All About Dyslexia: Cutting Edge Techniques To Cope With A Royal Syndrome
I have recently visited some of London leading centres for dyslexia to hear more about the syndrome that affected King George VI.
If the monarch would be living today, he could have certainly benefited from great improvements in treating the syndrome that hits today around two million of people in the UK alone, with all due respect to the healing techniques that speech therapist Lionel Logue employed for him.
Dyslexia, the disorder that affects the ability to read, write and speak properly, is a disability that hits around 4 to 5 per cent of the general population.
According to the British Dyslexia Association, in the UK alone around 375.000 pupils suffer from this learning disadvantage. Aside from the young population, there is a conspicuous number of adults who suffer from the syndrome of Queen’s Elizabeth grandfather. Most of them have been struggling with some of its symptoms for years, before taking guts to address themselves to a specialist.
Dyslexia Action is one of the leading organizations in the UK providing help and support for those with the condition. A charity with 26 centres in the UK, one of them in Grosvenor Gardens, central London. “Many adults come to our centre to have assessments,” says Ms. Renoo, Office Manager at the Grosvenor centre. “They have been struggling with this type of problems for years, and they want to get tested,” she adds. “They had to overcome a lot of fears and prejudices in order to come here.”
The symptoms that adults affected by dyslexia experience, she explains, are most commonly the difficulty to read a text, to spell a word, or to carry out instructions in sequence. Often dyslexia is associated with other developmental conditions, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Dyspraxia, which causes sensory integration dysfunction. “Most of the people affected by dyslexia can read better on a yellow background than on a white one,” says Ms Renoo. She explains that people with the condition are generally more reactive to certain colours than to others, as they are more likely to integrate a certain type of sensory information.
Children and adults who are treated in the London centres can benefit from the multi-sensory technique, which involves experiencing an object through integrating what they see, listen and touch in the same learning experience. “The multisensory technique entails experiencing the process of learning using as many senses as possible,” says Sylvia, teacher at the North London Dyslexia Centre in Mill Hill. “In this way people with this condition can learn to use as many senses as possible in their experience of an object, so that their stronger senses can help the weaker ones.” “They also have a chance to read, so that their vocalizing and what they see can be integrated through the use of colours, so that certain words or sounds are reinforced.”
Written by: Ambra Guarnieri