Living with a dyslexic partner - British Dyslexia Association (2024)

FAQs

How do you live with a dyslexic partner? ›

Use simple sentences as instructions. Empathise with your dyslexic partner without displaying any undue sympathy. Encourage them to add special dates such as birthdays and anniversaries to digital or manual calendars or set reminders for them. Be cautious when your dyslexic partner shows low self-esteem or self-pity.

Dyslexia can affect short term memory, so your partner may forget a conversation, a task they have promised to do, or important dates. They may also struggle to remember the names of people they have met or how to get to places they have visited before.

You should have a good understanding of your strengths as well as your challenges. Your partner/spouse should understand that learning disabilities could interfere with many aspects of everyday life. You both should understand that some tasks might take you longer to do than they take other people.

In fact, despite reading ability, people who have dyslexia can have a range of intellectual ability. Most have average to above average IQs, and just like the general population, some have superior to very superior scores.

Finally, participants with dyslexia who showed low reading abilities had significantly lower scores in total empathy and cognitive empathy, as measured by the IRI test, than did typical participants with high reading abilities.

Frequently has to re-read sentences in order to comprehend. Fatigues or becomes bored quickly while reading. Reliance on others (assistants, spouses, significant others) for written correspondence.

About 1 in 5 people with a learning disability who are over the age of 65 will develop dementia. People with learning disabilities who develop dementia generally do so at a younger age.

Adults with dyslexia often have a wide range of nonspecific mental health, emotional, and work difficulties. They may have low self-esteem, experience shame, humiliation, or lack confidence in their ability to perform at work or school.

Both mothers and fathers can pass dyslexia on to their children if either parent has it. There is roughly a 50% – 60% chance of a child developing dyslexia if one of their parents has it.

Do dyslexics have social problems? ›

Individuals with dyslexia have reported anger, stress, embarrassment, shame, aggression, guilt, isolation, insecurity, anxiety, low motivation, low self-esteem, and related social problems.

Dyslexic children (and adults) respond to confusion by becoming disoriented. The feelings of uncertainty and the mistakes they make while disoriented cause emotional reactions such as anxiety, embarrassment, or frustration. These emotions in turn provoke continued or increasing levels of disorientation.

Dyslexic brains process information differently. We are naturally creative, good at problem solving and talented communicators. Our heightened abilities in areas like visualisation and logical reasoning skills and natural entrepreneurial traits bring a fresh and intuitive perspective.

Poor memory recall is a key characteristic of the dyslexic brain. This means that while students may appear to understand things well, they often struggle to recall concepts later. Think of your memory as a warehouse full of ideas. A dyslexic searches for the words with the light off.

People with dyslexia find it difficult to recognise the different sounds that make up words and relate these to letters. Dyslexia isn't related to a person's general level of intelligence. Children and adults of all intellectual abilities can be affected by dyslexia.

Many adults with dyslexia see themselves as more emotionally sensitive than other people. In its most extreme form, high levels of emotional sensitivity are both a blessing and a weakness. The positive features of this trait helps adults build meaningful relationships with others.

A new school of thought in evolutionary developmental biology, combined with research in the neurobiology of stress, suggest that early exposure to stressful circ*mstances may be a cause of dyslexia.

Dyslexics think in pictures instead of words

Dyslexics have non-verbal thoughts, which is thinking in pictures, where the picture grows as the thought process adds more concepts. Therefore, It's much faster, possibly thousands of times faster (a picture is worth a thousand words).

Can dyslexics have low IQ? ›

Some teachers and parents can mistake a dyslexic child for someone who is lacking intelligence. But the truth is dyslexia has nothing to do with a child's level of intelligence.

Dyslexia symptoms don't 'get worse' with age. That said, the longer children go without support, the more challenging it is for them to overcome their learning difficulties. A key reason for this is that a child's brain plasticity decreases as they mature. This impacts how quickly children adapt to change.

Experts agree that the best practice for teaching children with dyslexia is to teach them by engaging all their senses (multisensory teaching). This means using visuals, motion, body movement, hands-on, and auditory elements in their learning.

They can get easily overwhelmed

Different, not wrong, and most neuro-typical people can't begin to do the things that dyslexic people find easy. Usually being photo-realistic thinkers, it means that they are processing trillions of bits of visual data to make sense of what they are seeing and sensing.

Yes, trauma – both physical and emotional – have been cited in potentially causing the onset of dyslexia.

In a word, no. Dyslexia is a lifelong condition that affects people into old age. However, that does not mean that instruction cannot remediate some of the difficulties people with dyslexia have with written language.

Many of the emotional problems caused by dyslexia occur out of frustration with school or social situations. Social scientists have frequently observed that frustration produces anger. This can be clearly seen in many children with dyslexia. Anger is also a common manifestation of anxiety and depression.

Get confused when given several instructions at once. Have difficulty organising thoughts on paper. Often forget conversations or important dates. Have difficulty with personal organisation, time management and prioritising tasks.

Dyslexics become fearful because of their constant frustration and confusion in school. These feelings are exacerbated by the inconsistencies of dyslexia. Because they may anticipate failure, entering new situations can becomes extremely anxiety provoking. Anxiety causes human beings to avoid whatever frightens them.

People often confuse dyslexia and autism for one another or conflate them for their similarities. But they are two completely different disorders that affect the brains of people in different ways. While dyslexia is a learning difficulty, autism is a developmental disorder.

Does dyslexia affect math? ›

Dyslexia can affect writing and spelling, too. It can also impact math. A learning difference that causes trouble with making sense of numbers and math concepts. Struggling with reading can make kids feel inferior to their peers and can impact self-esteem.

Males are diagnosed with dyslexia more frequently than females, even in epidemiological samples. This may be explained by greater variance in males' reading performance.

Because of their difficulty with language, they may unintentionally foster mis-communications with others, and it may be a turn-off to peers. Students who feel badly about themselves may not have the social confidence or skill to seek and maintain friendships, and may become withdrawn from friends and family.

People with dyslexia are also often unorganized with messy hand-writing, messy workplaces, messy bag-packs etc. They may also suffer from discrimination and bullying.

Individuals with dyslexia often suffer from low self-esteem. This low self-esteem usually comes from the struggles, frustration and loneliness that they have experienced in their lives.

Children with dyslexia often feel stupid, have low self-esteem, attempt to hide weaknesses with complex compensation strategies, and are easily annoyed and angered/ saddened by reading or school testing.

Kids with dyslexia have many gifts, including:

Holistic thinking that sees the whole picture. Improved pattern recognition. Enhanced problem-solving ability. Brilliant spatial reasoning.

In an attempt to learn more about the minds of millionaires, a team of psychologists and business experts, spent a day testing a group of entrepreneurial millionaires. They were put through a series of tests. 40% of the 300 millionaires who participated in the more comprehensive study had been diagnosed with dyslexia.

Are dyslexics gifted? ›

Underneath all of the spelling mistakes and the trouble focusing, the backwards handwriting and the processing problems, dyslexic children have a high tendency to be extremely smart. In fact, studies have shown that the average IQ of a child with dyslexia is routinely higher than that of the regular population.

And this is only the short list. A study of self-made millionaires in the U.K. found that 40 percent were dyslexic. Former Cisco CEO Chambers estimates that “25 percent of CEOs are dyslexic, but many don't want to talk about it.”

Dyslexia can affect short term memory, so your partner may forget a conversation, a task they have promised to do, or important dates. They may also struggle to remember the names of people they have met or how to get to places they have visited before.

About 85% of the dyslexics think mostly in pictures. A screening tool for the Dyslexia Correction Program is to test ones 3D thinking ability, called the Perceptual Ability Assessment; which you can have done when you come in for your dyslexia testing.

Word skipping is very common for dyslexics, and the symptom can manifest itself in various ways. A severely dyslexic student may have a very difficult time even noticing that they are skipping words.

People do not outgrow dyslexia, although the symptoms do tend to vary by age. With appropriate instruction and support, people with dyslexia can succeed in school and the workplace.

Yes, trauma – both physical and emotional – have been cited in potentially causing the onset of dyslexia. Trauma Dyslexia, also commonly referred to as acquired dyslexia, can develop after a person has experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as a fall from a ladder, a car accident, a sports injury, etc.

Yoga, mindfulness activities, meditation, biofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), medication and exercise are among the many ways that individuals (with and without dyslexia) can conquer excessive or debilitating stress.