Why a cure for dyslexia?
Last week a parent gave me yet another web site address to investigate; yet another web site and yet another group of people claiming to cure dyslexia.
I have worked with dyslexic children and adults for over forty years. I am dyslexic and I have two very successful dyslexic children. I taught my dyslexic sons to read before they went to school. I made sure their spelling was good, but I never taught them how not to be dyslexic. How could I? They were born dyslexic. Their brain matured differently from the brains of his friends. They were born dyslexic and would always be dyslexic.
Does this worry me and is either still looking for a cure? No of cause they is not. Why would they want to not be dyslexic? My eldest son was a self-made millionaire at 25.
Why on Earth would he want to be normal when most normal people are well – ordinary.
Do I ever wish not to be dyslexic?
You must be joking. Why would I want to be one of the masses? Why, when as a dyslexic, I am so special?
There are just so many things that we dyslexics can do that you non-dyslexics struggle like hell with. And one of those things is making money.
We have the ideas, the intuition, we can see the big picture, we can solve problems, we have the people skills and we have the determination. This is why nearly half of all self-made millionaires are dyslexic.
I have seen many of these millionaire dyslexics talk about their success but I have never heard any of them wish they were not dyslexic. Dyslexia is a gift and all you have to do to harness it is to stop trying to be like everyone else and embrace the gift of dyslexia.
The educational system disables us in a mad attempt to turn us into normal, round pegs.
And this seems to be happening all over the world. So a plethora of multi-million dollar industries are persuading parents to part with huge amounts of money with the promise of normalizing their kids. Dyslexics are being disabled by the system which wants us to spell perfectly, even though we have spellcheckers, read fast, even though we have text to voice and award winning authors spend years writing their books, and remember facts and figures that we can easily find on a mobile phone wherever we happen to be. When will the world realize that it is what we do with these facts that counts and moves the world forward.
Instead of making your dyslexic child try to conform, spell perfectly and memorize his or her times tables let him or
her be his or herself. Let the true genius come out.
When your dyslexic child tells you of some new idea he has – listen to it. When a dyslexic walks into your bank with a badly spelt business proposal take special note of it, because a dyslexic is statistically ten times more likely to succeed with a business than a non dyslexic – and it does not matter whether he or she can spell well or not.
“I am partly doing this ( sailing round the world single handedly and unaided at 16) to prove to me teachers that I am not stupid, (just dyslexic).”
- Jessica Watson
“At school they thought I was lazy but I was just dyslexic.” Nobel prize winning Auther and world leader.
- Winston Churchill
“There were two things that turned me into a star, my
inability to learn to read and my cheating girlfriend.”
- Will Smith
“When I left school I was functionally illiterate.”
- Tom Cruise
Nor….
…..does it matter that he or she does not know his times tables. We are entrepreneurs, not mere calculators.
More than half of all NASA employees are dyslexic. Canadian dyslexic web site.
However I have developed very cheap apps, games ad courses that can, without training, teach literacy to dyslexics of all ages very quickly and painlessly.
