Jennie Sjursen 0:00
Oh my gosh, my child can't read and is bouncing off the walls all day. Is this dyslexia? Or is it ADHD? Is it even remotely possible to be both?
Jennie Sjursen 0:14
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 18. My specialties, working with the quote unquote difficult almost always to the student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps.
Jennie Sjursen 0:54
Before we dive in a quick reminder, it's officially the beginning of IEP season. To help you out we've put together a 12 questions to ask at a dyslexia IEP meeting, including answers, podcast and matching PDF, we've linked to both in our show notes below. Go ahead and hit pause, bookmark the podcast and grab a copy of the PDF. Well wait for you.
Jennie Sjursen 1:18
Okay, ADHD, and dyslexia. This is a topic in dear to my heart. As many of you know, not only does dyslexia run in my family, but I have pretty significant ADHD. And if you didn't know, five minutes into a phone call, or a zoom call with me, would have you cluing in pretty quickly. So what are some of those clues and hallmarks of ADHD? ADHD is characterized by an attention sting, I forgot to lock my door again, distractibility that clock on the wall never stops ticking, hyperactivity, never stops moving are talking filters, filters, what filters there's no filters, and impulsivity. Let's go take a 50 mile hike training, high needs training. I personally may or may not embody all of those traits that ever tell you about the time I signed up for a 75 mile canoe race? No, I really did. But that's a story for another day. dyslexia and ADHD have a lot of overlap. And sometimes you can't tell if your child is struggling because of their dyslexia, or their ADHD. For instance, is your child struggling to read because they have dyslexia? Or are they struggling because their ADHD makes it hard to focus and learn to read needs a lot of focus? Or is it a combination of both? It's estimated that 30% of students with dyslexia also have ADHD. The medical term for CO occurring disabilities is CO morbid, but frankly, I find that word pretty morbid.
Jennie Sjursen 3:01
It's important to note while both are genetic and have similarities, one does not cause the other. A person's not dyslexic because they have ADHD. Nor does a person have ADHD. Because they're dyslexic. It doesn't work that way. Remember, dyslexia is language based and ADHD is executive functioning behavior based. So where did dyslexia and ADHD overlap? Some of the symptoms they have in common are processing speed challenges, working memory deficits, struggling with word recall, auditory processing difficulties, and motor skill deficits, thinking and writing. So it's easy when your child is younger to mistake the symptoms of one for the symptoms of the other.
Jennie Sjursen 3:50
One way to tell the difference between dyslexia and ADHD is with an ADHD ear. Focusing issues are prevalent in all areas of life, not just reading. A dyslexic might lose focus when reading because it's a demanding task for them. And they only have so much reading stamina, and ADHD or will lose focus walking from their bed to the bathroom. Another way to tell the difference lies in how they read. A Dyslexics reading is usually not fluent and full of decoding mistakes on both small and large words. An ADHD ear may also not read fluently, usually racing through the text with no consideration for punctuation, dropping word endings and losing their place along the way. But they typically don't misread words. However, the disfluency of both readers affects their ability to comprehend a given passage. So, what do they have in common as readers? Both readers get very little pleasure from reading and most likely would rather be doing anything else. Both Dyslexics and ADHD errs tend to be poor. writers. They both have substantial problems with organization of their ideas, proofreading, and possibly the physical mechanics of handwriting.
Jennie Sjursen 5:09
The dyslexic additionally struggles with spelling, grammar and syntax. Both the dyslexic and ADHD ear have difficulty showing their true knowledge and can often be seen as underachieving in class. Anyone else in the room periodically got a doesn't work up to potential on the report card. No, just me. Okay. So what do you do, you get your child properly evaluated. You also observe your child is dyslexia or ADHD affecting your child more when I was still an IEP case manager. When a student showed with multiple comorbidities, we were told to tackle the biggest issues first. Sometimes when you tackle the big issues first, the lesser issues also sorted themselves out in the process. For instance, if the Dyslexia has more of an impact on your child, providing them with the appropriate instruction often also helps her reading stamina and focus. direct instruction and support and executive function skills is highly valuable for both. They will learn strategies and coping skills that will be beneficial across the board. With the appropriate instruction and supports, these students can grow into highly successful adults. Like I always tell my students, your path may look different, but the endpoint is always the same.
Jennie Sjursen 6:32
If you have any further questions about dyslexia and ADHD, please feel free to sneak into my inbox. Our next episode will feature Our second guest and I can't wait for you to meet her. Not only is she a dyslexic she's also the daughter of a dyslexic and a mom to another dyslexic. A song stuck in the middle with you is running through my head now. Anyway, until next time, bye bye I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangle. 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
