Dyslexia symptoms infographic. Repinned by SOS Inc.

Drop The But

I listen to everyone include myself, and realized that we tend to use the word but several times a days.

You’ll use the word to invalidate what you just said, as in: You did a great job, but… Or you’ll use the word to defend your actions, as in: I would have done that, but…

To defend yourself, (young children can use the word but like more than 5 times days just for this case).

When they do something wrong, they always try to defend themselves using the word ''but''. And they use this word as much as they can, like they can excuse anything with it.

For example let take a conversation with a kids that break a vase, and let call this kids Bod: Bod did you drop the vase on the floor? ''Yes, but, but, but, but, but, but,......'' Bod would say and instantly absolve himself of any responsibility.

It never their fault.

He never wanted to said I'm sorry.

He just use the word ''But'' to put the responsibility on someone else.

We need to take responsibility for our actions and stop using the word but to defend yourself.

Let imagine now the same situation with two adult in a car accident. One will said : ''yes the light was red but you were driving so fast'' and the other ''yes but you were passing on the red light''.

Stop using but to defend yourself and just take responsibility for your actions and said instead: ''I'm sorry, I past on the red light.'' or ''I'm sorry also I was driving to fast.''

But are also use to invalidate what you just said

 

When people say the word "but" after a sentence it's very demeaning and it's almost as if they recognize your statement and then throw it aside just as quickly.

For example, adding but after praise makes the praise feel less significant.

"You did great in the recital but next time try to speed up your tempo"

In order to reinforce the positivity and effort I would instead say:

" You did great in the recital. How about we try to work on speeding up your tempo and see what happens?"

When one, "drops the but" they are actually taking the time to recognize and hear what someone is saying which in turn makes the other person feel good. Even if they don't agree with that person, "dropping the but" still makes the person feel as if they have been genuinely heard.

Drop the But

You can start using the word “and” because the word “but” nullifies what you just said. e.g. “I did ten things on my to-do list, but I didn’t do the remaining five things”. Instead you could say: “I did ten things and I have five more to go. ”

So the next time you find yourself saying “but” pull out your forefinger and thumb.

Reach for your check, and tighten into a pinch. It's will help remember to stop using the word ''BUT''.

It's one of the best way to make your life a life without BUT.

Growth Mindset

The Dr.Carol Dweck published an very interesting and important article about a study she make around 373 middle school students.

She ask every student the same and unique simple question: Is intelligence something very basic that can't really change ?

The answer was divided into 2 group :

- The fixed mindset that said no it's cannot change.
- And The malleable mindset that said yes this can change and growth, she call them the Growth Mindset.

And she realize that the first categories the fixed mindset are more worried about looking smart than learning, they don't like to try news think because failing make them look stupid.

In the other case the malleable or the growth mindset are more interested in learning and love to try, event if they do mistake because they think of it as learning. And seem to think that the they next time they will do better and so on.

The Growth mindset was having some attribute that the fixed mindset was not having:
- Effort,
- Using strategies,
- And provided seeking.

Check the full article there:
http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124
http://www.mindsetworks.com/webnav/dr-dweck-interviews.aspx

Generation of Robots in Lebanon

Lebanon like North-Korea, Japan or China have one of the best education systems in the world. Children learn in primary school 3 languages (Arabic, French, & English) and some event more with Spanish. We teach our kids that excellence it's to know everything by head and to speak it out-loud in class.

And if our kids don't get good grades we yell at them and put all our salary in private tutors. Some of our kids become so genius and are always succeeding in school. And the message this kids get it's that all is easy, everything will always be fine if they learn it by head.

And for some of those kids it's really super easy for them to get good grades like that. And theirs parents so proud of them give them money, gift and tell them to nothing in the house else than studying so they don't have any independence and some of them at the age of 20 years old still don't know how to cook eggs or event how to do a sandwich. And the trouble's is that they are going to reach a point in their life where it's not going to be easy, and they will get lost. 

I think those kids we're creating actually have like a sort of Fixed Mindset Syndrome. You can see there more informations about this syndrome: http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset-which-one-are-you/

 

They don't get any part-time jobs, or anything type of jobs when they are studying and some of them never worked until they get their college or event master degree, but like Businessinsider said : ''A diploma it's just a door to the work forces and may the best man or woman win.'' So with their fixed-mindset they still think everything will be easy with their GPA they will get every jobs they want, but actually in the real life this is not the case so they will get the felling like a bomb was trough in their face when they will finally woke-up of their illusion. And that is a really dangerous thing, I think, to send our kids out into the world with this.

And the questions is how we help this kids ? And that a very difficult question to answer when you think of the pressure of college admissions for that perfect transcript, or this perfect student.

And yet unfortunately, the college admissions system, isn't actually looking for growth right now but for robots student. And that the big problems with this news generation of ROBOT STUDENT we are creating: ''why parents would tell their children to be lest like a robot and to learn for fun, when college and university are just looking for that perfect transcript ?'' So we have created this fragile troubleshoots people more likely to get depression in the future in their life when thing will not be easy for them.

At the end what we must think as a parent or a teacher did we provide to our kids and the new generation with this type of education what they need to survive in this world ?

The solution is to teach our children lest with the textbook but more about life and to parents to give their children the change of independence by so work in the summer or doing task for their money in the house washing the car for example or just washing dishes like in the picture.

Why Optimism is so important ?

Have you ever read or see this quote: ''Humans being are creatures of the future, and not the prisoners of the past.'' or ''If you don't let go of your past, you can't have a great future.'' So humans are creatures that like to project themselves in the future, and it's why optimism is so important to us. 

Imagine someone that project himself into the future with pessimism views. He will see everything bad, and see himself become a failure. And so be depressed, sad, etc... 

 

In the other hand imagine another person seeing his future with hope and optimism. He will imagine good thing happen to him so when bad thing happen he will see them as local and as thing he can change. And so on will try harder.

So we can said that the ripples of optimism is:

• You get less depressed when bad event occurs
• You're more resilient.
• Your physical health is better (less stress).
• Event people like you better.
• And because you try harder, you achieve more.

We can see that the ripples of optimism isn't just feeling good and happiness.

Some Dyslexic people tend to be pessimism because they see theirs failures instead of focusing in their accomplishments. Most of the time it's because teachers, school, parents tend to put a focus on their learning disabilities and tell them every days about it. 

So we teach kids  to become children with bad self-esteem, we need to change that and to focus on good thing more than bad thing. Like the quote of James Baldwin said: ''Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.''

Let take an very simple example of every days : Let take a teacher or a parent, that want their children or student to stop yelling at each other. The teacher or Parent will simply yell at them to stop yelling. The children will see you yelling at them to stop yelling, is this a good example ? No, you want them to stop yelling and you're yelling at them to stop yelling. You must be an example to them and not ask kids to do things you don't enjoy or choose to do yourselves.

It's why Optimism and Good example let people and kids flourish more than pessimism and bad example. If you want people to do something you must do it yourself first and if you want to get good thing in the future you must think of them and stay OPTIMISM. 

 

AND FINALLY DYSLEXIA DOESN'T HAVE TO HOLD YOU BACK, SO ALWAYS KEEP IN YOU THIS OPTIMISM ATTITUDE THAT WILL HELP BE A BETTER PERSON.

Dyslexie Free Font For your Browsers

I fund many article talking about this free add-ons for your browser that help dyslexic people to read: Dyslexie. So I decided to try Dyslexie for one month.

Dyslexie is a font created especially for people that have reading difficulty, like Dyslexia. The founder of this font is Christian Boer (1981), a graphic designer graduate from the Utrecht Art Academy of Netherlands. He come with this idea to created a font for Dyslexic as a final thesis project for his diploma. Christian a dyslexic himself, set the challenge to himself to create a font that would make reading an easy task to Dyslexic people around the world. After finished his project he decided to allows people around to access to it.

Christian mentions and applies these points to his font:

• long ascenders and descenders,
• distinction between confusable letters, e.g. b and d, though a miniature capital Q for the lower case letter is surprising.
• Capital I, lowercase l and digit 1 are distinguished.
• rounded, g but not a.
• good letter-spacing;

After trying this free Dyslexie for 1 month, I fund in it advantages and disadvantaged, but the advantages take more place than the disadvantages.

 

First the advantages I fund are:

• Make articles and text more clearly readable, event a study from The University of Twente showed that people with Dyslexia made fewer reading errors when they use Dyslexie font compared to using standard font. 
• You can read more long article without giving up, because your don't find difficulty to read it.  
• The color of the letters blue is more relaxing for the eyes, and if you like to read for a long time on your computer it doesn't hurt your eyes.  
• The add-on is user friendly interface (easy to use, simply 4 bottoms on the right side of your browser ). 

Let now show the disadvantages, I see by using this font for 1 months:

• This add-on have the tendency to slow a little bit your Internet, because it's take more time to load a websites.  
• Some web-sites don't use it.  
• And finally on a black background this is difficult to see the blue letters because the add-on don't allows us to change the color of the text.

Sources:

• http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/extension/ 
• http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/ 
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLtYFcHx7ec

How can you write with your Dyslexia ? (Tips for Dyslexic Writers)

Many times people ask me:  ''How can you write so well and be dyslexic ?''

The thing they don't understand it's that dyslexic people can read and write just like you with some practice and tips.


So here I give some of my personal tips to helps every Dyslexic writers in the world to write better.


1. Practice,  Practice,  Practice, and Practice reading books and writing;  learn news words,  keep a notebook,  enjoy it and never feel down or discourage when you don't know how to write something just ask and learn.  


2. Plan your writing with Bullets points.


3. Take your time,  it's important to take your time.


4. Content is the most important thing in your writing not your spelling. 


5. Write in different colors,  this can really help you.  Like me I prefer write in  red and blue this is more easy for me to read later.



6. Do some research.


7. Write Note before you put it on paper or on the computer  (bullet point note).


8. Fill your bullets points (pc),  just add more informations.

9. Don't rush, the more you rush the more mistakes you will make (take an hours or more if you want to write something very good).


10. Use technology like Microsoft corrector,  spelling check,  autocorect, detected word,...


11. Use a dyslexic font, there are several available online to buy and download. Find the one that works well for you.  They are fab and finally for me,  at least,  it has stopped the B and the P getting muddled up.


12. Write short, simple sentences.  For me I realize than when a sentence it's too long I just get lost.   So I decided to write simple sentence using subject-verb-object.   And also to keep my paragraph short as well to don't get lost. 


13. Avoid any type of Abbreviation.  Me I just cannot keep track with this when I write and I forgot if WA means weight average or something else.


14. Give your work space, like using one more space after the period.  This will help you keep in track with your essay. 


15. Read at least 4 times each sentences to see if their is a mistakes in it (read it latter not just before you write it, and correct it.  And do it also later.).

  
16. FINALLY NEVER GIVE UP, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU WANT IT.

Stop this CAPTCHA verification, I'm not a robot, I'm just dyslexic.

This post is borne of my big frustration against CAPTCHA has dyslexic user. Once against society decided to lock us more out and make a new barrier that made it very more difficult to use web site.

Each time when you want to create an account or just write a comment on site, they want us to verify if we are human or robot using this indecipherable CAPTCHA image.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

You have to read the text, then enter the characters you see into a form. Then, and only then, can you complete the transaction, but if you're dyslexic like me and have difficulty to read event normal letter; this job become a difficult one. And some site have limitations time to try to do this and after you get block for all the days; it's happen to my often to be block after 5 times on forums.

CAPTCHAs are meant to prevent robots from spamming or overvoting or whatever it is that computer robots do in their spare time; but what if I'm not a robot but just Dyslexic. Some sites  using CAPTCHA have added an audio option, thinking this will probably makes them feel more good about helping dyslexic or blind people. But really did someone try to do it, those audio CAPTCHAs are far more difficult to do than the textural one, and some of them are just impossible!

I'm not a robot because I'm dyslexic and cannot read this CAPTCHA; Dyslexics are 'Humans'. But I doubt when they invented this they didn't think about it and didn't think this would be one of the more insulting & effective barrier to the dyslexic web user to be tell that because they cannot read this they must not be Humans. And event me sometime I give up on my registration on some web sites because of this, this make them lost many users like me.

Let take an example look at the picture belows, I'm dyslexic and I cannot for the life of god decipher the last image in the graphic, or just figure out whether the second is an U or a V or an I that is so near the first b, nor whether the fourth one is O or Q or an over sized lower case a.

And of course when you fail the first round they give you another one to do like this one bellows. The 3 one is a h or li or a 1i, I cannot figure this out and if you lose this round some site block your account for all the days till tomorrow and you get really frustrated, because they tell you that you failed the test so you're not human.

The problem with this of course, it that why they wanted to create these barriers this is simply unnecessary. This are supposed to be created to detect internet spammers, who use software bots to post advertisements, links to malicious software, or to attempt to launch denial of service attacks on web sites. Not to block dyslexic people from it or blind people.

There is other alternatives like calculus image; these are other tools that web designers can use to trap or trick the spam-bots, without creating barriers for their human users.

For me the difference between a human and a computer is simple, and should not be tested with these CAPTCHA. A computer is a robot or a machine and an human is someone that deserves to be treated with equal chances and some respect.

A petition to sign to stop these CAPTCHA TEST: http://webbism.com/2013/08/05/fighting-to-end-the-reign-of-the-captcha/

How Manga help me with my Dyslexia ?

First of all let me tell you What are manga?

This is stories told using the medium of comic, with a lots of pictures accompanying the text. However, this definition is a little to simplistic. A Manga is a medium of visual storytelling with graphic and pictures, that is originates from Japan. A Manga book is usually slightly thinner, that means that they require reader to start from the back of the book due to Japanese language being read from right to left.

A Manga can be in so many distinctive style, with large text, eyes. An anime is its a film do from a manga and that use the same artistic style.The most popular manga and anime in the world was Pokemon or Dragon Balls. 

Some people assume that manga is only for children because of the success of children's cartoon, like Digimon, and possibly due to the cuteness appearance of some manga characters. This is not the case, people of all ages can read manga, and it covers a wide variety of topics like: action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, suspense, detective, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce, among others. Likewise, some other people when they think of comic or manga only think of superhero or geek reading but this is far from the truth, and it's come to same thing has judging all books based on one genre, such as magical or horror.


Let me show you some example of Manga bellows: 

 

Remember Manga are read right to left (This Death Note and Welcome to The NHK)

Now let tell you more about How Manga help me with my Dyslexia ?

If you have read my previous post you all know that being dyslexic means you have problem at reading and with letter.  What is great about Manga is that there is pictures to help me will I'm reading, that really help me has a reader to keep in track with the plot event when I'm struggling with some words and letter. For me the fact that there is less text to read per page make this less hard for me to read with my Dyslexia and allow me to keep focus and also to finish these books much more faster that with normal novel. I remember myself starting reading novel and having so much problems with world, and how the text is little that I totally give up, but with the larger characters and the pictures in Manga this never happen. This help me boost my confidence has a reader, and make me fall in love with the interest of reading books against.

Dyslexic people like me struggle sometime to remember some details of the stories so like me they lost the focus and give up, but because of the pictures and designs in manga this rarely happen. Also the effort of reading some words make it so hard to understand their meaning at the same time. For me, I realize that I have so much better memory with picture than sounds and words. I also have some trouble remembering names but never faces, and place. This means for me book which use pictures are as well more accessible for me to read than the one that only have text.

Finally Mangas, are so much more fun and interesting to read than novel, because most of them are based on popular Anime or TV Shows. I would like to recommend every Dyslexic or People that hate reading to start reading Manga this can give you the like of reading again. 

Some Resources:

1. A Research about how Manga and Comic help Dyslexic: http://design-cu.jp/iasdr2013/papers/1259-1b.pdf
2.  Some free websites to start with Manga: http://www.mangareader.net/ http://beta.mangafox.com/ http://www.mangahere.com/ 
   

I swears I know how to write, but why it's so toughs by hands writing

I realize this society become so addicted to technologies event teachers ask now for our paper research to be print and write in computer. The new generation star to forget how to use a pen and how to write by hands writing or just have a so bad one. And I realized myself too, my hand writing is so bad. So I decided to change it, and practice each days to get a better one.

I fund this great resource online for adult like me that want to get a better hand writing: http://www.nala.ie/sites/default/files/publications/better_handwriting_for_adults.pdf. This resources is very helpful and in one weeks my hands writing star to get better (n.b: with each days 30 min practice). It's will take time but everything can be change and ameliorate if really want it.


This resource is very simple to use with clears exercise and 100% free,t it's only to you to work hard if you want some result and to ameliorated your hand writing like me.

Book Cover

Example of exercises from the Books

I will keep in tracks with my progress this 2 pictures bellows are take one week for each other the first one at the beginning the second after one week; I'm very happy to see some progress and amelioration in my hands writing.

Good Luck everyone, with this great resource !

Dyslexia a word that sound strange, what it's ?

Now let open The Larousse Dictionary and read the definition:

dys·lex·i·a 
disˈleksēə/ 
noun 

1. a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence. 

Yes this is a cleaver definition but this not so specifics and telling you what really Dyslexia is.

First let me tell you a little story.  

John is a young boy, he just started primary school todays. He was so happy to find news friends and to see his class. The second days in school the teacher start teaching alphabetic letter, they all have the homework to know the alphabet. The next days in class John was ask by the teacher to tell her the alphabetic letter he wasn't able and all the other student start to laugh, but John did study. The teacher ask to see his parents and tell them that John need to study and stop doing the clown in class, but John didn't want to be like that. 

John grow up past some class and still hates write, but also he hate reading aloud in class. He's never been good with letter, or reading, and even he seems to have trouble to recognizes the words on page. School's never been his favorite place anyway. He often gets lows self-esteem, laugh at, and discouraged thinking that he's not good enough or smart like the other kids. But John always past his class and he's good in sport and math. He found that he had talent with calculus and equations.

But what everyone doesn't have realize : John, his parents, and his teachers is that John has Dysliexia.

So now let me be more specific and tell you What's Dyslexia ?

A dyslexic person is a person with a learning disability with processing words or numbers. There are several type of learning disabilities; dyslexia is one of them and the term used when people have difficulty learning to read, even they are smart people and motivated to learn.

N.B: Been Dyslexic isn't a disease. It's a condition that you are born with, and it often runs in families. People with it are not slows, stupid or lazy. Most of them have average or above-average intelligence, and they work very hard to overcome this learning problems. 

Now let talk about the signs of Dyslexia so no more children like John didn't know and think they are stupid all their life.

• Learning to read - the child, despite having normal intelligence and receiving proper teaching and parental support, has difficulty learning to read.


• Milestones reached later - the child learns to crawl, walk, talk, throw or catch things, ride a bicycle later than the majority of other kids.


• Speech - apart from being slow to learn to speak, the child commonly mispronounces words, finds rhyming extremely challenging, and does not appear to distinguish between different word sounds.


• Slow at learning sets of data - at school the child takes much longer than the other children to learn the letters of the alphabet and how they are pronounced. There may also be problems remembering the days of the week, months of the year, colors, and some arithmetic tables.


• Coordination - the child may seem clumsier than his or her peers. Catching a ball may be difficult.


• Left and right - the child commonly gets "left" and "right" mixed up.


• Reversal - numbers and letters may be reversed without realizing.


• Spelling - may not follow a pattern of progression seen in other children. The child may learn how to spell a word today, and completely forget the next day. One word may be spelt in a variety of ways on the same page.


• Phonology problems - phonology refers to the speech sounds in a language. If a word has more than two syllables, phonology processing becomes much more difficult. For example, with the word "unfortunately" a person with dyslexia may be able to process the sounds "un" and "ly", but not the ones in between.


• Concentration span - children with dyslexia commonly find it hard to concentrate for long, compared to other children. Many adults with dyslexia say this is because after a few minutes of non-stop struggling, the child is mentally exhausted. A higher number of children with dyslexia also have ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), compared to the rest of the population.


• Sequencing ideas - when a person with dyslexia expresses a sequence of ideas, they may seem illogical for people without the condition.


• Autoimmune conditions - people with dyslexia are more likely to develop immunological problems, such as hay fever, asthma, eczema, and other allergies.

But really what are the cause of Dyslexia ?

There still no real cause of it, you're just born with it or not.

Did there is a treatment to cure Dyslexia ?

No there is no cure to dyslexia but with proper care and education a dyslexic children can do big study and become whatever he/she want doctor, scientific,....

Dyslexia Nigthmare: - How hard can it be? - Seriously! you can’t spell that ? It’s soooooo simple!

Dyslexia some have hear of it, other have read about it, and some people never see this word before. But does anyone really know what it's ? I do, but the majority doesn't.

Some people make fun it, call dyslexic people slow or stupid.

The schools that are supposed to be there to help them in all honesty don't do anything and said ''University doesn't teach us Teacher how to help you.'' That the sentence they usually use to put the job in the hands of someone else.

When I was in primary school I didn't get any help, basically I was struggling alone with this learning disabilities, and I was trying so hard to don't slow down other student by the time it's was taking me so much more time than other to build a small sentence.

I've struggled so much to keep up in class, to past my class and had been called stupid or slow by many students & also teacher, after a while I start to believe it.

Every time the teacher said to me to read out loud in the class, I heard giggles and people calling me stupid and such because I couldn’t pronounce the majority of the words.

You know what this leads to? Low self-esteem…. I stopped raising my hand during class, I avoided working in groups, it went so far that I actually stopped speaking in class completely.

So I become the quiet one in the corner of the classroom in the last seat of the class and I barely ever said any word for approximately all my primary school. And when I did open my mouth to talk I was forced to do so by a teacher.

Finally in high-school a nice teacher see what was the problem, and call my parents to tell them that I was probably dyslexic and I need to past some test. And after the test I finally know that I was not stupid or slow and that all these people saying ''how hard can it be? or you just have to practice and you'll be better or how stupid you're ? or seriously! you can’t spell that ? It’s soooooo simple!”.

Didn't know anything because no it isn't so easy to a Dyslexic Person !


It's not good and it hurts so much when you don't know what you have, and constantly you're reminded that you are not as good as everyone else ? You see with your own eyes that everyone around you can do it,  but you didn't and you ask yourself : why can’t I ? And after you start to feel left out, alienated,  feeling that you don’t belong or deserve to be there or you just want to give up…

I think it's one form of bullying to call a dyslectic stupid or slow… it’s a disability that the person can’t do anything about…

And this won't go away with time !

So stop and think before you question someone's spelling or grammar!

There could be many reasons why it's this bad ?

* The language the person is writing in might not be their first language, critic is alright when it comes to fan-fiction or any other from of writing, but be nice! There is no need to bash on someone and degrade them for trying ! Help them improve until next time !

* The person might have dyslexia, it appears in different degrees (mine is classed as a quite severe one), if the person has made it clear that they are in fact dyslectic then you should not point out their mistakes because there is no point ! They already know that there are mistakes but they can’t be improved with “a little more practice”.

* The person might have been born with a condition making it hard to learn any languages and speaking over all.

This advices was giving to you by a dyslexic person so please next time try to take this into consideration before you comment on someone’s spelling and/or grammar or just before you call someone stupid or slow. It’s just basic respect, if you want to point out at someone else flaws then don’t just yell it in a form of insult, it’s just an unnecessary action which can hurt. And before judging others people flaws try to looks at yourself before !

If you had read all this, I would like to thank you for your time and I hope I've made a point.

A dyslexic person.