Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Dyslexic Video Gamer

I was born during the video game boom. My sister played the Atari, and so did I! Next the Nintendo; "Duck Hunting" and "Super Mario Brothers"-- but it wasn't till the "Tom Clancy Rainbow Six" games in my living room did my world change. It was a no brainer than I would fall in love with first person shooter games! It put me into another reality, away from the kids that made fun of me, away from teachers putting me down, away from the everyday troubles of day to day life. Plus they were fun.

My parents first stressed out about the time I spent playing these games, and the subject matter and violence. The fears were short lived after they noticed how it really effected me. I was less stressed out, happier, stayed out of trouble. I never had many friends growing up or even now. I'm not much of a talker and keep to myself. I didn't want to go hang out with friends, because I didn't have any! I didn't get in trouble, because I spent my free time on the computer playing games.

I didn't really make friends until I moved; I changed  high school in my junior year. I was the new kid on the block and instead of it being a bad thing it was good. Making friends was pretty easy. After joining a new church with tons of youth my age I ended up in a band and spend all my free time with them.

So now in the present day I still love a good video game to unwind and release some stress. In the United States video games tend to get the blame for teenage violence  school shootings and anything bad that happens with our youth. If you look deeper it wasn't the games they played it was the psychological condition they had that was underlying that wasn't addressed or treated.

If your Dyslexic son or daughter likes video games it might not be so bad. I wouldn't recommend violent war games until late teenage years. I would recommend limiting the hours on games because children need to be outdoors and need exercise! All I am saying is they aren't all bad and don't believe the hype.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

What color are your lights????

Dyslexia is a different for everyone that has it. Why? Mainly because no one person is alike, even twins. The outward appearance might be the same but the brain could process data completely different.



               NORMAL                                                                         DYSLEXIA

I like to explain Dyslexia to outsider with a funny but useful example. Imagine if you wrapped only one side of a Christmas tree with white lights... left or right side doesn't matter.... this is basically how a so called "normal brain processes data. Using one side mainly over the other. Now take the same tree and put colored lights randomly all over left, right, top and bottom parts of the tree. Turn on just the white lights and you see how the brain lights up in a "normal person". Lets see what a Dyslexic brain looks like; Turn on the colored lights and you will see the huge difference.

What color are your lights????


The problem the teachers or school system says isn't you nor is it your child it's the way the data is received!    Teachers that teach to only one side of the brain or as my example showed one side of the tree... what happens to the second side, the side with no lights.

Both sides are used by a Dyslexic person which means the traditional approach to teaching student new material in the school system do not work...If 70% of the students learn the material but 30% don't are we not failing those students!!!

I was 16 years old when I had finally learned I was in fact Dyslexic and the only saving grace I had was a program called " Wilson".

More Information

For writing and reading software this is what I personally use.

natural readers

I hope this helps!