Dyslexia: When Letters Throw a Party!

The movie Taare Zameen Par released in the year 2007 is a movie that became famous among the world. Ishan, the main character of this film, was labeled as unable to learn due to difficulty in reading, writing and pronunciation, and was in trouble at school as well as at home. But the art teacher he met suddenly caught his true talent and the story flows along that line. The special thing here is that this little boy named Ishan also has a learning disability called dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a brain condition that makes it hard for people to read quickly and correctly. Children and adults with developmental dyslexia have trouble reading even though they are smart, motivated, and have had good schooling. Dyslexia, also known as a specific reading disability, is the most common learning disability, affecting 80 percent of people with learning difficulties. It can range from mild to severe, and it can co-occur with other specific learning difficulties.

It’s important to remember that thinking differently can be a good thing. Many people with dyslexia have strengths in areas like reasoning, visual skills, and creativity. I have especially seen creativity in children with dyslexia. With the right help, the strengths and talents of people with dyslexia can truly stand out.

Symptoms

The signs and symptoms of dyslexia vary for each person. Everyone with dyslexia will have their own unique set of strengths and challenges. The main symptoms are,

• Struggles or delays in learning the alphabet, speaking, reading, or spelling.
• Difficulty identifying the correct sequence of letters in a word; for instance, individuals with dyslexia might unknowingly switch the order of two letters.
• Mistaking one letter for another; common examples are confusing b with d, p with q, and u with n.
• Challenges with pronouncing longer words.
• Trouble recognizing common “sight words” such as it, the, or and.
• Seeming difficulty in distinguishing the sounds of different words.
• Problems recalling sequences of letters, numbers, or words.

In general, children and adults with dyslexia may have trouble summarizing stories, remembering words or phrases, understanding idioms, jokes, or wordplay, and learning a second language. (However, just having trouble learning a second language does not mean someone has dyslexia if they have no other symptoms.)
https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexia/about-dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia

Causes

Dyslexia happens because of differences in the parts of the brain that help with reading. In an important study, Galaburda and his team (1985) looked at five dyslexic brains after death and found some unusual features. These brains did not have the usual differences between the left and right sides of a brain area called the planum temporale. The right side was unusually large. They also found small malformations, like ectopias and dysplasias, mainly in the left side of another brain region. These issues suggest problems in brain development during early growth. Dyslexia often runs in families and seems to be connected to certain genes that affect how the brain processes reading and language.

Treatment

In addition, there are more learning disorders such as Dyscalculia (weakness in math), Dysgraphia (writing related errors) and Left-Right disorder (difficulty identifying left and right).Many teachers find out that children suffer from this kind of symptoms during school. Then the child and the parents should be directed to get the proper doctor’s advice without making them uncomfortable.

The movie Taare Zameen Par images credit – https://theprint.in/feature/tisca-chopra-gets-nostalgic-as-taare-zameen-par-turns-15/1275974
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/745416175814257240/