoid jobs that may expose their learning disability that is why their problems are not properly addressed.

If you think you have learning disability in adults, it is important to get diagnosed and take the necessary screenings because there are treatments and strategies to help you cope with your difficulties. Dyslexia is not a disease or an impairment that someone should get embarrassed about. It is a condition that needs to be understood and addressed properly. 

Adult with Dyslexia- Ways to Tell If Someone Has Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects millions of people.  The sad reality is that there are cases that they do not know that they have it. They are just being told lazy, slow learner, incompetent and even stupid but the truth is dyslexia is affecting their lives and it has nothing to do with their intelligence.  There are ways to tell if someone has dyslexia and it is important that the affected person and the people around him or her knows about it.

Being aware that you have dyslexia is extremely important for you to know how to deal with it.  Adult dyslexia can cause problems in the workplace and to your personal life. It can affect your efficiency at work and may jeopardize your job that is why it is important to know if you are dyslexic for you to know how to cope and live with dyslexia.

One of the ways to tell if someone has dyslexia is that he or she is encountering difficulties at work. Although dyslexic people have the intellectual qualifications for the job, they may commit mistakes that can put their jobs at risk.  They often have trouble remembering appointments and have poor timekeeping resulting to missed deadlines or meetings. They often have mistakes in taking down telephone numbers and notes. They misread or misspelled words even if they already checked their work.  They also have trouble in dealing with sequences and taking instructions.  They find themselves disorganized and often misplaced files and things.  The sad part is that they often do not know why they are always making mistakes, inefficient and forgetting things. Not understanding why they have these behaviors can cost them their jobs.

Due to the problems at work, people with dyslexia often become defensive if their loved ones want to discuss their problems at work.  They often prefer to deal with their learning disability or inefficiency alone and when they failed to deal with their inefficiencies alone, they get frustrated and distant. They think that they are a failure so they sulk at home with their frustrations or feelings of being a failure and shut their loved ones out affecting their relationships.

Dyslexia if not diagnosed as early as possible can affect a person’s life. It can affect the self-esteem of a person that may lead to frustrations and other negative feelings. It is important for dyslexic people to know that they can cope with dyslexia and they can live normally with the proper guidance and help.  But before seeking help, a comprehensive dyslexia screening test is important. Although there are ways to tell if someone has dyslexia, an adult dyslexia test is necessary. 

Diagnosing Dyslexia in Adults – Are You Aware That You Are Dyslexic?

You may have heard about dyslexia in school, news, etc., and somehow you have an idea about this learning disability. But did you know that there are people who have this disorder and grew up not aware about it and cannot even put a name on the disability they are suffering? Dyslexia is a known condition now but years ago, people do not have an idea about it. The good news is that it is not too late for these adults to seek treatments because diagnosing dyslexia in adults is possible now.

There are still a large percentage of dyslexics now who are not aware of their condition. It is only in the last 10 years that dyslexia became a known condition and dyslexia tests for children before entering schools are available. But how about those dyslexics who were born at the time that dyslexia tests are not yet available? They are adults now and most of them are not aware about their conditions and they are dealing with their disability on their own without the proper treatments. Some are not even aware that diagnosing dyslexia in adults is possible now.

Most of these dyslexic adults grew up thinking that they are just lazy and slow learners leading to low self-esteem. Some hide their disability by avoiding things that has something to do with reading, dealing with numbers and other things that they find hard to understand or comprehend.

This should not be the case because diagnosing dyslexia in adults is now possible and there are treatments available to help you manage your learning disability if you suspect you have the symptoms of dyslexia. Dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence, there are dyslexics who have discovered their true potential and became successful in their chosen fields.

Diagnosing dyslexia in adults is the first step in knowing your condition and in seeking the necessary professional help for your disability.

Late Diagnosis of Adult Dyslexia- Is There Still Hope?

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that affects people of all ages. Just as with other disabilities, early detection of the condition and early intervention are beneficial to the person with the disability. However, this is not always the case with dyslexia because late diagnosis of adult dyslexia happens to most sufferers.

An Overlooked Beginning

Most of the time, the beginnings of dyslexia is overlooked, which is the reason why a lot of cases are only diagnosed during adulthood. To think of it, in present culture when a child has not yet learned to fluently read by the age of ten or eleven years, he or she would be often thought of to be lacking in motivation or intelligence.

Most people would think that they are stupid or lazy. However, in most cases, they are neither of the two. Most likely, they have dyslexia, which is a learning disability that causes their difficulty in understanding written language, even though they have normal or even higher-than-normal IQ. The wrong perception is one of the causes of the late diagnosis of adult dyslexia.

Faulty Wiring And Early Detection

The most recent studies show that the difficulties in reading that dyslexic people experience are due to "faulty wiring" in specific brain areas that have a relation to learning and language. Research also shows that identifiable genetic variations or defects are the partial cause of this faulty wiring.

Early screening and detection for such variations makes it possible for you to have appropriate and timely remedial training. Most experts suggest that children should be allowed to deal with their condition to overcome it and at least learn how to read at an acceptable level. However, since dyslexia is sometimes only diagnosed during adulthood, the benefits of early detection are not maximized.

Late Diagnosis of Adult Dyslexia

Although there are people who only become dyslexic during their adulthood, due to stroke and traumatic brain injury, in most cases the condition is a developmental disorder. According to experts, still, the majority of cases reported of people with dyslexia are adults who have had it ever since childhood but only knew they had it when they were already adults.

This late diagnosis of adult dyslexia is something most adult dyslexics are troubled with since early intervention is not a choice anymore. However, if you are one of those who had late detection, there is no reason to be troubled. Intervention no matter how early or late is still intervention, even though they may have varying effects.

The Issue On Brain Plasticity

Late diagnosis of adult dyslexia becomes an issue due to the premise of brain plasticity. Research shows that younger people or even animals have a more elastic brain than older counterparts. The relevance of brain plasticity is that it is one important factor in relation to intervention.

Since the brain is more elastic when you are younger; rewiring of the brain is then possible, since it hasn’t reached its mature state and continues to develop. Thus, if ever a learning disability like dyslexia is present, then your brain can still be developed to function at a more acceptable level, where the condition has minimal effect.

A lot of adults recently diagnosed with the condition fear that intervention would do them no good, simply because their brain is not as elastic anymore as children’s. However, recent studies show that the brain’s property of elasticity is still present even with adults.

This recent finding on plasticity in the adult brain is a breakthrough for adult dyslexics. So if you are an adult that had late diagnosis of adult dyslexia, then be happy! There is still hope for your condition to improve, even if only to an acceptable level.

Adult Dyslexia Awareness- Courses For The Work Place

Recently, a lot of attention has been given to the rights of people with disabilities. These rights include being able to have work, and not be discriminated by his or her colleagues. The workplace should also provide proper support for their employees’ condition, no matter what kind of disability the employee has.

One disability that may have great effect in the workplace is dyslexia. However, a lot of companies nowadays are trying their best to accommodate people with this condition into their working force. That is why they have to meet and provide for certain needs, so that employees with this condition can optimally work in the company. Adult dyslexia awareness is really important.

Improving Your Workplace

In fact, there are special institutions that provide assistance to companies and employers in able to help out their dyslexic employees. Some specialized institutions offer courses and sessions that target the workplace’s improvement in relation to the presence of dyslexia. They also provide adult dyslexia awareness programs.

The programs offered can vary, depending on the wanted outcome of the company. Each program has a different end goal, but generally they are tailored to improve the company and dyslexic employees’ relationship. Here are some of the common courses offered by some institutions for this purpose.

Professional Development Programs

Professional development should be continuous; thus, there are courses that can be taken by your company’s HR personnel, psychologists, trainers, and managers that are designed to upgrade their skills, particularly in regards to assessing dyslexia.

In this kind of program, they can learn and understand more about the said condition. The difficulties that are faced by dyslexic employees are pinpointed and discussed too. Additionally, some ways on how to make adjustments to enable your dyslexic employees to reach success and productivity are also tackled.

Workplace Awareness Programs (Adult Dyslexia Awareness)

The awareness of your workplace about the condition of dyslexia can be invaluable to the success of your company. There are courses and briefings that can be conducted to increase the awareness of all your employees about such kind of condition.

Here, dyslexia is explained using layman’s terms, in a manner that everyone can easily understand. Your employees are also exposed on how the condition can affect an individual, along with the skills and talents that dyslexic people possess. Basically, they are familiarized to the nature of the condition.

Ways on making adjustments and overcoming problems caused by the condition in the workplace are also discussed. All of your employees are also given tips on how they should relate with an officemate that has the condition. Additionally, they are taught how to cooperate with each other.

Skill Development Programs

This kind of program is focused on the development of the skill of your dyslexic employee. Improvement tips are taught, along with strategies on how to overcome common dyslexic problems. Confidence building is also a target for the program, since most adult dyslexics are frustrated and has low self-esteem due to their condition.

The flow of the program may vary depending on the individual being trained, his or her skills and weaknesses.

Work Skills Evaluation Program

This kind of program is made to ensure that the skills of the person you are eyeing to hire appropriately meet your job requirement. Additionally, it ensures you’re your dyslexic employee can work productively and efficiently.

Here, evaluation on whether extra training is needed by the employee to improve his or her skills. Also recommendations, on whether or not your employee needs computer aid, are also done.

Any individual who have learning disabilities should know what they are going through. It is important to go though a comprehensive adult dyslexia test to find out if you are really suffering from dyslexia. 

Adult Dyslexia And Related Conditions- Irlen Syndrome

One condition that a dyslexic person may have is the Irlen Syndrome. This condition is very much related to dyslexia since, they both have a number of similar symptoms. Additionally, a lot of dyslexics have this syndrome, along with having dyslexia itself.

From research and testing, it was found that a diversity of problems could result from seeing a distorted page of numbers, words, and musical notes. It can actually affect reading, spelling, and writing. Also, there are times that math, copying skills, music reading, driving, sports performance, ability to work on a computer, and being comfortable under fluorescent lights are also affected.

Defining Irlen

People with this syndrome perceive the printed page in a different way than those people that has normal vision. If you have this, you are obliged to constantly adapt to the distortions you are seeing on the printed page.

You can become a slow or inefficient reader because of this. Additionally, you may exhibit poor comprehension, since you don’t really understand what you are reading. You can also suffer from headaches, strain, or fatigue.

The condition can affect your attention-span, motivation, energy-level, depth-perception, handwriting, and most of all, your self-esteem. People who sufferers from this condition are sometimes labeled as underachievers that have behavioral, motivational or attitudinal problems.

This syndrome is considered to be a variable and complex condition that is often found co-existing with other learning-disabilities, such as dyslexia.

The Beginnings

The syndrome was identified first by Helen Irlen, an Educational Psychologist. This happened in the 1980’s while working in California with adult-learners. She was able to observe that a number of her students can read with better ease every time they used a colored overlay to cover the printed page they are reading.

Treatment

If you are a dyslexic with this condition, you would have to undergo the patented treatment-method. Here you need to use specially formulated, colored overlays or colored lenses. You can wear these as glasses or even contact lenses. Once you use the lenses, a reduction or even elimination of perceptual-difficulties is experienced.

Their program is specifically designed to fulfill the needs of people with learning difficulties, such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other conditions that can interfere with sufficient functioning inside the workplace, classroom, and socially.

Symptoms

Some symptoms of this syndrome are poor reading comprehension, reading in dim light, misreads words, skipping of words or lines, slow or hesitant manner of reading, and avoidance of reading itself.

While reading, a person with this condition can have numerous complaints like strain, fatigue, tiredness, sleepiness, headaches, and nausea. A person may also seem restless and fidgety while doing the task.

In regards to writing, you can have some trouble copying words, unequal spacing between characters, uphill or downhill direction of writing, and inconsistent spelling of words.

When using the computer, you can also feel fatigue and strain. You may also experience some difficulty when reading music. Also, you often have sloppy or careless math mistakes. When you write numbers in columns, they are also misaligned.

One obvious symptom however is the syndrome’s effect on your depth perception. You are often clumsy and have difficulty with sports that involve catching balls. You may also have problems in judging distances.

Most of the time, when people with dyslexia undergo treatment, the intervention is not successful since there is an underlying presence of Irlen Syndrome. That is why getting an assessment for this condition is equally important when you have dyslexia.

It is important to take the adult dyslexia assessment and know what you are dealing with. 

Treating Adult Dyslexia- Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program

Another program to treat adult dyslexia is the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LIPS). This program generally uses phoneme awareness as its method to learn how to read efficiently.

The Program’s Premise

This method believes in the premise that the primary cause of problems related to decoding and spelling is the individual’s complexity in judging the identity, sound sequence and number that is found within words. This inability is then termed to be “weak phoneme awareness”.

A dyslexic person is basically thought of to have a weakness in his or her phonological processing. This weakness is the said cause on why both children and adults tend to add, substitute, omit, and reverse the sounds and the letters within the words that they read.

People with dyslexia cannot precisely get the words they are reading off the page, simply because even though they can correctly see the letters, they are unable to judge whether what they see would match what they are about to say. Because of this poor judgment, they are prevented from correcting and detecting their errors in spelling, reading and speech. Additionally, this can be the cause of difficulty when a person tries to learn a second language.

What It Does

The program aims to successfully develop a person with dyslexia’s phoneme awareness. Here you are able to apply the so-called awareness to your reading, spelling, writing, and speech both remedially and preventively.

If you train in this kind of program, you are aided to find out the different mouth actions that can produce real speech sounds. By the use of this kind of sensory information, you can verify sounds and know their order within words. Once you know this kind of skill, you are then enabled to correct yourself when reading, writing, spelling, and speaking.

Program Intensity

Generally, people under this program tend to gain several grade levels on their decoding ability within four to six weeks of having intensive training and treatment. If you are to undergo an intensive program, then you are required to undergo therapy for four hours in a day.

However, if you still have the choice on how intense you want your program to be. If you want it light, then they can adjust it so.

Findings have also shown that additional gains in speech and language skills have also occurred by the means of this sensory-cognitive method. This was observed even after the individuals have already reached a plateau through the traditional approach of speech therapy.

Where You Can Find It

You can undergo this kind of program by going to a Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes Center. You can find one in over fifteen states in the United States and United Kingdom. The public can have access to materials that are included in the program such as a manual with a detailed presentation of the steps that you have to take in the program. Some outlines and sample dialogues are also included.

You would also need some of their support products. Some of these are their classroom kit, program clinical kit, training videos, a practice CD, and a testing kit. These products are included already when you apply for their program.

Other Conditions For The Program

The program also caters to other conditions related to dyslexia, such as hyperlexia. This is a condition where you may have specific problems in comprehending the data that you just read, even though you can read it accurately.