No such thing as dyslexia?

[jennymanara]

Okay I acknowledge a bit of a click bait title.
But I was reading a journal on a train yesterday where a senior educational psychologist was saying that the diagnosis dyslexia was useless. As the term dyslexia is actually a name for a wide range of reading difficulties, many very different to each other. He was arguing that we need to properly name these different reading difficulties, instead of calling it all dyslexia.
I haven't come across this view before. So just wondered if anyone had heard of this argument, and what they though about it? And crucially would naming reading difficulties more precisely actually make any difference?

I have post graduate qualifications in the teaching of specific learning difficulties. Those specific difficulties might range from difficulty learning to read, difficulty writing and spelling, poor handwriting, slow processing speed, and a range of other things that may make learning difficult for some children.

Some may have one or two, some may have multiple conditions, but what is important is that a child has those difficulties recognised and that appropriate intervention takes place. There is also a difference between specific and global learning difficulties, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

You wouldn’t say that someone with a broken toe should have the same treatment as someone with a fractured tibia or fibula, so you shouldn’t, in my opinion, consider all types of specific learning difficulty as being the same.

@foxyloxy So you agree with the very non specialist summary I gave above of the article?

Most people think dyslexic children can’t read

That’s not true

They may need extra processing or need to learn visually or have prompts or lists

They may look like they aren’t listening when they are, and get in trouble.

They may have difficulties with time and being late

Or disorganized

It is a wide range and there should be some distinction

I have some sympathy with this argument. There is I think a very real misunderstanding about dyslexia and I don't think a single label helps, given that it covers such a wide range of problems.

I was personally very ignorant about dyslexia until a few years ago, when a teacher suggested we had our daughter tested. How ridiculous, we thought. She's always been a very good reader. Indeed she had, but it turned out that she was dyslexic, with a very poor working memory and slow processing.

When I told other people she had been diagnosed with dyslexic, they were equally surprised and some people simply refused to believe me.

It’s not usually called dyslexia now. Usually specific learning difficulty.

In dyslexic and have always had a reading age (as a child) well above my age.
My issue came with getting information out and onto paper in a coherent fashion.
I was an avid reader all through my childhood!

Point in case
"I'm dyslexic"

My daughter is everything that GreenTulip listed above. But she's freaking awesome at reading, that is her superpower. So Dyslexia isn't just a reading issue.

Dyslexia means she struggles with spelling, organising and concentrating, that side of things really. She also has Dyspraxia which doesn't help her coordination or handwriting. And I don't think it's unusual for children diagnosed to have more than one 'thing' though.

Dyslexia as a term covers a broad spectrum of issues but a lot of the struggle is that people (not in the know) see it as only struggling with reading. Equally, I am not sure that splitting it into auditory processing disorder, working memory issues etc will clarify things or make it more complex.

I think they are moving away from the term dyslexia as it covers such a broad and varied range of processing issues.
My son has a dyslexic diagnosis but his reading is above average (which is why it was a late diagnosis). He has auditory processing issues and is a visual learner.
Spelling and maths are weak.

Dyslexia is a range of learning difficulties. That’s why it isn’t helpful to call it dyslexia, because it’s a learning difficulty specific to a person, not a general catch all for children who have some learning issues in school. It was once deemed acceptable to be dyslexic, because the simplistic view was that dyslexia applied to otherwise bright children.

That can be the case, but there is such a range of issues and it absolutely is not just limited to difficulty in learning to read, or spell or hand write. Children can have a specific difficulty and be very able. They can also have a specific difficulty and be less able.

Otoh, labels can be a shorthand! If I were in a shop with DD, she was struggling to read labels and people were rolling their eyes; it’s much easier to say:

“She’s dyslexic!”

Than

“She has a severe phonological disorder (due to a massive auditory processing disorder), severe problems with sequencing, visual perception, horizontal tracking, very poor memory....”

I doubt unless they had a child with SpLD themselves, all that would convey the essential message that she has difficulties with reading?

jennymarana I was an EP for many years and this was, and still is, my view too.
Many children (and adults) have difficulty with reading, spelling and decoding the written word. My husband is one example.
But it's not a blanket coverall, as the word dyslexia implies. All of us have an individual profile of sensory strengths and weaknesses. some affect reading etc, and some don't.
To help children with reading problems we have to identify the weak area and devise programmes to remediate. and develop strengths to compensate.
eg I deal with all my husband's written correspondence .

Thanks this is all interesting and helps make sense of my queries over some adults I have met who told me they have dyslexia, but who have had excellent writing skills. I admit it made me doubt what they said.

Dyslexics can find ways to help navigate difficulties. It just takes them a lot longer and a lot harder to work

Dyslexic at work needs peace and quite to take in new information. Can’t handle distributions and get back to its. Handwriting and reading both fine.

Memory skills can get better with a different way of doing things, example by assimilation or pictures etc all helps

If you describe someone as dyslexic you aren’t looking to give precise information about their differences just as if you describe someone as autistic you aren’t listing the particular combination of differences they have. . It’s a bit like the revaluation that if you describe someone as a woman she might get be any colour, age, or IQ. What did you think was being conveyed by “dyslexic”?

In France they use different names for the different difficulties. My DSC have dysorthography. Basically pretty much everything to do with spelling is extremely difficult.

It’s not an argument it’s fact. Just as there’s is no single disease called cancer. There are many variants of speech and language processing disorders. Dyslexia is an umbrella term just as cancer is an umbrella term.

@itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis I though it would mean their reading and writing would be poorer than average.

@greentulips I assume you mean more than average? Because I need peace and quiet to learn. I could not function in some of the classrooms some parents describe on MN and assume that kids can just filter out noise and get on and learn. I need quiet for example to read and actually take the information in. But a lot of people are like that, which is why when I went to school classrooms would be quiet a lot of the time. It was recognised most kids could not learn with a lot of background noise.

Yeah well the idea that dyslexia is purely about reading and writing is nonsense.... But that is not what the diagnosis is based on. It's based on differentials in ability. I learnt to read early and have always been able in this area. I have a B at English A-level from the 90's (pre diagnosis and support), and Master's in science communication. I can clearly read and write very well....but I am also dyslexic, I can't hold onto verbal information for love nor money, mental maths, organisation, time management, sequencing and taking down phone numbers are all tricky. My working memory is very poor compared to my other 'abilities'. Rats what defines dyslexia (problems with working memory and processing speed).... This can be observable in reading and writing difficulties but not always

I’d agree with those posters above. DS has auditory and visual processing disorder: he has problems tracking text, recalling the next sound in a sequence (do spelling by phonics is screwed) and struggles to transfer visual information from a distance to close up work- in his case the operations are handled by opposite hemispheres in the brain.

In old terminology he’s probably dyslexic, but his diagnosis is more precise and comes under the heading of SpLD. He reads (using chromatography prescribed lenses) voraciously, listens to audiobooks and podcasts in his spare time and is bright (but no genius!). Spelling is a massive challenge, but we have ways round that.

Was this Julian Elliot by any chance?

I find it really counter-productive when people frame arguing that dyslexia as a term is hard to define, as saying it 'doesn't exist'.

There is very obviously 'something' that is going on with certain people. It runs in families. It presents in similar-ish ways. There are better and worse ways to work with it. Etc. I don't care whether we call it Dyslexia or Susan, but it's something, so why not just get on with supporting people who have it?

Btw, I find the broken bone analogy made upthread interesting.

There are masses of different ways to break a bone. There are various combinations of other things that can happen (displaced fractures, open fractures, etc. etc.). They require different types of treatment, both immediately and in terms of longer-running physio.

But we still accept that 'I broke my arm' is a useful statement of a basic fact, and we don't imagine that doctors are miraculously unable to see the distinctions and treat appropriately, just because we use the word 'broken' for a wide range of different things.