My Dyslexic Mind Newsround Specials

Hi, I'm Ben. I'm 12 years old

and I have something you might have heard of - dyslexia.

It's to do with my brain and it makes it really hard

for me to read and write.

Lots of kids have dyslexia, about one in every 10,

so it's pretty common.

It can make life very difficult, especially at school.

It's hard because you don't like saying "I don't know how to spell it"

in front of people, cos people will laugh.

I didn't know what was happening and I blamed it basically on myself.

As I'm going to find out, it doesn't have to be a barrier to success.

If it wasn't for being dyslexic,

I wouldn't be where I am today without it.

In this programme, I'm going to explore what it feels like

to have dyslexia and how it affects brains and minds.

Not being able to read and write as well as your mates

can be really hard, and living with dyslexia

is like trying to find your way around this maze.

You come across lots of barriers.

Everybody's heard of dyslexia

and there'll be people in your class with it,

but not many people know what it really is.

Can I ask you - what do you know about dyslexia?

Not an awful lot.

Isn't it when people have trouble reading or writing?

It's, like, um...

It's when someone can't read properly or write properly without help.

It's hard to explain.

People get their words muddled up.

I don't know if you catch it, I think it's just something you're born with.

I want to find out more, if only I could find my way out.

When I was younger, I was really frustrated because I didn't know

I had dyslexia and I thought I was just dumb.

I couldn't do the work very well and I had to just keep on trying

and Miss would be disappointed in me

and Sir, they'd just say, "Come on, boy, wise up."

When I'm reading, words get muddled up.

Say I'm reading one line, I'll just skip a few, say three lines,

and then have to go back, read that line and then read the other three.

That can be really annoying because I've read the future of the story.

In every school class,

there are likely to be two or three dyslexics, so I'm not alone.

My name's Khalaya and I'm 13 years old.

I found out I had dyslexia when I was 10 years old.

It's hard because if you're in lessons

and you don't know how to spell summat, you don't like saying

"I don't know how to spell it" in front of people,

cos people will laugh.

They don't have dyslexia so they don't know all the frustration

we're going through where you can't read or write.

When you're writing you always say to me, "How do you spell that one?"

What are those two letters saying together?

Ch. Ch...th.

Th. Good, because it's a T, isn't it?

This morning when we had to spell something,

you'd think it was spelled the way it sounds.

You think that "they" would be like that, wouldn't you?

That seems sensible, but unfortunately, it's not.

It's one of those that you have to know.

The "A" sound is made by those two letters.

Like many people with dyslexia,

Khalaya's found that words seem to move around the page

when she's trying to read.

You know, d and b, they move the wrong way round

so I get b as d, and d as b,

but now, I've got further and higher

and I've noticed they don't move around any more but they used to.

We've got two letters that make one sound.

When she first came in year seven,

she said, "I want to be able to sit down and read a book properly."

She's made great progress towards that

and there are some books she can sit and read now.

Many girls Khalaya's age are hooked on books

like The Hunger Games trilogy. That's too tricky for her

but she can now read short extracts from books like Harry Potter.

I really do love books.

Every time I see one I go, "That looks good," by the front cover.

That's why I really wish I could read and I didn't have dyslexia.

I'd have lots of books and probably would hate books

like all my friends, "I wouldn't want to read a book,"

but they don't know how it feels because they don't have dyslexia.

Dyslexia affects my memory as well so if I go to the shop,

I might forget something so my nana writes me a list.

Because I've got dyslexia, sometimes I can't read everything

so I get mixed up with the words.

I draw a picture or something next to it or I do a colour next to it

so I know which one it is.

If you're just going out or something,

you have to read something, like on a top,

when I come home, it can say something stupid or something.

Khalaya's an intelligent girl

and that is even more frustrating for her.

She has lots of friends and lots of friendship support with her

so I think that helps her.

Some people think that people with dyslexia are stupid

but you're not actually stupid.

It's just that you've got a difficulty with reading and writing

and it's not your fault.

You're not stupid, because me, I'm not stupid.

I know a lot of things but sometimes find it hard to put it on paper.

Lots of dyslexic people have similar experiences to Khalaya.

Finding it hard to read and write

and having difficulties with their short-term memory.

But what is it about dyslexic brains that makes them different to others?

For this film, I've come to Oxford University to try and find out.

I've agreed to go through a number of tests

carried out by dyslexia specialist, Dr Anna Pitt.

Hi, nice to meet you. You must be Ben. Come on in.

These are electrodes and what they're going to be doing

is taking readings of how much energy your brain is using.

Without going into your head in any way,

we want to have a look and see if we can record those electrical signals

and see how much activity is going on inside your head.

These tests involve looking at a checkerboard

which changes from black-white to white-black.

-Aww, it hurts looking at it.

-It hurts looking at it?

-A bit.

It's getting back to normal now, my eyes.

'And following a spot on a screen

'to see how my eyes move across the page.'

The blue dot is where your eyes are actually following this line.

Following the dot like that is like reading a line of text.

If your eyes move around a lot,

you can often find it hard to stay on that line

and people jump around sometimes with dyslexia

and they miss lines of text or end up on the wrong line.

I found out that experts think parts of the brain

function differently in dyslexics.

These include the areas

that deal with processing what we see and hear.

To see what affects me most,

Anne is testing my ability to read different words.

We're going to be doing some reading tasks.

I'm going to ask you to read some words as quickly as you can.

'Anna views the fact I'm OK reading words that look like they sound

'but not so good at oddly spelt words

'is evidence of problems with my visual memory.'

Visual memory, looking through your eyes

and remembering the shapes of things,

is what helps with these irregular words,

because you can't build it by using the sounds of the words.

You have to remember it visually.

Visually, exactly! Using your eyes.

Anna thinks my dyslexia is mainly to do

with how my brain remembers what I see when they read.

For others, dyslexia can be more about remembering

and recognising sounds.

One thing experts are sure of is that dyslexia has nothing to do

with your intelligence.

Check out Zach's story.

A lot of people will say dyslexia is a disadvantage or a disability.

They're not telling the whole story.

I'm really good at science and maths.

I love making things.

I like to think of dyslexia just as a different way your brain's wired.

It's nothing to hold you back.

I'm Zach, I'm 13 years old and I've got dyslexia.

When I was younger, I found it really, really hard to come to grips

with the fact that I couldn't spell or read pretty much at all.

I didn't know what was happening and I blamed it mostly on myself.

I approach things quite differently to a lot of other people.

I like to use fridge magnets that are physical things,

3D things, that can move around.

They're big and they're bright,

and I can distinctively see when a word is right with these.

Fantastic. Nice little mind map!

Somebody else who is not dyslexic might just write a list,

which I find really hard to read.

I like doing this cos it's like mind mapping and it's big,

so it's a lot clearer than writing in your book.

The only thing we are looking at is really your spelling, isn't it?

That's the thing that's holding you back a little bit.

Dyslexic students tend to be big thinkers.

It's the big picture, so we kind of go outwards with our thinking.

Some people think that I'm really not that clever

because I'm not good at English,

but I excel at science and DT and textiles.

There's a lot of dyslexic people out there and I'm one of them.

I see it as just different skills that we have,

so we may not be the greatest spellers in the world

but perhaps we're the greatest inventors or the greatest artists.

This is the first body armour that I made. I really like this one.

I blended the colours quite well.

I want to make it radio controlled with a hydro-electric motor

which fires high-speed water out the rear of the boat

and draws it in through the bottom.

This is my other body armour.

It's stab-proof. This is a work in progress.

Partly assembled firing gun that fires water balloons.

It goes like that... and that's not meant to happen!

Then it fires like that.

There are some great people out there which have dyslexia

and it's helped them achieve what they achieved.

People like Einstein were thought to have dyslexia

and he's one of the greatest minds ever known to man.

If you are struggling, just keep at it

and you just need to learn those skills

and don't let it hold you back.

CBBC star Dom Wood, one half of Dick and Dom,

is another talented person with dyslexia

and it hasn't stopped him from succeeding.

I've come to meet him on the filming set of his new CBBC series.

-Hi, Dom.

-How are you, all right? Good to meet you.

Welcome to the weird world of Dick and Dom.

This is just one of our locations we're shooting at

for our new series called Absolute Genius.

We're trying to learn our lines.

Look, we've got all this to learn in a day.

-Words, words, words, words. How does that look to you?

-Daunting.

Listen, I've got to go and do some stuff now.

-Stick around, I'll tell you how I try and get it in my head.

-OK.

-Horsepower!

-Come on, everybody!

When did you get diagnosed

and when did you figure out you had dyslexia?

It wasn't until I was 15 years old, which was very late.

Until I was 15, I just thought I was thick

and I couldn't understand why because I was trying so hard.

Around then, it wasn't recognised as much as a form of disability.

You were just considered as not learning as quickly as everyone else

and not being as intelligent as everyone else.

I can remember really vividly when I would have been six years old,

I remember the day the teacher,

and I remember her name but I won't say it, she said,

"Wood, you're not very good at reading

"so the whole class is going to move on to the next book

"and we're going to put you back to the baby books from last year."

I thought, "That's not good!"

There I was struggling away and no one knew why.

The thing that made it really difficult

was that I had three older brothers

and all of them were A-level students, grade-A students.

I was in the D set and people at school used to call me thick

and used to say, "Your brothers are clever but you're really thick."

That used to really hurt.

His engines were better at doing some of the stuff than horses

and he needed to measure a way of...

Are you good at being constructive and good with your art

and other sides of your brain?

I enjoy creating things.

When I was younger, Lego especially and K'Nex and stuff like that.

That's really fun.

It's interesting, I was exactly the same as you.

I was really creative as a kid, and Lego as well,

it's something I was really good at is making and creating things.

I think generally dyslexics find that.

They know the academic side is a little bit more difficult

so they use their creative side a lot more.

Would you give any advice to people,

say, in how to learn a script if you're dyslexic?

It looks daunting when you get a big script

but it's not that bad actually.

It's always done over and over and over again from different angles.

It takes a long time so it's not very scary.

When you're at school, a lot of schools are all about

if you're academic, that's the only way forward.

Do you know what?

There are thousands of jobs out there

that do not require academia at all.

It's actually not really a disadvantage being dyslexic.

In some ways, it's a really positive thing.

If it wasn't for being dyslexic,

I wouldn't be where I am today without it.

Back in Watts' time,

horses did a lot of the jobs that machines do for us today.

-Yeah, so...

-Lollipop!

It was amazing to meet Dom

and hear what a hard time he had as a dyslexic child.

Luckily, we know much more now

and there's a lot of help for people like me, Zach and Khalaya.

What I found out by making this programme

is it doesn't have to hold you back.

We all see the world in our own way

and my dyslexia's just one part of what makes me unique.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd