Where to start…oh my, where to start?
In a publication called “7 Days” from Abu Dhabi (Dubai), I ran across a story entitled “The ‘gift’ of dyslexia” which claims that one-time super-model and Mick Jagger paramour Jerry Hall has dyslexia and considers it a gift. The article’s full of what I consider inaccuracies, but what do I know?
Appearances can be deceptive - and there’s no better example of that than the glamorous Jerry Hall and her four children. The leggy Texan model has recently revealed that she and all of her kids by Mick Jagger suffer from the learning difficulty dyslexia. But far from moaning about it, Hall has described the condition as “a gift because it makes you think differently”.
First, I wonder how many individuals who have dyslexia would say it’s a gift. I don’t know of any survey data about this. It sure is a popular idea, though; a Google search will find lots of relevant (and some irrelevant) links.
Here is a selection of other quotes from the article:
- “‘It is believed that people who have dyslexia are more creative and intuitive than others’”;
- “Most dyslexic people are great communicators and have excellent interpersonal skills”;
- “Puts letters and figures the wrong way round” and “Still occasionally confuses ‘b’ and ‘d’ and words such as ‘no/on’.”
Link to the article. Sigh.
Sphere: Related Content
Sigh indeed. The “gift” language is often paired with “dyslexics think in pictures, not words” as the root cause of dyslexia. Thank you, Ronald Davis, for marketing that bit of nonsense–and your expensive and useless “treatment” as a cure.
As you know, but your readers may not, my darling dyslexic daughter (ddd) is well-remediated (thank you Slingerland, Lindamood-Bell, and gifted teachers), but her reading rate is lower than one would expect, given her constellation of abilities. Complex texts and any narrative with unusual spelling (ex.: dialect) ==>> reading while listening to the recorded text (thank you Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic). She excelled in biology, but chemistry was a real challenge. She understood the table of elements, but rapidly recalling, for example, that silver = Au, or rapidly decoding molecular formulae (example: methane is represented by CH4)…well, good thing her lab grades were extremely high, because the test grades were low. Oh, and the difficulties with rapid automatic (or accurate) naming…
Did I tell you the “parentheses” story? We were in the grocery store at Christmas time. Ddd gestured toward those familiar green and red plants, and said, “Let’s get some of those parentheses plants, Mom!” I was curious, so we talked a bit. She knew that they were native to Latin America, she knew that they were part of a large family (Euphorbiaceae), she knew that they were perennials, she knew that the red parts were not flowers but bracts….but correctly recalling poinsettia? Nope. We rehearsed “poinsettia” several times. The next day, she asked, “Should I water the parentheses plants, Mom?”–and then clapped her hand over her mouth, and said, “Oh, Jeez!..Poin, poin, poinsettia!”
I’ve actually had several conversations with ddd on this issue.One response: “How would I know? I’ve always been dyslexic.” Another: “I’d give a lot to be able to read as effortlessly as you, Mom.”
“If it is a gift, I want to give it back.”