Post # 15B What?
Yasik was four and a half when he entered the English-speaking world. He tried at first to hold on to Russian but, probably at first reluctantly, later in frustration, he gave up and started to work with English. Forest Gump was his go-to mentor.
I have journal entries of some of Yasik’s early language, cute words and incomplete or even wrong phrases. ‘Telephone’ came out first as ‘Sillyphone’ and ‘tuddle’ for ‘puddle’. Forest Gump was first ‘Forest Gunk’. It was ‘mockbark’ for ‘bookmark’. Did he flirt with copyright infringement with his rendition of the ABC song, singing ‘eno, meno, p and now I say my ABC’? When Yasik had to give in on some challenge to our authority, it was ‘No look’.
Were these the first signs of a learning disability or the first forays into language learning as the lone Russian in a new world? Or some mix of ‘set and setting’, nature and nurture for this child?
These are the questions this set of posts considers.
Cavet: In seeking to understand our personal experiences with learning disabilities I am attempting to interpret research; I am reaching into knowledge I have little preparation for. I found a warning in this sentence, “The moment you start to arrange the world in words, you alter its nature”[i]. Warning taken.
In Who?, I provided an outline of Yasik’s slide from happy confidence to determination never to put himself in a place of learning again. To make the point of the power of external pressure dictating an expectation to read, Naomi Fisher wants us to recognize, however improbable it may sound to our minds, that when anyone is living in an environment where no one reads, not being able to read is not a problem[ii]. Entering a world full of the expectation to read, our son was swamped.
What? looks at what may have overwhelmed Yasik.
I start with the current terms for the “spectrum of experiences”[iii] outside a standard understanding of ‘normal’, yet given the title of Roy Grinker’s book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, [iv] likely few can unquestionably place themselves within the parameters of ‘normal’. This ‘normal’ may be as facile as “some sort of mental benchmark or yardstick in our head.”[v]
But…, if there is a place for a ‘normal’ standard it may be the ‘Simple View of Reading’ (SVR) which says that “good reading comprehension requires two broad types of abilities: good word recognition skills and good oral language comprehension”.[vi] Grok adds this: It’s often formalized as a multiplicative model: Comprehension = Decoding × Comprehension (meaning if either is weak or zero, overall comprehension suffers).
When readers see language symbols on a page, they can read and understand them.
But not everyone can read and understand what they have read.
Struggling to recognize the letters, words, phrases, and sentences on a page is a frustrating aspect of the experience of those outside the SVR standard. Starting from the outer edges of the lexicon built for the struggle to read, I move to the specific terms associated.
“Neurodiversity: a biological fact, not a perspective, an approach, a belief, a political position, or a paradigm, not a trait that any individual possesses or can possess”. But rather, “a person whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from dominant societal norms. Thus, neurodivergence is not intrinsically positive or negative, desirable or undesirable”.[vii]
Naomi Fischer writes this: “Neurodiversity is the idea that some children and adults have naturally different brains, and these differences should not be thought of as a disorder. This is sometimes talked about as ‘differently wired’ or a ‘peculiar neurology’. Neurodiversity includes autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, sensory processing disorder and more.
Neurodiversity is an anti-stigma movement and it comes from the social model of disability. This sees disability as a product of the inaccessible world, rather than something which is located in a person. For example, if a person cannot walk, the degree of their disability is determined by the world around them.
The principle in neurodiversity is that some people should be recognized as different (not disordered) and accommodations are made in order to reduce their level of disability.
[However] … in many cases it divides people into distinct groups: the neurodiverse, and the neurotypical. … It assumes there are some people who are qualitatively different to everyone else and this is because of a discernible difference in their brains. It rejects the term ‘disordered’ but replaces it with ‘difference’. There is no evidence for this. All of the behaviours which make a person neurodiverse vary on a continuum, not categorically. It’s not at all clear where the line between typical and diverse should be drawn. Neurodiversity runs through the whole population, not only a subset.
A problem with the neurodiversity framework is that it can encourage us to think that problems are fixed. …This isn’t based on evidence. We simply don’t know what will happen to many of the children who are currently being diagnosed with development disorders”.[viii]
Sally Shaywitz, seems to agree for wanting to distinguish learning disabilities from dyslexia she writes: “Learning disabilities is a general term referring to a range of difficulties which have not yet been delineated or scientifically validated”.[ix]
Yet, moving to the heart of this lexicon: SLD, (Specific Learning Disorder), according to the DSM-5, refers to neurodevelopmental impairment that remains persistent (lifelong) in reading, mathematics, and written expression but is not related to intelligence nor laziness.
When comedian Phil Hanley’s learning disability became apparent in school, he wrote “I tried to pray away my disability”[x] but over the course of his memoir we see that he makes peace with its persistence.
According to Google, “The official Canadian definition of a Learning Disability (LD) describes them as neurological disorders affecting information processing (acquisition, organization, retention, understanding, use) in individuals with average or higher intelligence, distinct from intellectual disabilities, impacting areas like language, reading, writing, and math due to underlying processing issues (memory, attention, executive functions) … LDs are specific, not global, impairments”.
Other and more common terms for SLD are ‘learning disorder’, ‘learning disability’ or ‘learning difference’ (LD). Another term: ‘Low-achievement’ (LA) is defined as “at-risk for academic failure”, “with and without learning disabilities and with or without specific cognitive deficits”.[xi]
Areas of communication that may be affected are word reading accuracy, spelling, grammar, or calculation as well as fluency and comprehension in degrees from mild (affecting only some academic areas) to severe (needing support and or accommodation). Intellectual disability, vision or hearing problems, a neurological condition, adverse conditions such as economic or environmental disadvantage, lack of instruction, or difficulties speaking/understanding the language, emotional disturbances or lack of educational or cultural opportunity are outside the LD criterion[xii].
Time and again, two words are found in the LD definitions. Given a person’s otherwise normal capabilities, difficulty in certain areas are “unexpected” and “specific” deficits, a ‘deficit’ being “observable impairments in function relative to age peers”.[xiii]
Types of Learning Disabilities
Once again I begin with (admittedly a rearrangement) of Grok’s tidy overview providing the list of types of learning disabilities with the DSM-5 as reference. And heads up: a person can have more than one of the following issues.
Dyscalculia: Mathematics indicated by trouble understanding numbers, memorizing math facts, grasping time/money concepts.[xiv]
Other terms used are ‘math learning disorder’, ‘math learning disability’ and ‘math disorder’.
Dyscalculia is “a deficit in basic numerical concepts and basic computational skills” that persists. “Mathematical competence is strongly influenced by language skills, visuospatial skills, and memory”, but again “not caused by intellectual disability”. [xv]
Dysgraphia: Written expression indicated by poor handwriting, trouble organizing thoughts on paper, spelling issues.[xvi]
Dyspraxia: (sometimes included) Fine/gross motor coordination indicated by difficulty with handwriting, tying shoes, sports, sequencing movements.
Auditory Processing Disorder: Processing sounds indicated by trouble distinguishing similar sounds, following verbal instructions.
Visual Processing Disorder: Interpreting visual information indicated by difficulty with reading maps, recognizing shapes, spatial organization.
Nonverbal Learning Disability: Visual-spatial, social skills indicated by strong verbal skills but poor motor, visual-spatial, and social abilities.
Executive Functioning Deficits: (not a standalone DSM-5 learning disorder but frequently co-occurs) Indicated by challenges with planning, organization, time management, working memory and self-regulation.
This seems a long and comprehensive list and yet I have come across other labels as well. Whether this makes the list complete or not, I am not sure anymore, but here are the others I have found.
Specific Reading Comprehension Disabilities(S-RCD): Difficulties in language comprehension which are the “opposite pattern to dyslexia”. These people have “phonological and word recognition skills”.[xvii]
Google says there may be brain-based differences and a genetic component involved with S-RCD.
Mixed Reading Disabilities: Indicated by problems with “both word recognition and language comprehension because of weaknesses in vocabulary or other language areas that also affect their reading comprehension”.[xviii]
Language-based Learning Disabilities/Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): Indicated by difficulty acquiring and using spoken and/or written language despite normal intelligence and hearing. Like dyslexia this disorder is “unexpected” but the phonological deficits “are more severe…. These children may have language deficits across multiple dimensions of language-phonology, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and pragmatics-but operational definitions often require deficits in more than one language domain”.[xix]
I’ve saved the most well-known disorder for last.
Dyslexia: Reading and language processing indicated by difficulty decoding words, poor spelling, slow reading, trouble with phonological awareness.
Sally Shaywitz and her son Jonathan Shaywitz defined Dyslexia most clearly and thoroughly for me.
Dyslexia is sometimes regarded as “a hidden disability, but dyslexia is hidden only to those who do not have to live with it and suffer its effects”.
“Dyslexia is ’dimensional’ rather than ‘categorical’ – occurring along a continuum/gradations. It can’t be conveniently boxed and labelled”.
“Dyslexia is very specific and scientifically validated” having been found to be “linguistic, residing in phonology”.… “the functional part of the brain where the sounds of language are put together to form words and where words are broken down back into these elemental sounds… of language…Dyslexia involves a weakness within [this] language system. At various times in the Shaywitz writings I have read, they call this ‘weakness’ a ‘glitch’; I understand what I need to with that one word.
“…. As a consequence, such children when speaking may have a hard time selecting the appropriate phoneme and may instead retrieve a phoneme that is similar in sound. Unless the reader-to-be can convert the printed characters on the page into the phonetic code, these letters remain just a bunch of lines and circles totally devoid of linguistic meaning… [leading to] unexpected underachievement… unexpectedly low [reading skill] in relation to his or her intelligence”.
We were surprised at Yasik’s difficulties when he went to school for we saw him as very quick.
Such a ‘weakness in the language system’ leads to problems in “attaching letters in a word to the sounds they represent, decoding/reading difficulties, impacting both accuracy and fluency, encoding difficulties, that is transforming sound into letters, impacting spelling, learning the sound system of a foreign language… but slow reading does not imply slow thinking. Nor does it necessarily impede imagination and “grasping the big picture”.
“Dyslexics have a reading impairment, not a thinking impairment”.
Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz also want their readers to know “Dyslexia is pain. It represents a major assault on self-esteem”.[xx]
I appreciate how Phil Hanley illustrates this pain.
“When I was a kid, I was desperate for people to see me as anything but a special ed student. I tried to conceal my dyslexia from the world the way one hides a hickey from their parents at the breakfast table. I attempted to use my appearance to distract from my learning difference. So, when I developed a love for Bob Marley at age eleven, I decided to grow dreadlocks. They would be the perfect smokescreen. When a white person has dreads, no one wonders what else is wrong with them”.
As an adult Phil Hanley met someone who was modeling but was also trained as a lawyer. Hanley couldn’t imagine anyone modeling if he or she could read. He’d chosen modeling only because he believed that any career involving reading was out for him. Hanley was writing of the years he was a model but ashamed to let his hometown friends know what he was doing to make money. “Why did I still hide my career? Why had shame followed me cross the Atlantic? My shame stemmed from a lifetime of embarrassing moments caused by dyslexia. I was embarrassed that I was the only one who got a zero on spelling test. Embarrassed that I was constantly being taken out of class and forced to go to the Learning Resource Center. Embarrassed that I needed more time to finish tests. Embarrassed that even with all these allowances, I still ended up in special ed.
Embarrassment is fleeting; it surfaces, then fades. Shame is enduring; it stays with you like a criminal record or the theme of the television show Muppet Babies”.
He saw himself as “the world’s slowest learner. I still struggle with concepts taught in first grade”, a ‘major assault on his self-esteem’.[xxi]
Yet Hanley is now a renowned comedian and writer, turning his struggles into a successful, creative career. That is the surprising ‘unexpected’ part of Dyslexia for while the reading impairment is evident, there is so often this other aspect of people with Dyslexia, creativity. A quick Google provides a list of successful dyslexia creatives.
“There is evidence that adults with dyslexia may be among the most creative and successful of their generation. How can this be explained in the light of cerebellar impairment, which apparently causes significant difficulties with acquisition of skills, and with linguistic skill? We believe that the resolution of this paradox lies in the problematic but undoubtedly real distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge, between explicit and implicit knowledge, and between explicit and implicit learning…. The cerebellar impairment hypothesis suggest that dyslectic children will have difficulties specifically with the procedural learning mediated by the cerebellum. There is no reason to expect difficulties in explicit learning and reasoning, which are mediated through the hippocampus and the temporal and frontal lobes… Reasoning ability does not depend fundamentally on fluency. …analytic, creative and practical [learning] … [depend] directly on skill or fluency”…[xxii]
The DSM-5 “has adapted their terminology by removing dyslexia and replacing it with “Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in reading, written expression, or mathematics”
(to allow for) wider breadth of learning variables and alludes to the variety of impact that this alternate wiring in the brain may cause”.[xxiii]
Other Considerations
Like Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz say above, “Dyslexia is very specific and scientifically validated”. There are criteria that must be part of the equation and criteria that definitely are not part of the equation for Dyslexia. But that doesn’t mean that other conditions expressed by someone with a learning disability can be dismissed. Perhaps these other expressions of difficulty may actually be what the person is struggling with rather than one of the above types of disability.
Naomi Fischer tells the story of a child who was recommended for various tests by his school and other professionals for why he was acting out. This child wasn’t abused or neglected but had a difficult school year due to a physical injury and his parents’ divorce. “His basic psychological needs weren’t being met”, so he turned to inappropriate methods to deal with his distress. Lining him up with a label was missing the cause of the child’s difficulties in school. The child simply needed some time and support to navigate his distress.[xxiv]
Like we have noticed all along, ‘the science is settled’ is an oxymoron.
And then there is dialing back from a specific glitch to what genetics have to do with learning struggles. Temple Grandin sees it this way: “Genetics determines whether it’s a four-lane highway or a single-lane road. In my own case, a detailed MRI showed that I had narrower “streets” for speaking, which would have been determined by genetic factors”. She adds: “But it was the environment (intensive speech therapy) that would determine whether I could learn to speak, the increased use slightly widening those narrow roads”.[xxv]
Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz have something to say about genetics as well. This comment may be addressing a study out of the University of BC that sought to confirm that there was a gene “associated with dyslexia or other reading problems”.[xxvi]
To this study, the two Shaywitz say, “… the initial hope that dyslexia would be explained by one gene or just a few genes has not been fulfilled. …for though an individual’s genetic makeup contributes to the risk of having dyslexia, other factors, such as the environment (including family, community, school, and health) likely play a major role as well.
…there is no one-to-one mapping between a single gene and a specific neural circuit. …dyslexia is best explained by multiple genes, each contributing a small amount toward the expression of dyslexia”. To which they add,” …genetic influence is complex though it sometimes runs in families”.[xxvii]
Two physical conditions parents might more easily take care of than those teeny, weeny genes, are the child’s eyesight and hearing. As well, if the child had a deprived start to life, not receiving sufficient protein in the first years as the brain grows, there may have been a negative impact on the development of the child’s brain. Here though all may not be lost. Naomi Fisher notes that even many severely deprived Romanian orphans managed to catch up once they were placed in loving adoptive homes.[xxviii]
The role of the school system in a child’s struggle with learning will be dealt with more fully in the How section, but gets a nod here as another influence. Perhaps the school, with its own agenda, is simply not delivering what the child needs at that stage in his or her learning.[xxix]
I think it is safe to say that the condition that gets the most attention outside the specific disabilities would be the interference of emotional issues on a child’s learning. “…toxic stress bleeds through. … It poisons children, weakening their immune systems and adversely affecting their emotional, physical, and intellectual development”.[xxx]
This toxic stress may come from the child’s lived experiences, getting misdiagnosed as having a learning disability or may come as a companion piece to the difficulties negotiating life with a persistent learning disability.
“Lived experiences” may be as seemingly innocuous as changing schools or as devastating as many of the types of abuse that do not cease to shock people whether experienced while yet in the womb or in infancy and childhood. Yes we know that many children weather neglect and lack of nurture and yet grow into strong adults but it can’t be ignored that “emotional neglect can actually change the way the neural pathways of the brain are networked…”[xxxi] as well as diverting thinking space to the hamster wheel of anxiety.
One of the first things Yasik told us about the Orton Gillingham school we enrolled him in was that the teachers repeated instructions, giving his tense brain time to hear and understand.
Nathan Lau and Moriah Sokolowski offer two theories regarding the anxiety experienced by some children in an academic setting: “The reduced competency theory suggests that early struggles with mathematics lead to anxiety about it … and the processing efficiency theory, on the other hand, suggests that math anxiety directly impairs performance by disrupting cognitive resources. Research shows that math anxiety affects essential executive functions like working memory, inhibition and mental flexibility – capacities that are critical for recalling facts, performing calculations, and solving word problems”.[xxxii]
I think that while using different terms, social psychology researcher, Carol Dweck, is saying about the same thing.
“…the way children think about their abilities or intelligence (implicit assumptions or “self-theories”) can dictate to what extent they are able to overcome fears of failing and triumph through academic difficulties or other cognitive tasks.
Children who believe that intelligence and ability are malleable or flexible (able to change and grow) have far greater success in their lives…
Children with a fixed orientation tend to believe that people’s intelligence or ability is limited to what they are born with, for example, believing they are “not good at math”. This fixed mindset lends itself to giving up when encountering difficulties. Failure is perceived as a weakness or indicator that the task is above the individual’s abilities, whereas a child with a flexible mindset sees failure as a challenge to keep trying and perceives mistakes as a part of the learning process”.[xxxiii]
Martin Seligman is often associated with the term, ‘learned helplessness’, which he defines as “the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter”. [xxxiv]
Ed Latimore, from his personal experience as well as study, adds this observation: “It doesn’t matter which mindset is a more accurate representation of reality. The only thing that matters is which one you believe to be true, because that belief will affect your approach to life’s challenges”.[xxxv]
And then there is that piece specific to our son and ourselves, adoption.
Before I bring forward the usual culprits in the adoption slice of the pie, allow me to tuck in some ‘a bit out there’ suggestions. You know if Hitler had won the war, he wanted to enforce a rule that Slavic children only be taught to count to 100 (May 1940 memo from Heinrich Himmler). Maybe that is why Yasik couldn’t imagine anyone could be expected to count to 60…. And then there is Oblomovism, named after a novel about a nobleman who spent his time in bed living off the income of his family estate, having no motivation to work, no need to work, as he would still be taken care of. Why bother to do anything when he didn’t have to? This attitude was prevalent in the Soviet years as people figured they would get paid anyway whether they worked or not. Have epigenetics turned on such a gene in the Russian psyche? [xxxvi]
When Yasik tried to sign off of unfinished homework or academic struggles with “I’m lazy” was he leaning on a cultural attitude picked up in his early years or was this an attempt at a more normal defense against the embarrassment of having to acknowledge a disability?
But now let me get serious. I came across an article titled, “The Paradox of Adoption”. People into the more mature years, generally well educated and situated at least in the middle-income bracket, are the most common definition of adoptors in the West. They are well equipped, and believe strongly in education and willingly provide all they can to give their adopted child the best advantages possible. And here is the paradox. These are the children most often struggling in school. The article offers the following: “Possible reasons why family resources do not always produce great outcomes may be found in attachment theory, traumatic stress theory, and behavior genetics”.[xxxvii] Maybe. But I think we need to be careful of making any of these ‘other conditions’ the only go-to.
Deborah Gray, whom I continually refer to offers these suggestions.
The child, usually after a stressful start to life, enters a new world no longer referenced by the first culture, with a new language. As she says: “Children are not able to exert control over their lives through language, which frustrates and confuses them … the meaning of things changes”[xxxviii] even though they will likely continue referencing some meaning in the new language from the culture and language they still know best.
Myths that have built up around children and learning.
Yasik does remember mixing up his ‘d’s and ‘b’s early on. For those of us who knew little about learning disabilities the ‘d/b/p’ mix-up was a simple enough explanation to satisfy us. And for that mix-up all we needed to do was find this slide-like device that isolated letters on the page for our child to be able to move ahead in reading.
Enter the next ‘however’. Apparently… letter reversal is quite common in the early stages of reading – for any child. Is that all it was for Yasik? I actually have problems mixing the ‘d/b/p’ as well at times – tired eyes, menopause?
Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz tell us “there is no evidence that they actually ‘see’ letters and words backward. But naming the words was difficult – kids write ‘was’ but say ‘saw’ … The problem is a linguistic one, not a visual one….”
They also brush off the possibility of mirror writing, writing backward and reversing letters and words. Apparently…this also happens in dyslexic and non-dyslexia children. [xxxix]
In response to Phil Hanley’s explanation for his hopelessness in sports: “I was the skinniest kid with the least skills. Dyslexia affects hand-eye coordination and depth perception, two things needed in any athletic endeavor,[xl] the Shaywitz family say that while clumsiness, left-handedness, difficulties with right-left orientation, and trouble tying shoelaces may be “side symptoms” for some dyslexic people, they are not “core” aspects of dyslexia. They may be elements of Dyspraxia though.
So many people have a right-left orientation frustration that store clerks are told to help hapless customers when necessary. I certainly have a problem with this in two languages. But alas I can no longer call it my dyslexia.
Not only is Dyslexia inclusive, sharing some side issues with non-dyslexic people, it is also politically correct for though it has long been thought that more males have dyslexia, it turns out that maybe the females were simply quieter about their struggle with reading.[xli]
And in response to the idea that our brains process writing differently based on the different ways languages are written: a child struggled with dismal inability to read in English in his American school. The family moved to Japan when the child was a teen. In Japanese the teen was very successful at reading. The different ways languages are written was the explanation. Nonetheless there remains some mystery to the teen’s success for the Shaywitz say it is a myth that dyslexia occurs only in a few countries.[xlii]
And what of all the programs that promise to lift a child out of a learning disability tar pit?
The Davis program does acknowledge “difficulty with words” but with a big ‘however’, waxes eloquent about the power of creative dyslexics if they only employ their ‘mind’s eye’ to see the pictures in their minds rather than words.[xliii]
Grok’s evaluation is to say the program relies on anecdotal support rather than data to back up the hope offered by the Davis program.
Grok does support the Orton Gillingham program.
Footnotes
[i] Shields, David. reality hunger: a manifesto Alfred A. Knoph, 2010, 65
[ii] Fischer, Naomi A Different Way To Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 21
[iii] Nerenberg, Jenara Divergent mind: thriving in a world that wasn’t designed for you HarperOne, 2021, 5
[iv] Grinker, Roy. Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, WW Norton, 2021
[v] Forbes, Samuel, Prema Aneja “Why there’s no such thing as normal in child development” December 23, 2024 https://theconversation.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-normal-in-child-development-244681
[vi] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in-reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition
[vii] Walker, Nick, PhD NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/, 2014
[viii] Fischer, Naomi. Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning Robinson, 2021, 134-135
[ix] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 94
Eide, Brock, M.D., and Fernette Eide, M.D. The Mislabeled Child: how understanding your child’s unique learning style can open the door to success Balance, 2006, 149-152
Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D. Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties Harmony, 2002, 83, 84
Nicolson, Roderick and Angela J. Fawcett Dyslexia, Learning and the Brain MIT Press, 2010, 221-222
[x] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 49, 131, 165
[xi] Kivirähk-Koor, Triin, Kiive, Evelyn “Differences in Cognitive and Mathematical Skills of Students with a Mathematical Learning Disability and Those with Low Achievement in Mathematics: A Systematic Literature Review” Education Sciences; Basel Vol. 15, Iss. 3, (2025): 361. DOI:10.3390/educsci15030361
[xii] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder
[xiii] Dennis, Maureen; Spiegler, Brenda J; Simic, Nevena; Sinopoli, Katia J; Wilkinson, Amy; et al. “Functional Plasticity in Childhood Brain Disorders: When, What, How, and Whom to Assess” Neuropsychology Review; New York Vol. 24, Iss. 4, (Dec 2014): 389-408. DOI:10.1007/s11065-014-9261-x
[xiv] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder
[xv] Kivirähk-Koor, Triin, Kiive, Evelyn “Differences in Cognitive and Mathematical Skills of Students with a Mathematical Learning Disability and Those with Low Achievement in Mathematics: A Systematic Literature Review” Education Sciences; Basel Vol. 15, Iss. 3, (2025): 361. DOI:10.3390/educsci15030361
[xvi] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder
[xvii] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in-reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition.
[xviii] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in-reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition.
[xix] Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P. Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4, (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049
[xx] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, (I have arranged these references numerically and suggest that all are valuable reading) 4, 27, 33-34, 39, 40, 41, 50, 65, 93-94, 96-98, 112-116, 130-138, 158, 159
[xxi] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 62, 64, 75, 98, 99, 147
[xxii] Nicolson, Roderick and Angela J. Fawcett Dyslexia, Learning and the Brain MIT Press, 2010, 4
Saltz, Gail The Power of Different: the link between disorder and genius Flatiron Books, 2017, 24, 25, 28-29, 30, 92-93
Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D. Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties Harmony, 2002, 87-88, 91
Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P. Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4, (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-004
Agbonlahor, Winnie. “44 years to find out that I had dyslexia’: More than 100,000 people in Notts suffer from dyslexia”. Nottingham Evening Post; Nottingham (UK) 14 Feb 2013: 23.
Schumacher, Johannes, Per Hoffmann, Christine Schmäl, Gerd Schulte‐Körne, Markus M Nöthen Genetics of dyslexia: the evolving landscape https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597981/#:~:text=A%20child%20with%20an%20affected,family%20members%20are%20also%20affected.&text=There%20is%20an%20estimated%203,when%20strict%20criteria%20are%20applied. PMCID: PMC2597981 PMID: 17307837
Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley The Mind & the Brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force Harper Collins Publishers 2002, 217, 226, 229, 236
Gobbo, Ken. “Dyslexia and Creativity: The Education and Work of Robert Rauschenberg” Landmark College Vol. 30 No. 3/4 (2010): Disability and/in Time || General Issue /
Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D. Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties Harmony, 2002, 92-94
[xxiii] Rappaport, Lisa, PhD & Jody Lyons, Med Parenting Dyslexia: a comprehensive guide to helping kids combat shame, build confidence, and achieve their true potential balance, 2025, 6
[xxiv] Fischer, Naomi. Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning Robinson, 2021, 205-206
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Judith’s husband, Oct 2’25
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Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 135, 2022, Article 104593
Dyslexic people make so-called “mirror errors” in reading, for example confusing the letters ‘b’ and ‘d.’ Scientists may have found a cause of dyslexia Published Wednesday, October 18, 2017
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