{"id":16040,"date":"2018-01-17T17:38:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T16:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dide.org\/surviving-dyslexia-and-not-dying-in-the-attempt\/"},"modified":"2018-01-17T17:38:17","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T16:38:17","slug":"surviving-dyslexia-and-not-dying-in-the-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dide.org\/en\/surviving-dyslexia-and-not-dying-in-the-attempt\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving dyslexia and not dying in the attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nuria Ros, PhD in psychology, tells us in the first person about her educational stage; the undiagnosed dyslexia marked her passage through school and life. Fortunately, and after an ordeal, with great tenacity she managed to overcome adversity. A true resilient. <\/h2>\n
“It’s 9 o’clock, it’s time to enter the classroom. I try to go unnoticed in the middle of the line. Inevitably I am already inside sitting at the assigned desk. Voices, laughter, throwing balls of paper… The teacher calls for order from her platform. Silence, and the military chanting of the roll call begins. State of tension, and like every day when my last name is reached, already automatically and unconsciously, I get lost under the chair looking for the fallen rubber and barely a thread of voice emerges with a ‘present’, with my face as red as a beet. Dry throat, thick saliva and consistent problems swallowing. The torture is only in its preamble. The cast was long and the passage of time until leaving school even longer. <\/p>\n
Homework review, explanation of the \u201cletters\u201d, of the \u201cnumbers\u201d, reading\u2026 abundant reproaches and punishments for what concerned me. Then I was six years old and it was understood that the basic foundations of reading and writing<\/strong> and calculation, had been acquired at home. In fact, my family tried hard to do it, but \u201cthrew in the towel\u201d, concluding that unlike the \u201cbrilliant older brother that I got in the distribution\u201d, \u201cthe rare, clumsy and slow-witted\u201d that I was, would have to be kept in school until she was twelve years old so that she could obtain the minimum title of the moment and then put her to work as an apprentice in a factory. A promising future. <\/p>\n
I spoke little and listened a lot. I had as good auditory memory as bad visual memory. I remembered perfectly, unless I was hidden in my world of fantasy and imagination and had not paid attention. It is true that they brought me back to reality quickly with some taxative system, whether it was a shout with an insult or directly a slap. <\/p>\n
The teacher of that first year, with a high probability close to retirement, was a devoted follower of the pedagogical method of \u201cspare the rod and spoil the child\u201d and practiced it diligently. Unfortunately, the progressive geometric increase of stabs and derogatory qualifiers did not make the vowels easier for me, nor the damn consonants, and let’s not even talk about joining them in syllables and reading them. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
I felt vertigo and literally panic when they forced me to go up to the pulpit to \u201cread\u201d before the class. I swear I tried to identify that gibberish called letters, but I couldn’t. I stammered, tried to guess\u2026 and already watched out of the corner of my eye the reaction of the teacher and the laughter of the esteemed peers. <\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the most recurring phrases was “look what is written\u201d, and I looked but it was as if I didn’t see. Another experience that also gratified my soul was copying on the blackboard. It could have been said that my writing was Chinese, and the kind teacher only dedicated flattering epithets to me, the mildest being \u201cclumsy and stubborn\u201d. <\/p>\n
For the other children everything was or seemed simple, including learning the days of the week, the alphabet, the months of the year, the series of concepts\u2026 for me it was an enormous mystery. In that historical period it was “well considered\u201d to call a child who did not learn to read and write, a donkey and mentally retarded. <\/p>\n
I couldn’t manage to hit the left and right either, nor make the numbers with \u201cthe bellies\u201d in the required direction. Other usual compliments were \u201cdisaster, dirty, messy\u201d. I put effort in although I couldn’t organize myself. They made me repeat first grade, although nobody had good expectations about me. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
I felt a lot of shame, withdrawal, I was not like the others. Nobody believed in my possibilities and neither did I. I was not popular nor did I have little friends, apparently it was not convenient for the others to get together with me lest stupidity be contagious. <\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I had had disruptive, impulsive, explosive behaviors, feeling of impotence and despair, conveniently reprimanded both at school and at home. They said I was lazy, undisciplined, rude, disobedient\u2026 <\/p>\n
Without knowing how to explain it, I was aware of being in the most absolute solitude. I proposed secretly and stubbornly to learn the letters as it were, they were the key. It occurred to me to trace each one of them, in the same way with the numbers, in the mud of the street, first with my eyes closed, forming them and feeling them with my fingers and then looking at them. I started with mud, then with flour and plasticine, and I even did it with my mother’s only and greasy lipstick on a mirror. This last thing cost me a few blows. But I made it. <\/p>\n
The light came on for me, the aha!, to be able to identify grapheme with phoneme. I could finally read. I overcame the repetition of first grade and in second grade I found a great prize, D\u00f1a. Araceli, and of her I do say the name, \u201cthe altar of heaven\u201d. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
She was the teacher who taught me and helped me to advance, she transmitted confidence to me and of course she thought that I was an intelligent girl with options, although diverse. I loved going to school and improving myself. Then nobody spoke of dyslexia<\/strong>. This teacher was my fortune and my early detection<\/a>. <\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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