HBO offers a great Documentary on it. My daughter and I watched it and it was very moving for her as she does have it and did struggle in school.

http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/jou...ynopsis.html#/

This documentary is also based on a long study of dyslexia done by Yale. My daughter was involved in that study for many years. She began the study around age 6 and it helped me to understand where her challenges were, and how to help her.

Many people who struggle with it struggle with feeling they are not smart enough or good enough and often can get made fun of by their peers. My daughter dealt with that for years, sigh, peers can be mean. But, the truth is, often the person who has it can have a very high IQ, and in the study they noticed they tend to be more driven in spite of how they are challenged with learning.

As I mentioned, it has nothing to do with intelligence, the brain uses different areas when learning, which takes longer, but can actually have advantages. Because we now understand it better, students are often given more time to take tests because of how it can take the dyslexic brain a bit longer to read a question, understand the meaning of the question and then come up with an answer. That was a challenge when my daughter was in school because of how her peers made fun of her, she tended to not want special treatment or stand out by having more time than others when test taking.

Because my daughter was a part of that study, I was lucky because I had the paperwork to present to teachers and the school so she would not be punished for mis-spelling and the teachers would encourage her to be ok if she needed extra help or time. I was lucky because the paperwork I had to share with teachers discussed her challenged areas because not all dyslexics are the same. While math was a challenge for her, she grew to love it, and oddly enough she works in a job where she is always using numbers and math and she has designed programs to make certain calculations easier. Also, in spite of the challenge dyslexics have with reading, my daughter grew to love reading and reads a lot.

Our technology is very helpful to dyslexics because of spell check etc. now.

OE