At this stage, we’re probably all pretty sure we know what dyslexia ‘looks like’: it’s a learning difference that primarily- but not solely- affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word-reading and spelling (thanks, BDA). We usually associate dyslexia with difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed- but what’s important to remember is this isn’t an exhaustive list, and that dyslexia can look very different in different people.
Last week, we covered a few of the ways that dyslexia can manifest in somebody’s life where it doesn’t adhere to affecting the kind of reading-and-writing skill sets that we might expect it to be most apparent in our article 10 Signs of Dyslexia You Might Have Missed. But the reality is that there are far more than ten ways that dyslexia can have an impact on somebody’s life even when they haven’t got a book in their hands, and some of them might surprise you as they don’t really look all that much like the traditional ways we’d think of dyslexia having an impact on somebody’s day-to-day experience.
So here are ten more signs of dyslexia that you may not have encountered before, and how it can effect everything from the way we spend our leisure time to how we encounter the building blocks of communication…
Late onset speech. Children who have dyslexia sometimes start speaking later than their neurotypical peers, and this delayed speech development has been cited by a number of exerts as being one of the first reliable signs that a child might have dyslexia before they learn to read. In some cases, children won’t start speaking until they reach around four years of age, but in actuality for most people the delay is only to the degree of being around six months behind the average. This delay doesn’t have a bearing on intelligence at all, and many neurotypical children have delayed speech too, so it’s certainly not an indicator that a child isn’t going to be a strong learner or isn’t destined for great things academically. It’s also important to note that in rarer cases, dyslexic children have been observed to start speaking very early- around six to eight months before we’d expect them to- so there’s a lot going on here.
Foreign language learning. Most people study a foreign language at some point during their education, even if they choose not to take it to exam level.But if you’ve got dyslexia, learning even these first words of a foreign language can feel much more difficult than your peers seem to be finding it. Were you sat in high school French still struggling with remembering numbers, whilst other people around you found themselves ready to move onto topics like names and dates, lessons and birthdays? It could have been down to your dyslexia making it difficult to process these new words that you have no familiarity with, and affecting how quickly you can retrieve the new vocab you’ve learned. You can find out more on this at The BDA’s resource on Modern Foreign Languages and Dyslexia.
Where was I going again? Some folks with dyslexia really struggle to read maps, especially handheld paper maps. Not only can they be very busy and confusing canvases with lots of tightly-packed letters and coloured backgrounds, maps also rely on the idea of visualising three-dimensional objects and layouts from different angles, as well as the ability to navigate in the real world from a set of decoded information and symbols on the page. Online mapping software such as Google Maps or SatNav devices can be handy here, as they transform map directions into verbal ones, as well as presenting a dynamic picture of where you are at the moment so that you don’t have to visualise quite as much.
Cursive writing. We touched on this last week when we explored how messy handwriting can be a sign of dyslexia, but it deserves its own section as it seems to be something that affects a lot of people: joined-up writing can be tricky when you’ve got dyslexia, and it might take you a little longer than average to nail the skill. Cursive writing alters letter forms from the standard ones we first learn in school, and adds extra connective strokes to them which can complicate letter-writing for somebody who’s struggled with the skill in the first place, However The BDA suggests that it’s actually recommended that children learn to write using continuous cursive handwriting so that they don’t have to learn how to form letters twice when they need to write more quickly later on, so it’s a skill worst persevering with.
Remembering names. Ever been in a meeting with a new colleague and you just can’t remember what they said their name was, or forgotten your neighbour’s name when they popped around to ask if they can have that lawnmower back that you borrowed in 2005? You’re not alone: many people with dyslexia struggle to recall people’s names, even if they’re not new information to them. It could be somebody who you’ve just met or somebody that you’ve known for years, and whilst you can remember their face, their clothes and what they bought to the office potluck, their name just escapes you. Luckily, social media seems to actually help people here, as whilst scrolling through a news feed on Facebook or Instagram we get to constantly associate names and faces and form strong memory links between the two – which we suppose is great if your friend’s Insta name is @BarryJones1, but marginally less helpful if he’s @ItsYaBoi89645670.
And it can affect other information too! As well as names, people with dyslexia can sometimes struggle to remember dates, times, phone numbers, pin numbers- pretty much any of those strings of information that dictate how, when and where we live our lives. You can find out more about how Dyslexia and Memory interact at our article on the subject, as well as explore the differences between short-term memory and working memory when it comes to dyslexia and literacy differences and some solutions and memory aids that might help you add a little structure.
Someone in your family has dyslexia (or you think they might have). Dyslexia has a hereditary component, which means that whilst you can be born with it even with no history of the condition in your family, you’re pretty likely to have a relative with it somewhere. This is most likely to be your mother or your father, but it can skip generations and be present in your grandparents and you but not your parents, or in your parents, skip you, but then turn up in your own children. Many older people never had the opportunities to get their dyslexia identified however, so it could be tricky to get a real picture of who in your immediate family has it.
Driving. Did you find it particularly difficult to learn how to drive? Were you one of those people who when they were learning to drive manual transmission, (stick) you just couldn’t seem to remember where the gears were even though you’d been learning for months- or was it more like you had to take a panicked second to think which is your brake and which is your accelerator, even though you absolutely know which is which? Some people struggle with the immediate recall needed for driving even if they’re facts and actions they comfortably know, and that’s before they have to get into the business of dealing with lefts and rights on the go (something that many dyslexic people report struggling with a lot).
Dyslexia is much more complex than ‘difficulties reading and writing’ – it’s got a whole other set of signs and symptoms that many of us, even those active in the global dyslexia community, don’t really address or talk about as much as we should. And some people believe that within dyslexia, there are a whole host of amazing strengths and abilities too, from creativity and spatial skills to a knack for business and entrepreneurship. Developing a holistic picture of dyslexia that accurately reflects the depth of the condition is important in helping people understand themselves and their skills better, as well as developing better research and critical understandings of something that’s part of the lived experience for a huge between 10% and 15% of the world population.
