As a parent of a dyslexic child and as someone who works with families of children with dyslexia I know how much dyslexia causes a barrier to learning, but do you know which part of having dyslexia seems to be the largest part of that barrier?

Anxiety

I don't have any statistics for you, I am writing this from a gut feeling perspective.  I write this as someone who dreads having to read long texts because of the amount of energy it takes me to concentrate enough to only experience that information going into my brain as a trickle rather than a flood of information.  I don't have visual stress in that the words I see don't get jumbled up, or that I experience strange optical patterns forming in the text, for me the issue is processing the information.  I can read it out beautifully without assistance, but I may not be able to recall what I have read without reading it a few times first.

For my daughter the issue is that the text does get distorted and added to that are processing issues.

So when in class ( I can remember all those years ago) , picking up a text book to read was never an easy thing and being able to process information quick enough took a lot of effort if I needed to be able to move at the pace of the teacher.

Try it today.

So, I hope that you can see that whilst there are some very real challenges when studying with dyslexia, what makes studying text books really hard is the anxiety that you have to overcome before you can even think of tackling the issues of having dyslexia.

Just feeling that anxiety as soon as you have any sense that you may have to do some heavy reading puts you off.  What I think stinks is that in this world of technology, our kids are often forced to experience that anxiety simply because of the lack of knowledge or availability for technology that helps with reading.

Just imagine if the teacher said, "Don't worry about reading the text book, why don't you listen to the text being read out on that laptop?"  You wouldn't have to stare at a screen, you could simply listen to the information.  In having this option you may find that you don't get anxious as the different style of learning might suite you.  It may not but having this option is worth a try.

This service has collated 82,000 curriculum based text book titles that can be downloaded for FREE if your school registers for the service.  A lot of these titles come in pdf format and so this means that they can be read out using 'text to speech' software such as SprintPlus.  As dyslexia is considered a 'print disability', a student is entitled to download PDF text books for free, to be accessed on laptops and tablets where the text can be resized, read out, highlighted and so on.

Here is a video about how to access these titles.

To find out more about the RNIB Bookshare Service click here.

To try out SprintPlus for 60 Days for free click here.

Please tell your SENCO about these resources, they make a real difference to the life of a student and will help them to achieve less stress and anxiety as well as get better grades in school.