Jennie Sjursen 0:00
At last, a final report from the dyslexia evaluation has arrived. When we left the office, we were told my child had dyslexia, but to wait for the final report. Now I'm going through the report and it says my child has phonological dyslexia. What the heck is that? Isn't dyslexia just dyslexia?
Jennie Sjursen 0:20
I'm Jenny Sjursen, ex special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago, that I too, was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between. Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education. And you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from ages six to eight t. My specialties, working with a quote unquote difficult almost always to each student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps.
Jennie Sjursen 0:56
Hi, everyone. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to offer a heartfelt thank you to everyone who listened to our last episode, Episode 580 years of living with dyslexia. People from all over are reaching out and telling us how moved they were by my dad's story. After it went live, Dad called and told me how exposed he felt telling his story. But he felt it was much more important for all the other Dyslexics and their parents to hear what he had to say. And from the feedback we've received, you've really paid attention to all that I've listened, dad, and I thank you.
Jennie Sjursen 1:38
Now, back to the types of dyslexia. Whenever this topic comes up, I remember a conversation I had with my sister. When she first found out one of her children had dyslexia. She was recounting how she and her husband were reviewing the final report with the evaluator, and her husband was asking for clarifying details. Was their child severely dyslexic, or only a little dyslexic? Are there different types of dyslexia, or someone just dyslexic, my sister commented, that was like asking if someone was just a little bit pregnant. But the thing is, my brother in law was onto something. Dyslexia is a spectrum disorder. A dyslexic can be classified as mild, moderate to severe or severe. And to confuse issues more, there is no exact cut off for each category. It just sort of blend into each other. On top of that, there are different types of dyslexia. And there's a little bit of controversy out there on this too. When I was trained at the associate level by a fellow with the Orton Gillingham Academy, we were taught that there were three types of dyslexia, phonological, rapid automatic naming, or ran and double deficit. Since then, in conversations and social media, I've also come across the following disc phonetic, auditory disc, dyadic, visual and surface dyslexia. But once you start digging, you see these other types are really a pulled out piece or a different name for original three types, phonological ran and double deficit.
Jennie Sjursen 3:18
So now let's take a closer look at these three. Phonological dyslexia. When people think dyslexia, this is the type most recognized and understood. A person with phonological Dyslexia has difficulty with processing the individual sounds contained within a word. People with phonological dyslexia have a hard time connecting sounds to the individual letters or letter combinations, difficulty with sounding out and spelling words, oftentimes spelling the same word multiple different ways in a paragraph, or even the same sentence. Because they have to work so hard to match the sounds to letters. They're also slow readers and have low reading stamina, they tire out after only a few sentences or pages. This type of dyslexia can also be called the DIS phonetic or auditory dyslexia.
Jennie Sjursen 4:09
The next type of dyslexia is rapid automatic naming, usually shortened to ran. Ran is related to processing speed, how fast a person can retrieve language, or in other words how fast their word recall is. This type of dyslexia can also be referred to as dynamic visual or surface dyslexia. Person with ran dyslexia can have issues with fluency and comprehension. Their brains have difficulty quickly pulling the correct word to the surface and will sometimes pull a similar sounding or looking word. For example, sad for said they might frequently leave out small words like the end on or in, and if you pull the wrong word or leave a word or two out, it can drastically change the meaning of a sentence which in turn affects the overall comprehension of a passage. You might hear a RAND dyslexic say, Oh, I thought it said blah, blah, blah, not blah blah ha. The RAND dyslexic will often mix up or combine sayings and idioms. To in the hand is like one of the bush. They tend to talk with their hands, filling in the blank words spaces with hand gestures to get their point across. This difficulty with pulling words accurately and quickly from memory also affects a ran Dyslexics writing skills. Writing is a long laborious process when you can't find the right words.
Jennie Sjursen 5:43
The final dyslexia type is known as double deficit dyslexia. This is the double whammy of dyslexia, and the hardest to remediate. It is considered the most severe type of dyslexia. People with double deficit dyslexia have both phonological and rapid automatic meaning dyslexia, in essence, take all of the symptoms from phonological and ran dyslexia, tumble them together, and you get double deficit dyslexia. So now, if we go back to my brother in law's line of questioning, just how dyslexic was his child, you can see how difficult of a question this is to answer and why no two Dyslexics are exactly the same. Not only does dyslexia occur on a spectrum of severity, but there are also different types.
Jennie Sjursen 6:36
Really bad analogy here. But it's like going to an ice cream bar and taking a little bit of each topping. And on any given day, you might get a similar final ice cream creation, but it's never exactly the same. So now you have a better understanding of what your child's dyslexia diagnosis means to them. Knowing the type of dyslexia your child has also helps you make educational decisions for them. What type of instruction is going to help them the most?
Jennie Sjursen 7:06
In our next episode, we take a look at ways you can support your child and those educational decisions. Until next time I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangled if you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part. I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye
