[TOPIC] Dyslexia?

My brother has minor dyslexia, but it does affect him as badly as it used to. He still often asks me how to spell words though, even ones I think are incredibly simple to spell (I've always been pretty good at spelling).

When he was in school, my brother often did badly in English due to bad spelling, but since he got into reading he's got better at it.

"The power of the mind and the strength of the heart are humanity's greatest weapons."

My son is learning disabled. He is classified as dyslexic because he has a hard time reading, but he also has a host of other problems that contribute to his difficulty. He has very slow processing speeds, which makes looking at a word and sounding it out or copying from the board (or a book) very time consuming. It also makes it very difficult to read music and sight read--he dropped out of band in total frustration. He also has fine motor problems, which make his handwriting hard to decipher; he can't spell because sometimes he doesn't always hear some of the letters in blends and leaves out letters.

Note taking in high school was a nightmare. He simply couldn't keep up, and the teacher usually erased the board before he could finish copying the information. Often, what he did get written down was almost undecipherable. I would find him shaking his head because he couldn't figure out what he had written! Some sentences that he writes don't make any sense: How does this dog belong to? When he sounds out the word WHO, he hears the H sound; he knows it has an O and a W so they get written down in some order. One teacher suggested he use a laptop at school--but even spell checker can't figure out what he's trying to write, and looking words up in a dictionary is almost impossible.

Now is he going to college and has run into another problem. He is directionally challenged. I get numerous phone calls as he is driving back to campus asking if he is on the right road. A GPS navigator is on his Christmas list, but it still won't help on campus. Sometimes, he has to call me and have me look up on the online map where he is on campus and tell him how to find the building his next class is in. Once he gets the landmarks down, he should do fine unless he walks out a different door at night.

Most teachers are very helpful, once he explains the extent of his disabilities. And families have to jump through hoops to get the school system to give them accommodations. He has had to be tested, retested, and to take a different batch of diagnostic tests every time we changed school systems. The writing portion of the SAT and other standardized tests give him fits, because although he can have more time to complete them, they still don't cut him any slack on the grading. He gets very tired of having these tests tell him what he already knows. Unless he can dictate his thoughts to someone, he will never be a proficient writer.

My brother has it bad and I have a touch of it. I am going to describe things like what my brother has told me:

It's like looking at a book or numbers with half of it in English and the other half in a close but not quite close enough language. The two parts are jumbled together and there are places where the spaces between words even like to move around.
It makes spelling and math a little hard to do without spending some time concentrating on it. Computers can actually be more challenging to navigate than any other source because of the way the screen works and the way the letters/numbers appear on it. Hands-on work is far easier to do though msot any job relies on a computer more and more (brother is a mechanic so he gets rather fustrated with hooking a car's computer up).
I don't know if there is a medication, but I do know that a lot of people who have it tend to be even more careful with how they write and read things than normal people. Most I've met - and my brother - stay away from '|33t' writing and limit their chatspeak.

A born loser with no wins and many attempts. thanks computer and friends for distractions, lost files and many refills of my coffee mug

I'm pretty sure I have a mild form of dyslexia as sometimes I find myself convinced that a word is spelled one way, only to be corrected by it, and sometimes instead of seeing the world "sweater" I see "seawater." ??

Anyway, my friend, who was in the Navy is pretty dyslexic and doesn't do much reading because of that, and actually, he's really insecure about it (doesn't say so, but I know so) and that keeps him from pursuing his dream of meteorology more than he did with the Navy.

I know it makes people really insecure because they feel stupid and like it will hold them back indefinitely.

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That's not that strange actually. I've heard that we primarily identify words by the letters at the start and end of the word, so that if the letters in the middle are moved around we'd still recognise the word most of the time

"The power of the mind and the strength of the heart are humanity's greatest weapons."

My sister was dyslexic as a child, although it's something that she's learned to control over the years. She still doesn't like reading, and for the longest time she wouldn't read, which affected her grades in school a lot. It wasn't that she was stupid, but she made herself out to be, sort of sliding into the stereotype of "preppy blonde" so she wouldn't be expected to read or comprehend the class material.

I'm not really sure how she got past it, or if it's just faded away over the years, but she does read books now!

Michelle
ML for Chicago, IL
ml-michelle@chiwrimo.org

I have dyslexia. I had a private teacher when I was 3 work with me but I don't know what she did. I still have problems with numbers. If I am trying to take down a number over the phone I reverse the numbers. I have to have it read to me slowly and in no more than 4 numbers at a time. It is worse when I am tired or stressed. Spelling is also a big problem. I use to write in mirror image but again the private teacher must have corrected that as I don't do that and haven't from about age 5. I have never heard of a medication. I use an old dos base program at work that is set to display white text on a black background. That is harder for me to see. I have to change it to yellow text on a black background which is MUCH easier. I also jumbled up my words when I talk combing two words into one. Here is a list of characteristics: http://www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm

Ohhhh thank you guys so much! *loves you all* This is really going to help with Asher. <3

2008: The Michael Mackin Project (53k/50k)

There is no cure for dyslexia and there is no medication. It's not a "disease", it's to do with how your brain processes certain information. It's neurological.

I have dyslexia and dyspraxia. (I'll explain dyspraxia later.)

Firstly, dyslexia affects people in different ways. One of the most well known "symptoms" of dyslexia is reading problems. However, I don't have any issues with reading. Absolutely none. I was a ridiculously advance reader which is why I didn't get diagnosed with dyslexia until I was 15 because teachers were told to look out for reading problems and nothing else.
My main problems lie with writing and organisation. I can't spell to save my life. I really can't. I spell words how I think they sound but I also have problems with pronouncing words. I also tend to miss out letters a lot. And unless my spell checker screams at me, I can't see the mistakes. I often miss out small words in sentences like "the" or "of".
I cannot plan or organise. I often forget things that I need. When writing essays, my teachers always tell me to plan my work but I can't do it. I physically can't.
Also, I can never really write down what I want to say. I can say what I mean (kind of) but writing it down is really, really hard. It means that I often repeat myself over and over again because I don't think I've been able to get my point across.

Another problem I have is seriously messy handwriting. That's partly due to my dyspraxia as well. Dyspraxia is where you lack fine motor skills (and have bad co-ordination) so really I can't hold a pen properly meaning my handwriting is always messy. I have to use a word processor in my exams because of it.
Actually, I think my organisation might be down to my dyspraxia but I can't really separate the two things.

I just want to know, why is your MC ashamed of being dyslexic? There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't mean your stupid or anything. It's not an intellectual disability, it's to do with how your brain processes written/spoken language. It's neurological.

I'm dyslexic and didn't realize it until senior year of High School.

I've always been an avid reader and a fantastic speller but it takes concentration. I never knew I naturally compensated.

I don't tell people either because I don't want it to affect how they see me.

A few weeks ago, I told my best friend from High School whom I now work with. She made such a big deal about it that I regret telling her at all.
"Should I check your work? I'll check your work. I'll do that - don't do anything with numbers or the alphabet."
It's unbeliable - I just wanted to quit the job and go home! I was always an 'A' student and she'd be lucky to get 'C' 's and now I just felt that she lost all confidence in me.

I see letters and numbers change.
Sometimes, I'll read something that doesn't make sense and do a double-take to discover the word actually changed. That's what it's like. I'll see a billboard, read it, then read it again and it says something different because of transposing letters.

Sometimes when I'm looking at something I will physically see the letters or numbers switch. Right before my eyes, like someone cast a spell and the letters/numbers move. This has happened so many times it's almost "normal" for me - as another person on the forum said, it happens or worsens when I'm tired.

I compensate by expending a lot of mental energy on focus.
I don't last long with difficult things like dealing with numbers all day simply because I constantly transpose - and you never know when you do it. I don't have confidence that I took the phone number down correctly so I repeat it back or I reread it. Most of the time it's fine (becuase I really focus) but that one or two times I catch a mistake are enough to make me do it every time.

I'm not ashamed I'm dyslexic - I have little choice in the matter.
But I don't advertise it because I don't want people to treat me with kid gloves.
Or lose faith in my ability to handle certain tasks.

My Blog: Live Out Loud http://jenniferoberth.blogspot.com/

A close relative is dyslexic and feels that people sometimes think he/she is stupid because spelling, dealing with numbers, and reading all require massive amounts of concentration and time. He/she does feel stupid sometimes.

He/she has also been penalized by school systems that demand new testing to determine if he/she "still has" the condition. Duh. It's not curable, and the testing is very expensive. And there is no medicine.

Here's what I have observed:

Dyslexia does seem to create organizational issues. Dyslexics keep trying to break down items into smaller and smaller pieces in order to comprehend them. Which leaves them with too many pieces of information. And where the rest of us can switch focus quickly and do some tasks in a scant manner, dyslexics can't. It's thorough or forget it.

Weirdness: Dyslexics are not instinctively aware of which is their left hand or right hand. They have to think about it.

I'm wondering: Do dyslexics in countries with more logically spelled languages have the same spelling problems they do in the US? After all, English is a crazy, inconsistently spelled and pronounced language. Not to mention grammatically nightmarish.

Another fellow Dyspraxic, hurrah! I don't have the dyslexia co-morbid symptoms though {thankfully} so I don't have much trouble withreading and writing, aside from skipping over lines when I'm reading from time to time.

To the OP: You'll often find that people with severe learning difficulties often express other difficulties besides the main one e.g. Dyslexia/Dyspraxia or Dyslexia/Dyscalculia {pretty much the same thing with numbers as with words} are the most common if I remember correctly. If it's as severe as you say then he's probably going to have done quite poorly at school if he had no support and as a result will either have overcompensated with something else or become socially isolated {I ended up doing both with mild Dyspraxia, go figure}. Most older people will have found coping strategies though, that might help them in a really tight spot, your MC might, for example, sound out words under his breath when looking at signs if he absolutely has to read them himself, even if it isn't exactly right he'll be able to tell roughly where he is {unless you have him with the useless sense of direction that many of us with learning difficulties have ^_^;}.

For me personally, I find it difficult to understand people at times. A lot of the times people will speak and slur words so quickly that its hard to distinguish certain words or names. I tend to subsitute the wrong words when I write. If I meant to write weather, I may instead write whether - even know I know I want the first. Even reading over it, it hard to catch mistakes because it just hides itself as I'm reading. My spelling isn't the greatest and I certainly end up spelling things to how they sound, not how they are suppose to be spelt. Direction-wise, I was worse younger, but I will get turned around so easy. Anyone else walking into the store will know which way to turn when leaving (ie, Did I come from the right? or the Left? ), I almost always go the wrong way.

I find that being thorough and going through my work 2 to 3 times helps catch mistakes, but often time I have a really selfish and stupid boss who will try to rush me (knowing full well that I have dyslexia) making me do more mistakes. My boss likes to sabotage me.

But it is true, if you don't have enough sleep, the dyslexia gets worse and worse.

Edit: Prime example I wrote "know" instead of "though" and I only caught it after the post was posted. -_-
I'm leaving it in as an example how it happens.

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A co-worker of mine, who happens to be a graphic designer and does most of our printed materials (flyers, brochures, newsletter, etc.), is dyslexic, though I do not know to what degree. She did tell me that she felt she did not do as well in high school and college because of it, as it would take her longer to do homework and other assignments. Her workspace has quite a few notes posted around with the correct spelling of certain words, common phrases we use repeatedly in our publications, and check lists that always begin: "Double check spelling and numbers." She is very meticulous when it comes to her work, and whenever she has any doubts, she will read me the sentence or phrase that is troubling her to get my opinion.

As for transposing letters and numbers... I have the tendency of transposing numbers. I am not sure what the cause for this is, but I do remember always carrying my phone number with me just in case I needed it. Even in college, I sometimes gave the wrong student ID number because I would transpose two numbers. But then, I occasionally have "vision flips". When I am concentrating very hard, my vision will suddenly shift up and down very fast. Afterward, I will be looking farther down the page that where I was originally looking, but I do not register this fact when it happens. (It was a problem with exams, especially ones that used scantron answer sheets, and I learned to always "double check" my answers.)

~Jacquelyn

I have dyslexia and I am a school librarian. Before I added that library media specialist teaching certification to my Special Education teaching certificate and English teaching certificate, I taught 7th to 12th grade English for eight years. Luckily for me, when I was in third grade, my teacher taught me to read by site instead of phonics. My world exploded and expanded with the world of books. This experience caused me to overcompensate in reading and writing. Since I was a teenager, I read much faster than most other people around me.

My spoken language as never caught up and I can often tell from others expressions when what I heard myself saying is not actually what I said. The last time I was retested for dyslexia, the psychiatrist who administrated the tests said my brain worked so quickly that my mouth and voice could not keep up. He said my brain will be reading chapter five while my voice is still reading chapter one out loud.

As an adult, reversing letters only happens when I am very nervous, overworked, or tired. I never overcame my problem with numbers and directions. Reading maps and simple number crunching takes me much longer than normal even though the higher concepts and structuring problems in mathematics has always been simple for me.

I learned a long time ago that most things other people think are hard to understand, I easily understand. Many tasks that
are considered easy - like spelling - I find very difficult. I think differently and that is alright with me. Of course sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not have dyslexia. Would I still be me?

There are an infinite range of dyslexia, from illiteracy to "normalcy".

One hypothesis I read once in a library book is that dyslexics (who in general tend to be pretty bright, and darn good on spacial tests) see things as shapes, but understand that rotation does not change a shape. u and n are the same: dpqb are the *same shape*. Dyslexics do not have the same problem with paired shapes: { } < > [ ] ( ) - in general, a dyslexic will not put something )in the wrong parentheses(.

So when a dyslexic stores a memory of a wordshape, they do not store it as a simple mental image with one left and one up: they store it as a shape, and then have to mentally rotate that shape, and the shape they see on the page, through all 8 possible matches to see if they are the same. If dyslexics seem "slow", it's because they are working eight or 64 times harder at pattern recognition. That they are only a couple of times slower speaks well of their speed at this task.

As a mildly dyslexic person, I cannot say if this is true: but it feels right to me, and more severely dyslexic people have agreed.

Before I learned to read, I saw the words as a tangled thicket on the page. Impenetrable, spikey.

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I have mild dyslexia; my best friend on campus has a more severe form of it, to the point where she had to file a sort of disability form with the Learning Resource Center in order to get her teachers to not count spelling on her in-class writings. Out-of-class writings spelling still counts in; her roommate and I often both get a copy of her papers and have to check through it to make sure she hasn't made any stupid errors. We play Scrabble all the time, and occasionally she'll switch letters around, then pause and ask one of us if she's spelled it right. Sometimes she thinks the letters are backwards and they aren't.

In my case, I rotate letters, even when I'm typing. I'll write/type "b" when I meant "d", or "p" or "g" when I meant "b" or "d". I also once wrote "d" instead of the "9" I intended to write and got the whole math problem counted wrong, even though I had worked it normally--just in that one place I had written "2d" instead of "29". I talked to my teacher about it, and she pointed out the mistake to me; I explained that I had honestly seen it as a 9, and since that was the only place I'd done that, she gave me credit back.

There is no cure nor is there medication for dyslexia. I have some form of Dyslexia. I don't think it's as severe as others. I do not see the words and/or letters backward, but words do tend to jump around on the page from time to time. They also like to disappear on me -- maily those little words like a, an, and, the, of, etc. I can read fairly well silently. But I avoid reading out loud because while I know the words, I stumble over those little words that I just named. And it's embarassing.

Especially when your second grader says, "Mom you missed a word!" And yet, I'm going to go do "Mystry Reader" for her class this Wed. I didn't do it when my son was in second grade, but I just thought that if I could learn the story, I could and tell it instead of read it. I'm much better at telling a story than reading it out loud.

I thank God everyday for spell check. And MSWord also has Grammar check, so if I miss a word, it will point out the fragment and I can reread it to make sure that I have all the words there. I still mess up a lot on that though.

I went to a school from 2-6 grades that allowed only dyslexics. This was a school that had schools all over the country. dePaul. (Yes they stressed to us that it was little de capital P. They might have a website. The local dePaul School changed it's name to The Brighton Acdamey (I think I mispelled that) because they no longer wanted to associated with dePaul. Don't know why, but there it is.

Anyway, You don't overcome or grow out of Dyslexia. However, you can be taught how to deal with it and how to live with it. In short, you learn how you learn. You learn little tricks on how to learn stuff. In high school, I couldn't copy down stuff off of the board quick enough, but I had friends who knew I had Dyslexia and they would let me copy their notes. I tried one year to not let the teachers know that I had Dyslexia, I didn't want "special" treatment. I wanted to "earn" the grades myself. Well, when one teacher took off because of my handwriting, (Funny thing was it was on a ruff draft of an informative speech on Dyslexia LOL) I told her that I tried to write neat, but I was the source because I had Dyslexia. She then explained to me that it was very important for my teachers to know this. That they would not just "give" me a grade that I didn't earn because of my Dyslexia, but because of my Dyslexia, I would get help when I needed it and they would make allowances on my handwriting. Maybe my school district was more educated, or I had more compationate teachers, I don't know. But, once I told my teachers that I had Dyslexia, they stopped taking off points for me not finishing class work and allowing me to add it to my homework so that it got done, they allowed me to copy my friends' notes as long as it was the notes and Study Guides and not home work and/or class answers. I thought that this was special treatment, but they told me that it was giving me the tools to learn.

As I got older I learned that it was more or less like most of us woulnd't expect a two year old to sit still and pay attention to a church sermon meant for adults for 2 hours, we make allowances for them if they squirm, color in coloring books, draw on paper, etc. as long as they don't make noise, or they go to the nusary. In the same way, my teachers knew that I was incapable of doing my work as quickly as my peers, but they also knew I did not belong in the Special Education classes. So they made allowances for me to get my work to them. I still had to read out loud, but again, my peers did not tease me about it. They were sinistive about it and never brought it up.

Oh man I think I got off topic here. Sorry. Hope this helps.

Stacie M. DeShazer
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Stacie M. DeShazer
Blossoms of Roseland 2006 (Just started it did not get to 50,000 -- still working on it)
I've Got A Brand New Girlfriend 2008 52,604 words WINNER

I don't think I'm dyslexic, because I don't have many problems with spelling or words, but I appear to have a couple other problems that might or might not be related. I have a little bit of trouble speaking words. I can spell dyslexic just fine, but if you ask me I might say "lysdexic," and not even be aware of it until several words farther on. Or I'l say that I need to buy some cimminom, instead of cinnamin. Or I'll have the word in mind that I want to say, but then actually say the opposite word. It gets very embarrassing, and people think I'm stupid. I've always been very self-conscious about that.

Yet I can express myself very well in the written language. I often tell people that's why I became a writer instead of a speaker, because I write a lot better than I talk.

I do have dyscalculia. I transpose numbers. I couldn't tell you my cell phone number because I tend to transpose the last four digits. I'll get it right maybe half the time because I know both the right number and the transposed number, but I can't remember which is which.

I did well in math in school, but I could be doing a very long calculus equation in a test, and at one point I'll transpose numerator for denominator and blithely continue on. I always checked my work, but I'd transpose the numbers in the exact same place when I check it. Of course the answer's wrong, and I can't figure out why.

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Writing can be pure hell as spelling does not make sense to you at all since you do not see the words correctly... you spend a lot of time trying to sound out words and figure out the spelling! In most families when the person with dyslexia is trying to write a paper or do school work you will hear a shout how do you spell this or that... some of the simplest words can be very difficult to spell. Grammer does not make sense when you are trying to write something. Reading can be very difficult as the letters don't always make sense together one day a word can make sense and the next day you can be caught on the same exact word. There are many coping methods you can see a lot of people move their lips as they read or write, they use words that are already on the page so that they can spell them correctly, try to use spell checker but a lot of words are so off that spell checker cannot help also spell checker can put the wrong word in and their brain will read it as correct. Some people are lucky enough that when they were small children they were read to a lot and had many books this helps later on.

There are other lables that schools use, sometimes people are labled with a Learning Disability (LD) in Written Expression since there are a lot of problems with writing.

-----
ML for Mississippi

50,000 or more words while helping my mom (who has just busted up her knee) to unpack our new house and find a job all at the same time; oh and find a university down here that will except all my hours so that I can get MBA

I was never formally diagnosed, but it's sufficiently mild that I never really needed intervention from the school system (but it was still hard, especially when I was younger).

I started reading only at the age of six, to the point where my parents were ready to send me to special school. I remember memorising word shapes to recognise the world itself, so if I saw "difficult" I knew the general shape of the word and would guess that it was 'difficult'. It means I got words with similiar shapes mixed up, ie 'difficult' and 'difference'.

Spelling was hell. I could memorise the words for a Friday spelling quiz, but by Sunday I wouldn't know how to spell it - again, this was memorising word shapes too.

According to my parents, I just suddenly started reading one day. I went from struggling with a storybook to being able to read sentences smoothly. I think it's called word blindness - you can't read, but otherwise your intelligence is properly developed.

I've got trouble spelling, and also with direction - I can't tell my right from my left sometimes, so I have to wear a watch. "Right! No, the other right" was a very common thing with me (: Still is, so I can get lost very easily.

Oh, and I almost forgot; I had trouble with "b" and "d". I'd write things like "He took the bog for a walk" and it would look alright to me. I had to guess which side the round bit went when I was writing. I never had problems with "q" and "p", which is also very common.

I was never formally diagnosed, but had many of the problems described in the other notes. Learning to read often brought me to tears. Our school was big into Phonics, and I just couldn't get it. Transposing numbers and letters, rotating numbers and letters was always a problem.

To this day I can't give people directions because I can't keep my left and right straight. I remember the teachers and my parents trying to teach me left and right and it was so difficult. They'd tell me that if I held out my index finger and my thumb on my left hand it made an 'L'...the only problem was, that for me, both hands made an 'L'.

I finally remember learning my Left hand by learning which finger my mother's wedding band was on...to this day if I have to figure out which hand is my left, I remember reaching and touching my ring finger...I actually remember the sensation and know that that is my left hand.

When I'm giving directions I almost always get them backwards and have to physically point in the direction to turn to be able to get the instruction correct...even when I'm giving directions to someone over the phone, I use my fingers to point the direction to make sure I get it right.

I'm a slow reader because of letters or words moving around. When I'm tired I mix up my spoken words and sentences. Some words I say backwords, especially words that spell other things...ie was vs saw. Other times I'll move entire words to the wrong places in a sentence, or say the sentence backwards.

I went through a phase as a teenager that it was actually easier to write my letters backwards. It was a silly teenager/pre-teen thing with sending letters to my girlfriends and I'd start writing at the bottom right corner and write backward...couldn't get away with it in school, but there were times it took less concentration.

Are Dyspraxia and Dysgraphia the same thing? I've been diagnosed with Dysgraphia, but it sounds exactly like Dyspraxia, and I know that a lot of this sort of thing gets multiple names.

Afraid I have nothing particularly useful to add to what others have said about Dyslexia, except some general things about having this kind of disorder. I have multiple learning disabilities myself, and I deal a lot with other people who are similar. Most of the people I know who are ashamed about this sort of thing only found out about it later in life. This means they spent years thinking that they were just "stupid", or "lazy", or whatever other label teachers and peers came up with. Even people with IQs over 180 will grow up thinking that they're dumb. Then, when you finally get a diagnosis, the first thing that happens is a doctor or a neurologist says something to the effect of, "This is what is wrong with you". So instead of looking at it like just another problem to deal with, you see it as an inherent flaw with yourself. It takes a lot of work to overcome that kind of emotion and learn to see the positive things that come with the situation. (Though there always are positive things, even if you have to look hard for them.)
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Yup, I'm dislexic. I have problems reading but it helps if I use something to keep me from dropping a line. I have problems with 4 & 7 and mixing numbers, combining words when talking, I'm ambidexterous, spelling isn't so bad. I don't have much trouble with left and right but east and west is a big problem.

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Woo, sorry, I just saw thsi! I didn't mean to imply that it was a disability, eek. And Asher's very bright, honestly. He's smart and picks up on things easily; he just has trouble reading/writing. And it's not that he's ashamed of it - honestly, I don't think he knows exactly what the problem is, because he's never said anything about it to anyone. He's just a very stubborn, secretive person, and, like someone else in this thread said, really doesn't want people treating him with kid gloves. It's just not something he talks about.

2008: The Michael Mackin Project (53k/50k)

Whenever I want to know about dyslexia, I check out the lovely page "L Is For Dyslexia" over at TV Tropes. It has a lot of useful facts, such as:

"Dysgraphia is a catch all term for disorders affecting spelling and/or writing. The Dyslexic variety gives inordinate trouble spelling words and can also have horrible penmanship it also often gives bad fine motor skills in general."

After listening to a lot of the stories here, I'm pretty sure that dyslexia runs in my family. My mother and sister both have problems with numbers, and have to focus to make sure they get them in the right order. I exhibit symptoms of dyslexic dysgraphia in that if I'm tired or not paying attention, I tend to spell words phonetically and drop or misspell particles (I've caught myself writing "teh" on paper). All of us encounter oddities from combining words subconsciously (generally when we can think of two words to fit the same situation) or misreading words, though that generally only happens when we're talking/reading faster than we can think, so I'm not sure I'd count that as a symptom.

Some interesting tidbits: there are two basic kinds of dyslexics. The first has difficulty reading phonetically, working instead by rote memorization. They can read any word they've seen before without a problem, but new words confuse them utterly. In languages with entirely memorization-based systems such as Japanese, they generally have no problems.

The other is the kind that cannot memorize words, and has to read each one piece-by-piece -- in the words of TV Tropes, they can't just skip any 3-letter word that begins with "TH". They read more slowly in general and have problems with words that aren't spelled phonetically. In languages such as Italian, where basically every word follows the same rules, they have fewer problems.

My dad, one of my sisters, and one of my brothers are all dyslexic. Their opinions that they've told me in the past (none of them are in the immediate vicinity, but if it comes up with them I'll let you know).

How much does it affect?

My sister learned to deal with it, even though her spelling is still atrocious. She LOVES to read and she is a psychology counseling major, which is not exactly a non-language-non-writing major. She couldn't read until the third or fourth grade, but with a bunch of effort, she can now read just fine. She is also an opera singer and a violinist, and reading music has always been something that she had to work really hard at. Numbers are not her forte, but she's VERY artistic, especially structurally artistic (like she sculpts amazingly well, she makes and sells jewelry, she makes and sells dresses that she designed herself).

My brother is the same as my sister, though he does prefer structural stuff and such over graphic things. He likes to build things, he likes to design things (like "duct-tape structures"), he likes computers, he likes taking things apart and seeing how they work. Yes, this could just be because he's a boy, but since it's so structural and similar to my sister, I'm thinking it might be a dyslexic thing. He could not read until the fourth or fifth grade, but now he's caught up. He really likes history, so he reads a lot of that, but you probably won't find him with fiction in his hands if it's not for a class. He likes to write, but it's so hard for him. He tried Nano with my in '07, but he just couldn't do it because he couldn't do if fast enough because of dyslexia.

My dad, unfortunately, never got the same attention and understanding my siblings did. When he was in school, "dyslexia" did not exist, so teachers didn't know why he couldn't learn to read. He still cannot read very well, and he's just putting a concerted effort into spelling and getting a little bit farther. However, he's structural too. He's an electrical engineer, he designs milcom (military communications) technology, and he's still structural. He likes to woodwork and the like (though one could contest that that is just because his father was a housebuilder and his father's father was a carpenter, and his father's father's father was a carpenter).

There is no "medication" for it, it basically just switches around letters or makes one unable to compose the letters together. Dipthongs and schwas have always been really difficult for my family members. They don't look at the middle of the word AT ALL. They're memorizing it all by the structure of the word on the page, not the actual word. Which is why they cannot get the things where the words are all mixed like in the did you konw taht the oerder of the lteetrs deos not mtaetr so lnog as the frsit and lsat lteetrs are the smae is not true for dyslexics all the time.

Really, that's classic dyslexia. Dyslexia is sort of like autism in the sense that there are whole spectrum of manifestations. Officially any person with an above average IQ (usually VERY high, really) that has difficulties learning written language is dyslexic.

And yes, the left and right thing is true for my sister, but my brother has never had a problem with it.

Nano 2005: Legend of Jael (Won)
Nano 2006: Diary in the Attic (Won)
Nano 2007: Reel Smuggling (Won)
Nano 2008: Those We Lost (A challenge, but it will work--I've got a winning pattern happening)

I went to a school for Dyslexia, and I my Self have ADHD

Well to answer your question it is like having both sides of your brain telling you different things.

the bigest problem is dyslexics think they can't do it so they can't

Ridelin and Concerda both are used to combat dyslexia, they make you focus more on a signal object rather then abeyant objects.

Sorry for my grammar I have adhd, and I am doing this to stand up for all people dyslexic and adhd. So please forgive me.