S1E17: Uncovering the Hidden Realities of Dyslexia - Exploring the Different Types

Unravel the enigma of dyslexia as we expose the challenges, triumphs, and unique brilliance of individuals with dyslexia, igniting understanding and acceptance in a world that often overlooks their greatness.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Recognizing dyslexia symptoms and overcoming challenges.
• Understanding the different types of dyslexia for better support.
• Hearing personal experiences with dyslexia for relatable insights.
• Uncovering the impact of dyslexia on daily life and relationships.
• Embracing the importance of self-reflection and seeking support.

Discover Different Types of Dyslexia
Dyslexia is not a one-size-fits-all condition; it takes different forms and affects individuals in unique ways. People may struggle with differing aspects of reading and writing, with conditions like phonological dyslexia and double deficit dyslexia presenting specific trials. Education about these diverse forms helps create targeted support systems for individuals living with dyslexia.

Transcript:

00:00:01
Welcome to word blindness. Dyslexia exposed. I am Juliet Hahn. I'm here with my co host, Brent Sopel. And we are here to change the narrative.

00:00:12
We want to educate, but we also want you guys to understand what it is like to be Dyslexic and how things can change. So join us every week for word blindness. Dyslexia exposed. Welcome back to word blindness. This is Juliet Hahn, and I am here with Brent Sopel, live from Canada.

00:00:31
How are you? Look at my jersey over my shoulder, sitting in my mom's office. I love it. Yeah, I can see you're in your mom's office. I can see the me.

00:00:43
Oh, I love that. That's a good mom. Okay, so, of course, we talk about this all the time that we kind of talk before we record, just to see what we want to talk about. And there's so many different things, and sometimes it's really hard to break down what we really want to focus on today, however, we kind of came up with because of different Dyslexia spectrums. Right.

00:01:07
We talked about that. There's major spectrums there's a little less all the people that we talk to, all the people in our families, kind of it's interesting to dive in. And so we're going to dive a little deeper into Dyslexia, and we did a little research, and you guys are going to get to hear me read a little, which could be very frightening when I talk to anybody outside the Dyslexia world. Oh, I just thought it was flipping your B's and D's. So it's going to take a step deeper.

00:01:33
And what are the correlations that kind of run with different things in Dyslexia? People are like, oh, really? I didn't know that. I didn't know. So trying to broaden their eyes in a little bit more of what comes along with Dyslexia.

00:01:48
Yes, there's severities, the most severe Dyslexics will never read day in their life. Yeah, and everyone be patient with my slower reading, but I have read this a couple of times, so I was not as like, when I first read it. I was like, wait a second, I can't read that on camera. No one's going to understand. So I'm going to do Dyslexia symptoms include and we can kind of break it down and then let's go through kind of the ones that we didn't even realize, like double deficit Dyslexia, triple D lead us off.

00:02:20
Yeah, exactly. Okay. So Dyslexic symptoms include difficulty learning new words, delayed speech development, which is very interesting because that is a big one. But I didn't have that. My son didn't have that.

00:02:33
He spoke really early. And so it's interesting. Again, this is the spectrums. Right. Difficulty with rhyming words.

00:02:40
Again, he didn't have any of that. But you would talk about you can never do your nursery rhymes. My nephew. I got to make my own words up now. Patty cake.

00:02:48
Patty cake. I've had to make up my own words. Completely confusing letters from each other, which is I do that all the time. Which is annoying. Reading below expected level for age, grammar issues, problems with spelling, poor sentence structure, lack of phenomic awareness.

00:03:11
I think I said that, right? Avoidance of reading out loud. Difficulty coping. No, sorry. Difficulty copying words from a secondary source.

00:03:21
We have actually made jokes about that because that is torture. But think about in school. Oh, my gosh. When it's on the board and they want you to take notes, that is almost impossible for a lot of Dyslexics. I mean, I go back and I think, oh, that's probably half the reason why I sucked so bad, because I couldn't take the notes.

00:03:40
Now, with IEPs, you can get that in your IEP. Like, the teacher has to give the notes that were on the board. I mean, oh, my God, I still get sweaty when I think of that. If you take two pieces of paper, somebody hands me a business card, I can't take the email on that business card and put it on my computer. I'll get it wrong ten out of ten times.

00:04:00
Ten times. Fucking annoying.

00:04:05
I've had arguments with people non Dyslexic. If you had two piece of paper side by side, just write on the paper next to it what that says. We fucking can't. What part of and this is what the embarrassment part? It looks so easy for you guys.

00:04:26
You just can't one word to there no it takes a lot to do that. And that is think about the business world. Think about anything to do that. I mean, as you said, there's so many times where I'll copy and then I copied it wrong, and then I get it wrong. And I know you don't use it as much, but I think you do with this.

00:04:45
That's why I will copy things off the computer. I'll do that. Copy, paste and put it in there. Because my friend 100% right. I can't do that.

00:04:52
That is something that takes a lot of time. And actually, when you just said it, I started getting like I could feel my heart starting to really speed up. And we're talking about these things because it is mentally exhausting. And I think we've talked about this, and there's so much embarrassment that comes along with this that should be simple and in our head, why can't we? Why the fuck can't we?

00:05:20
What's wrong with us? Right? And then you're having somebody to tell you you can do it, and you can do it or try harder. And I'm laughing because obviously I've gotten to a point where I'm fine with it, right? I know.

00:05:35
But yeah, put yourself in that kid's shoes where the teacher is like, just do it. Focus. Oh, my God. If a teacher said to me again, and you guys have heard our story, so I'm not going to go into it, but just focus. If you paid attention.

00:05:48
I am paying so much attention that actually my eyes hurt because I'm paying such attention, I literally can't do it. And again, that's why we're kind of taking this step a little bit deeper for some more understanding. Because if you tell a normal person that you'd get the email wrong ten out of ten times, and a lot of times I don't know I got it wrong until I get to send back the email, this email is sender cannot be found.

00:06:25
Again, it's not only frustrating, but it's also time wasting. And when you have a lot of things that you're trying to do, it gets even more frustrated because you're like trying to do that extra with the extra brain effort. Yeah, all of that you just said, it made me actually frustrated and angry. So now what I'm going to do is highlight the names and then instead of reading the paragraph, because that's not going to be fun, I'm going to read the bullets. Again, way easier for me to do than read a paragraph.

00:06:57
I can't follow it, and it's not going to be pretty to add on that before you we work in bulletproof here. Bang, bang. That's how we have to read. So you want to send a long email with your punctuation? Take your punctuation, fuck yourself.

00:07:15
Just bullet points. That's all we can process. No, totally. And saying that if you are in the workforce, if you're doing something, if you're listening to this, you're not Dyslexic, but you're in the workforce and you're like, maybe that person's dyslexic. Bullet points are really the way we can read emails.

00:07:31
I mean, I have like, five emails from a group that it's literally not even paragraphs. And every time I open it, I'm like, oh, my God. And I literally have shut it 15 times the amount of concentration. I actually have to copy it and kind of space it for myself. I have to print it out and then space it for myself.

00:07:51
And again, it's so annoying. It should be something that is able to do. I have to print out most of my things I can't read off the computer. Are you the same way? You know what, it's really funny that you said that.

00:08:04
I love that you just said that because I tried to print this and my ink was out, and I had technical difficulties before my ink was out. I've gotten way better. In the beginning when computers read, I had to print everything and I had to have a second paper. But then I was like, oh my God. I tried to do, like, the environmental thing, like, no, I can have it on here.

00:08:22
But if I really need to comprehend and I really need to focus on something and completely understand it and I'm not grasping it, I have to print it out, and I have to have it on a piece of paper, and I need to read it? Yeah, totally. I got piles of paper. Everybody's at the rink, everything's got to be it's either got to be paper can I read a short bulletproof? A couple of things, but with any length computer, no way.

00:08:47
No, I have to print it. So a lot of my emails I will print out. And I'll have a stack because it's also like I can read it, then be like, I process it. When it's on the computer, it's different. And that brings us also, as I'm going to read these, we can tell kind of some stories because one of my clients, when she has to put this overlay over her and it highlights letters and I never saw this, and I was like, oh, wait, this is interesting.

00:09:09
Okay. So phonological. Dyslexia. I think I said that, right? Again, I could not say that.

00:09:15
Sounds close. So difficulty learning sounds made by letters, letter combinations. Oh, my God. E, beep, whatever the fuck. Oh, my God, I want to lose my mind right now.

00:09:30
This might tweak Brent a little bit as we go. Can you just sound it out? No, I can't sound thing out. Well, and we talked about this. My mom and I the other day laughed because there'd be times where I'd be like, mom, can you just spell that?

00:09:42
And she would start sounding and I'd be like, Mom, I can't do that. Or look, back in the day when we didn't have computers. Look it up in the encyclopedia. I don't know how to spell it. I can't look it up in the encyclopedia.

00:09:50
This is obviously before we knew that I was Dyslexic and oh, my God, it's so frustrating. So when your mom would start sounding it out, did it send you off? Yes, I think I would just be like, Just tell me. And it was always like, kind of again, I grew up with five. There was always chaos.

00:10:15
I probably was yelling from the other room. She was more of a calm person. But I think there was times where I was like and I didn't curse back then because my mom didn't curse. So, no, I did not curse. But I'm sure I was like, can you just say it?

00:10:28
I'm trying to do something fast. Can you just say it? Yeah. It didn't set me off, but not where I would freak out. I think I would just yell at her and then she would kind of laugh and be like, fine.

00:10:38
That little bit yelling was that frustration? Oh, 100% that I can't do it. It was just like in the Correlation, we talk about dumb and stupid. Oh, you're smart now I want to punch him in the face. Because it's the opposite.

00:10:56
Right? Instead of saying, well, I don't know how you got there. That's a great job. Things like that sets me off because it takes me back to all those years where I'm sitting there trying my fucking hardest and felt like an idiot because I can't do it. Yeah, what does that fucking no.

00:11:17
And if you think about it from a parent's point of view, raising kids, I think we've talked about how the time when Monk Army, I was like, Come on, just do it. And then all of a sudden, I was like, wait a second, I got to pull myself back. That's so annoying. I'm doing what my mom used to do to me. And again, my mom was my biggest advocate, so she used to help a lot.

00:11:31
But there would be times where she's like, well, just try. Let's do this. Because there is that fine line, right? Because you could have a kid that's not Dyslexic or struggling, that just wants you to do it, right? They just want you to do it because they don't want to do it.

00:11:44
And they are maybe lazy when you know the person is Dyslexic, it is not that they're being lazy. It is that they literally cannot do it. It takes so much out of them. So it is a fine line as a parent, if you're listening to this, if you're like, oh, shoot. I was trying to encourage them.

00:12:02
I wanted them to know that they could do it. Yeah. And that's kind of why we were going a little bit step deeper, a little bit more understanding what it's entied with. And that doesn't always happen. A lot of times you've got the Dyslexic and then the other kid is brilliant, off the charts, easy.

00:12:20
Why can Sam do that? So it's just trying to bring that correlation, is what that all means, and the feelings that come with it and anxiety and the trauma that comes with it. And I'm going to say this because I'm going to say it early, and you know what I'm going to say. Dyslexia is not about your IQ. It is about a learning style.

00:12:39
So, yes, if you have other family members in your family that are not they usually are good in school, but they have high intelligence. So Dyslexics are usually very high IQ, even if it's not tested right. But it's just a learning style. It's nothing to do with your ability and also your intelligence. It seems right that you are not, and that's what you're telling yourself, because you're like, Why can't I do this?

00:13:06
Especially if you're not diagnosed and you're going through school. Absolutely. I think I saw 60% of self made millionaires are Dyslexic. Yeah. It's something crazy.

00:13:17
We talked about Big Picture the other day when I was driving. What that meant is I never understood really how different my brain was until I really got into coaching the last year. And people don't see what we see. No. Right.

00:13:37
It's fascinating, but then frustrating if you don't have that group that also does. That's why we're doing this podcast, is getting together with more like minded people. All the people that we've had on the podcast. It's really cool. And again, we talked about that in the recap that we did, I think two weeks ago of November.

00:13:56
Okay, so here's the other one. Difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words. I don't know. Not going to be able to sound it out. I've tried to Google words before, and there's not even a word that comes up in the fucking English dick.

00:14:08
Sherry. That's how far off I was. Yeah. Difficulty spelling. That just brings us up there.

00:14:13
Spelling the same word different ways on the same page. Absolutely. 100%. Slow reading. Avoid reading activities.

00:14:22
Difficulty recognizing familiar words in new context. So difficulty recognizing familiar words in new context. Okay, so that's interesting because, again, you might know the word, but if it's in something that you're not familiar with, like how I'm in the science world now. There could be words that I know, but I literally get to them. I'm like, I don't know that.

00:14:46
And then I'm like, oh, wait, I do it's just in, like, a bunch of science words around. Is that a noun or a verb? I don't fucking know. Or an adjective? I do know.

00:14:57
Adverbs. Aren't they the action words? Because there's only one there. That's an adjective. There's only one.

00:15:05
Why? I think I actually just said that wrong, which is hilarious. So all my English teacher friends so sorry, I got to know it. You didn't spell there right. I'm like, there's only one fucking there.

00:15:19
Leave me alone. Okay, so that's phonological. Dyslexia. Okay, another one. Rapid naming dyslexia.

00:15:27
Okay, now, when I was reading these, I was like, I couldn't pinpoint exactly like, I think Phonological. Dyslexia. Seems like that's exactly me. But then there's a couple of other bullets in these other ones that I was like, oh, I guess I'm similar to that. But again, there's spectrums.

00:15:42
Just like with anything, there's spectrums. So rapid naming dyslexia. I'm going to read the first sentence here because I thought this was interesting, and I don't think I had that. But then there were some of the bullets. But people who struggle with the ability to rapidly name colors, numbers, and letters when presented with them may have rapid naming dyslexia.

00:16:04
Okay. So it's like linked with reading speed and processing. I totally have that. But then I was like, some of these bullets don't. So difficulty retrieving words.

00:16:15
We talked about that. There's definitely times in my life I have been and I remember I feel like as I've gotten older and do what I'm doing, I've strengthened that part, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. We talked about it. We go to write a sentence.

00:16:34
I can't write anything, but you can't spell that word. So now we got to go back and try and reword that sentence to make something else fit all the time. And this is one of the things that was interesting. And if you guys I think I've talked about this on the podcast when Montgomery was a baby and how he wanted me to read everything to him. And I do believe that was a little bit why he was an early talk.

00:17:00
I mean, he talked so early, and literally, his vocabulary was crazy. People are like, did he just say that? I'm like, yeah, but he was so fascinated with words, and I really think as he was trying to process and couldn't, that was like he early on recognized that there was something different in the way his brain was. But again, that was a defense mechanism as a baby. And I mean, this is why he's so freaking smart.

00:17:27
He already realized. And so he built that vocabulary up kind of before. It got to be a point. If he didn't have me as a mom and I literally read everything, even though it was painful, would it have been different? It could have, right?

00:17:42
We could go down all that parent so fast. That's what we talk about. We always talk about your favorite review share. And we talk about how much we struggle. Share those people, because you never know that was a defense mechanism as a baby.

00:17:57
He was just born, came in this world, and then he knew he was different, and he was building that vocab. So by nine months, when he was pointing, he would scream, if I didn't read it, I'd be like, God, you're so bossy. I wonder where gets that from. Fuck. But that's how early we struggle.

00:18:14
I always say when we grab that first book is when we start struggling. That's why we struggle harder, longer and deeper than anybody. And that is prime example of him building up a defense mechanism at nine months. Crazy. So frequently substituting words or leaving words out altogether.

00:18:37
Now, I know you do this, and I feel like there was again, times in my life where I definitely did that. But if I'm reading, yes, 100% text messages, I'm like, I got to return text. What the fuck does this mean? Oh, yeah, I forgot. I forgot the next two sentences, right?

00:18:55
If I'm texting or typing, not as much as when I'm verbalizing, but we talked about songs, my kids will always laugh at me. They're like, that's not what it says. I'm like, oh, I always had my own no clue. My words are not even the same hemisphere as the right words of that song I'm going to jam out, and you're going to like it. Exactly.

00:19:13
Slow to respond orally. I have to think more about that because I don't I mean, I guess that's like a whole processing and it depends on the it's funny. A lot of times if somebody's like, okay, listen to words of the song, I got to turn my head, stare at the ground, and focus so hard to know what those words are. And it kind of goes I have a hard time understanding anybody with an accent. So I got focused so hard that I'm getting it because it's those little things.

00:19:49
Yeah. So slower to complete reading or writing assignments. I mean, I feel like that's with all of Dyslexia. I don't know why that's like just in this one. Yeah, this is actually funny and you're going to die laughing.

00:20:05
Make up nonsense words in place of real words. So rapid naming Dyslexia could be a little stronger for you. 100%. Every team that I coach, I don't know one kid's name and I've got all Disneyland cell phone, toothpick, face off. Shish Kebab and Tommy two tone and Fred McGregor.

00:20:30
What? I cannot do names. No. Harem hockey. Their last name is in front of me.

00:20:36
I got no zero. No. Yeah. And then using gestures in place of words, I feel like this is not me. What do you mean?

00:20:48
I'm Italian now I talk with my hands. You know that word? Yeah. Okay, so now double deficit Dyslexia.

00:21:00
Okay, so I'm going to read a little bit of the sentence here. A person with double deficit Dyslexia struggles with two aspects of reading. These two aspects often include naming speed and identifying the sounds and the words. This type of Dyslexia is combination of rapid naming and phonological and is not uncommon. However, it is largely regarded as the most severe type of Dyslexia.

00:21:30
Symptoms of double deficit Dyslexia include poor naming speed rate when asked to recall words weak. No, I can't say that word. Phonological. There we go. Awareness.

00:21:45
So I never heard of it. Brought to that, but I guess you got all of it. But again, you can have levels of it. But this is probably if someone as you said, if you're severely, severely Dyslexic, you're not going to really be able to read. I mean you probably can read a little but not and this is why we talked about the story about board games.

00:22:09
Somebody says, let's play a board game. Oh my God. The anxiety because it's not what you just went through. It's naming correlations, jeopardy or Will of Fortune anxiety. If it's not goldfish, I'm out.

00:22:27
I get no idea. I can't do it. The anxiety just that comes along with it to sitting there and trying to find the correlation that work. Oh my God. But then also think about test, like tests.

00:22:41
That's why it's like how many times and I know I would know the answers, right? I'd be like, okay, I got this. I maybe studied at home and then I would go and my brain would go blank and I would fail the test, like fail it so bad that they were like, you didn't really put in any effort in. And I'd be like, oh my God, I had it at home, I knew everything. But my brain literally shut off because they changed a little bit of the way they delivered the test and I didn't get it.

00:23:13
We're focusing so hard on that little word or that little sentence that it just explodes where we have nothing.

00:23:27
The self esteem explodes with it too. What's wrong? Why can't I? Yeah, this is interesting.

00:23:35
This paragraph is too big, so I'm not going to read that, but I'm going to read the first. So surface dyslexia. An individual who can sound out new words with ease but fails to recognize familiar words by sight may have surface dyslexia. So in this case, experts believe the brain fails to recognize what a word looks like in order to process the word quickly.

00:24:03
So this type of dyslexia affects words that need to be memorized because they don't sound how they are spelled. Oh, my God, they are there. Who? Which, what fucking English language then? Or then I speak Canadian.

00:24:22
A.

00:24:26
So this is difficulty with whole word recognition, slow to read, avoidance of reading activities, difficulty with spelling, difficulty in reading words that don't sound the way they are spelled. I can't do that at all. Difficulty reading new words by sight. So again, all of these little things, I feel like we have all of them, but one is maybe like rapid naming. I don't know that I struggle as much in that as you do.

00:24:55
And so it's interesting. Then there's visual dyslexia.

00:25:02
Okay, so this is interesting. And this I feel like I don't have and I think we've talked about this. Okay, so when a child struggles to remember what they saw on the page, they may have visual. This aspect affects visual processing. No, I have a little bit of that, but in the bullets, it's not as much.

00:25:19
Let me read the last thing. Visual dyslexia will affect the ability to learn how to spell or form letters because both require the brain to remember the correct letter sequence or shape impairing the learning process. So text appears blurry or going in and out of focus. I don't know that I have that as much. Maybe when I was younger.

00:25:42
Like difficulty tracking across the lines. I do like, if it's a big paragraph, I can't follow it. Difficulty keeping place in text. Can't do that. That's why reading out loud if I'm not with my finger.

00:25:55
So I do have and but you know what's interesting? And if you think about when your daughter was like, you know how they would put like, a card to cover their so it was a sentence that drove Montgomery crazy. He didn't like that he needed to use his finger because when it was that way, he didn't like just looking at it that way. So that's like an interesting process because that only blocks the words below. It still doesn't keep it locked in on each word.

00:26:25
What your finger would compared to that paper. Yeah. So I have to take this back. So I definitely because then text appears double or alternating between single and double. But headaches or eye strain associated with reading.

00:26:40
I get the worst headache and my eyes want to pop out of my head. It goes back to when it's the most severe Dyslexics I'll never read. Because when we read out loud, words will appear that aren't there. As you said, letters start blending in. So that's why reading out loud and most severe Dyslexics, the letters are always moving.

00:27:03
Yeah, right. And that's one of my nephews who needed the color. And I would say he was extremely strong in math. He needed everything to have a color overlay because that's how he read. That distracted myself and Montgomery.

00:27:20
But he would see the letters jumping at him, and so the colors stopped that jumping. Which is interesting because when my sister and I, when our kids were diagnosed and hers was first, montgomery was with Dysgraphia, so it was different. I was like, oh, yeah, we're in the process of it. I don't know, because this is again, when he was memorizing everything, I was like, no, he's reading fine. No, he wasn't.

00:27:44
He was memorizing everything to like crazy hers. Like, we tried the things and Montgomery was like, what is that? That's driving me nuts. I'm like, do things move on the page? And he didn't have that.

00:27:53
Did you said that that happened to you? Right? I didn't do the color overlay. Yeah. When I'm in front of class, when I was reading out loud, blending, no idea.

00:28:07
I remember getting laughed at. I'm saying words that even are on the page. What are you talking about? What are you reading? And then I snap and here we go.

00:28:18
Right? No, totally. Now there was another, and I'm going to look this up because I know I sent it to you, so that's interesting. But then there was like others I started researching and there was like twelve different forms of Dyslexia. And I was like, what?

00:28:32
So again, this is from one source that had that. But I've heard those kind of dyslexias broken down. Again, we kind of dove in about when Dyslexia was founded. And that's where word blindness comes. Again, I was saying this is late 18 hundreds, 1877.

00:28:55
And his name is I'm not even going to say it. He was a German physician. I'll just leave it at that. And he was the first one. And then the person that changed it to Dyslexia, which don't think you were Dyslexic, another German, but he was an ophthalmologist and he in 1887.

00:29:14
But I think when we broke it down, this means trouble and lexia means reading, or vice versa. Something like that. We're talking how many years ago? And we're still talking about having zero fucking clue what's going on. Yeah.

00:29:30
Okay. Where was the thing that I sent you because it had the left and rights, which I was fascinated that it was broken out like that. I'm going to pull that up. Yeah, where was that? And I talk about this all the time.

00:29:47
Yeah. So I want. You to tell your stories about also, do you have it? No, I'm going to look it up. I use left and right all the time.

00:29:57
I come across it all the time. Kids don't know adults Dyslexics. A lot of us don't know our left from our rights. I've got kids that play hockey. We got to color the thumb on their glove a color so that's his left thumb.

00:30:15
They know where to go. They know what the left side is. People look at me like, you got ten heads when I say these things. I've got kids that are 16, 1718, don't know their lefts and rights. I still don't.

00:30:28
And I'm turning 50. I have to literally go like this and make an L. And it is maddening. Yeah. And again, we're having these conversations because look how many correlations are with these little things that you'd never understand.

00:30:44
But the frustration, the anxiety builds up with that. I've got tying shoes. It's fine motor skills. I've got kids that are 1214. Can't do it.

00:31:01
So parents are like, okay, what do we do at hockey? How do we can't come in there. They can't go and tie their kid's shoe. Right. At that age.

00:31:09
Yeah. But it's our fine motor skills that being used to we used to call Monk, I made lead hands, and now I know it's his Dysgraphia, but he literally would come to hug or kiss. And when Truman was a baby, he would literally come in and it would be like slow moving. All of a sudden, it'd be like, boom. And it'd be he we called him lead hands because he would also knock everything over.

00:31:36
But that is all little symptoms that you don't think about. Right? Bowl in the to. Like, my parents could not bring me into nice places when I was little because I was, oh, let me touch this, and things would all break. It was like, no, you cannot keep your hands to your side.

00:31:51
Juliet. Especially again, it's we can't help, you know, the Dysgraphia side of, you know, it looks like chicken scratch. Can't read it. We cannot make it better. We can practice for a million hours.

00:32:09
It doesn't get better. It's how our brain is wired. So I had a parent I'm going to put them in writing class after school.

00:32:20
It's not getting better. It can't get better. It's the way your brain is wired. Yeah. So here's that this was the other list, because it's not all of it, but we talk about the left and right.

00:32:33
I've talked about it. And I want everyone to think of these little things on the sports field, right. I always went the opposite way. I would always get yelled at, especially if it's like, no, go left. No go right.

00:32:45
My dad always coined him, and I loved it. He'd be like, Your other left. And I would go my other left, especially when I was learning to drive right? And I still my kids. Again, we can joke about it because I'm okay with it, but I think when someone's not okay with it, you don't joke about it.

00:32:58
But even as an adult, if I'm driving and if I didn't have the ways up, thank God for that, because I wouldn't know where I was going at all. And left and right, I mean, I can't think quickly. I have to stop and think. And doing yoga now, since spring, there's some days where I'm literally actually, on Friday, I was facing and I had my eyes closed and I opened my eyes, I was facing this gentleman. He's like, you're supposed to be the other way.

00:33:29
Yes. Sorry. So sorry. And I had my eyes closed and he was like, Chuckling. Because literally everyone was facing I have to think so hard on that, that it is frustrating and it could be embarrassing, but it is what it is.

00:33:42
Right? But that's the word. You're always lazy. The exhaustion it takes left or right to sit there and go into your brain trying to figure are always the hardest worker. Yes, you guys can't see it.

00:34:02
But the energy that we've got to output every single day, I had one moment go, Brent, why does my Dyslexic? One, two kids are in college excuse me, in high school, one's going to bed at 09:00, the other one's going to bed, the one in the morning. I'm like, Dyslexic is going to bed at nine because he's exhausted. And it's that mental exhaustion that is 100 times worse than physical. It really is.

00:34:27
And I want to bring it back also again to different things because we talked about in last I think it was actually the episode that went out last week, but we had recorded it back in September and it was kind of like and there was a clip out on social media that I was like, if Timmy is not reading, he's not a summer birthday. Right? So there's like, little things to think about. But these are also little things to think about. Because I know when Montgomery was a baby, again, the pinching, the grasping people were like, do you sit around and do puzzles?

00:34:56
And I was like, no, we're out running. I'm not sitting around coloring and doing puzzles. I physically do not want to do that. Right? No.

00:35:03
So we didn't do that except when he was going to eat. It's really interesting, now that I think about it. My sister and I talk about this all the time. He didn't use his two fingers. He used his entire hand and shoved food in his mouth, right?

00:35:15
That itself. Now, again, that can be a developmental. It does not mean it's dysgraphic or Dyslexia, but those are little things to think about. Again, montgomery did not have a hard time with nursing rhymes. Now, my mom was with us a lot, and my mom was a kindergarten teacher.

00:35:30
She basically spoke in nursing rhymes. So he could memorize that because he was very what is not oral? Very visual. No, because he could hear it. So the other one audio.

00:35:44
Thank you. That's how he learned, through audio. Sam went 10 miles. I got no idea where the hell Sam is. Totally.

00:35:52
Leave me alone. But again, right? But that's those little things. And I remember my mom saying, because Bradley my nephew, the alphabet, my sister's like, he constantly misses the alphabet, where I sang the alphabet to the kids when they went to bed. So literally, they knew it all the time because of just the way I parented.

00:36:13
So we didn't know, again how Dyslexic he was because of all the things that we were doing. Not on purpose. So you might not see that. Start in the middle of an oh, my God, I have to go ABCD. Yeah, okay.

00:36:27
I think I told you this one time when we were with Montgomery and soccer, he had to go for a concussion thing, and they asked him to go backwards on the alphabet. And I was like, I can't go forward. I can't go. That's why I go. I go, I'm sorry.

00:36:40
I don't have a concussion. I can't go backwards. And the doctor looked at me and he actually I did not like this doctor. We never went back to this practice. But he was like, mom, you need to stay out of this.

00:36:49
Like, if he has a concussion, I was like, no, if he has a concussion, let's call it what it is. And I'm happy with him sitting out, but if you're going to give him saying he has a concussion because you're giving it, then he tried to have him spell something, and then he did a math problem. And I go, Dude, I go, I think you need to think about this. We're just like, Dyscalcula, we can't do that even if we didn't have a concussion and the guy was a dick, I was like, Whatever. But those are the kind of I mean, literally, Montgomery's looking at me going, mom, stop.

00:37:21
Because I was like, I wanted to rip this guy's face off. I was like, I can't do that math. And then obviously, the doctor thought I was stupid, which then pisses me off even more. I was, you know, whatever. But those are the kind of things that you don't think about again, right?

00:37:39
That's why games and all those things that people say, because I have to go ABCDEF. Even when I'm selling, even my son's name, I have to go M-O-N-T. It doesn't come naturally and flow for us. No, we got to start at the beginning. No matter what it is.

00:37:55
If you count 110, I can't start in the middle. I got to start at the beginning. Alphabet. It's the way it works. We got one, two, so try having that.

00:38:08
Try and exhausting my kids are young. I'm like, past grade one. It was no, couldn't do it. Homework out of my league. No, I was like, Please go ask dad.

00:38:18
And dad was in the city working, and he's like, I got to call dad. I'm like oola. No. So those are all the things, and obviously, that's why we do this podcast, to kind of break it down, to have people think about it. But also, again, to be aware if you struggled, but you kind of are like, oh, I got by.

00:38:39
Because again, we talk to people so many times, right? Whether it's a kid, and then it's like, well, there is a lineage. This is hereditary. And that's like, my favorite thing to do, be like, who has and a lot of times, people are like, I don't know. That's not something that we go through, but someone's going to get it.

00:38:57
And it's, where did it come from? If it's a ten year old boy, okay, who's that? Mom or dad? Because then you can see what their defense mechanism, what they do, and if the younger could just get diagnosed and the parents don't know, then you can start connecting dots. That's why we're talking about these.

00:39:21
Oh, I do that. Oh, I do that. You don't even realize the things that you do, your defense mechanisms. Our answers are, why talk about the erasers? Oh, right.

00:39:33
Oh, I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. This story is unbelievable. This is yeah, so one of my clients, who's Dyslexic, who really she's like, no, I don't really talk about it because it didn't affect me. We can dive into that later. She was saying in geometry in 10th grade, she's like, I couldn't literally see the board and the shapes.

00:39:56
And she was a good student, but as she said, I was like, okay, I want to know a little bit more about this, because you guys know I was not a good student. So it always fascinates when someone with Dyslexia is a good student. I'm like, okay, I want to know your processes. And usually it's not that I did not work hard, but they work there's an even more insane because they have a little bit more of a perfection. I was like, okay, I failed this.

00:40:17
Whatever. Move on to the next thing. I'm not going to be good at this. A little bit more of the realist, right? So she brought the shapes.

00:40:28
So if it was a cylinder, circle, triangle, whatever, geometry. I hated geometry, but whatever it was, she got a box and had erasers so she can put them on the table and see them there because she could not see them on the board. And I said to her, I go, oh, so you had a teacher that really cared, right? And she goes, no, I did that on my own. And I said, what do you mean you did that on your own?

00:40:51
You had the self awareness to be like, okay, I can't see it here, but I know if they're in front of me, I can see it. She's like, yeah, because I was struggling and I was not going to fail. So she went and did that on her own and then had to whether it was a parent or whoever, had to talk to the school, like, she needs to be able to bring these in. Because you could have a teacher that's like, oh, that's distracting. You can't do that.

00:41:14
There are certain things I don't get it. I do not get it.

00:41:19
That's the intelligence part that you always talk about. It's not about it. Usually hire you. That is fucking brilliant. And to bell to going, I don't see up there, but I'm going to go do this.

00:41:37
It's insane. It's a self awareness. It's a self awareness. And I could be saying that incorrectly using that term, but to me, that's like, she understood because she's also one that listened to this and was like, you know, I always thought I was like a witch because I was so intuitive and I knew I could see things. She goes, but then every person you had on your podcast and you always say, I just have a knowing of things.

00:42:01
And a lot of times it happens. And I said to her, yeah, that's really cool. So she's starting to she's like, I'd never really thought about my and I guess I don't think she ever had an official diagnosis. But doing all of this now, kind of looking back at things, she's like, I'm 100% Dyslexia, but so Dyslexic fascinating. And again, it goes back to how smart we are to be able to do that, have the awareness to do that.

00:42:34
Monk army to start memorizing. It eight months old.

00:42:40
We just learn differently. So that just shows you how brilliant someone Dyslexia can be to thinking that way on me. And I'm struggling, not paying attention. I'm out, right? But then I want to take it down with a couple of different things for you because I know because I've also done it where it's like, okay, well, I didn't do well in school.

00:43:04
I know some Dyslexics that did really well in school. Again, because they had that it was kind of this perfectionism thing. And for a long time and again, we talk about this all the time on the podcast, our strengths and weaknesses. And I don't know if I really ever, until later in life, really was like, wow, okay, there are things that I am really smart at. I knew, like, I was intuitive as a mother, and there was things that I knew that I was good at.

00:43:35
But not until I got older that I realized my intelligence, my creativity was at a different level than I ever gave myself credit. And I think you are still kind of in that exploration stage. Like, you played hockey for 18 years. Right. You don't look and think, and I know you're laughing at me because you're like, oh, here she goes.

00:43:57
Explore. Yeah, but I think you are just coming into your where your intelligence and what you're meant to do in life, and again, I'm going to be a little unicorny are, like, starting to come together. Like, yes, you had the amazing pro hockey, very successful Stanley Cup, all of that. And we talk about on the podcast that you really think that gave you a leg up because the way you saw the ice, so your Dyslexia definitely played a part in that. But since you've been out of the league, you haven't seen where your Dyslexia has been a positive other than connecting with people.

00:44:38
Yeah, there's no question. Obviously, I played hockey for 40 years, so I think the hard part for me is being misunderstood every day because what we see is so very different, and people like, what are you talking about? This is what's happening. This is what's going to happen a month later. Two months, people.

00:45:02
How the hell did you know that?

00:45:07
I've had to learn who I am in my brain so much more being out of hockey. No question about it. I still obviously don't think I'm smart. I was told I wasn't for my whole life. So you don't flip that switch.

00:45:25
But that's why we talk about these things, so that kid never feels the way I do every day. So you have that understanding of what this correlation is and that self esteem aspect. You can do it. You're doing it because of this. There's a reason why everyone always says, when you get that diagnosis, did you feel better?

00:45:46
So there's always intangibles and defense mechanism and pros and cons and weaknesses and strengths in this whole package. It's just trying to get everybody aware of it. Yeah. All right, well, I love that. I think that we can leave it here at 45 minutes, which is amazing.

00:46:03
17 minutes late. Yeah, I know. I had some computer issues, and that's why I couldn't have my thing printed and all that. A little bit of a fubbly morning on a Monday. So, again, Brent and I talk about what can you do?

00:46:17
Right? How can you support us in this? There's the Brent Sopal Foundation. Definitely go over there, Brentsopalfoundation.org, but also share. Don't again, you might be like, oh, this is interesting.

00:46:28
It might be bringing things up in your own mind. Let me kind of do this. Self reflection. I mean, self reflection is so freaking important in so many aspects. I don't think people give it enough talk about it because self reflection is hard.

00:46:42
It's hard, it's uncomfortable. It doesn't matter what it's just like rewatching this. You got to listen to yourself piercing, hearing yourself repeat, but you have to if you don't self reflect and change and adapt and grow, it's going to be a hard, long life. Yeah, it really is. So rate review.

00:47:07
But share share this with as many people you know because you do not know who is struggling, who is maybe having a child, a cousin, aunt, neighbor, someone that's struggling behind the scenes and needs to hear this. And we will see you for another episode of word blindness. Dyslexia Exposed.