DYSLEXIA IN CHILDREN
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00:00You would hear teachers, why are you so dumb, why are you so stupid?
00:03You have even parents who are so oblivious, who are so ignorant,
00:06and the parents tend to insult their children.
00:08You will hear a parent telling a child, you are so stupid, you are so dumb,
00:11you reason like a sheep.
00:14These are words a lot of children hear at home and at school.
00:19What their teachers and parents may not realize is that many of such children
00:24may just be suffering from a learning disorder called dyslexia.
00:30In this video, we are going to show you how to help a child with dyslexia
00:34who is suffering from a learning disorder called dyslexia.
00:37We are going to show you how to help a child with dyslexia
00:40who is suffering from a learning disorder called dyslexia.
00:44She is a good singer.
00:50She is a good singer.
01:00She sings well.
01:07Difficulties with fluent word recognition.
01:10This is one of the characteristics of dyslexia,
01:14a neurological condition due to faulty wiring in the brain.
01:20It's from the Greek word dys meaning inadequate or difficult,
01:25and lexis which has to do with words or language.
01:28It's a neurological condition characterized by difficulties in understanding language that is written.
01:35An individual may grow up fine and in school he has difficulties maybe understanding subjects
01:42and most of the time in the society will simply just say the individual is maybe lazy
01:47or maybe doesn't want to study or maybe is just stubborn.
01:51Generally, the presentation will be the child is having difficulties in school
01:56or the child is unable to focus, the child is unable to maybe show attention in school.
02:02And so despite all the resources that have been put in place,
02:05maybe home teaching, maybe extra hours with the child,
02:10they are unable to see any significant progress in terms of the child being able to learn new information.
02:17Children with dyslexia may thus feel that they are not doing their best
02:22or that they are incapable of learning.
02:25But this condition is no fault of their own.
02:30We have children who have parents suffering from learning disabilities,
02:35who have parents suffering from dyslexia, who have relations suffering from dyslexia.
02:40They are prone to inheriting those genes from their parents.
02:45We equally have causes before birth.
02:48We have mothers, pregnant women who have been exposed to toxins, chemicals,
02:54who have ingested alcohol, cigarettes, prescription and non-prescription drugs.
03:00Their babies are prone to developing dyslexia.
03:03Patients that suffer from childhood injuries maybe during birth
03:08or maybe trauma, head trauma while growing up can suffer from dyslexia.
03:15Professor Estella Tembe Fokunang is an educationist.
03:19She is also a certified speech and language therapist.
03:25Have you seen this one before?
03:35Okay. Sometimes we say th.
03:43And sometimes we say th.
03:48So we say th.
03:51Or some. Some.
03:54Speaking comes to us naturally as humans.
03:57But sometimes you get when children are speaking, perhaps they are mixing up the words.
04:03Can you tell me how you say this sound?
04:11How do you say this sound?
04:15Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay.
04:19I say it as th.
04:21Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
04:26So if I place it here.
04:30Th. Oh. Th.
04:35We make the word.
04:38We make the word.
04:40The speech is affected.
04:43Singing of nursery rhymes could be affected.
04:48You take Humpty Dumpty and you say Dumpty Humpty.
04:52And that gives you certain clues about what the child may be suffering.
04:58And when the child then goes to school,
05:02perhaps it is at that time that the child begins to learn the alphabet sounds.
05:07With that, we find that sometimes the children are confused with certain sounds.
05:13They may seem natural sometimes.
05:16Like the letter J and the letter T.
05:20Capital J and T may be inversed.
05:24Sometimes you see the P and the Q, the B and the D.
05:28These are signals.
05:30They are not diagnostics.
05:33As the child gets older, the child then begins to read and write.
05:39And we observe that in the spelling work,
05:42they have just remained at the point of using the sounds
05:47without applying the 44 phonemes of the English language.
05:51The problem continues because you see it in comprehension work
05:55when the children are expected to perform.
05:58If given a text, you should be able to provide answers from the text.
06:03And you see that some of them have difficulty
06:06because even the fluency in reading, nor the vocabulary, is not there.
06:12The spoken word does not match the printed word.
06:18Can you read the title?
06:21This is Splish.
06:24Splash.
06:27Splosh.
06:29Recall the book, The Good Foot, by Sander Eber.
06:32There is a character in this book,
06:35the protagonist and his friends, they always mocked at this child in class.
06:39He would call Rula as Lula, Kat as Lat.
06:43And the children just kept on laughing, thinking he was really dull,
06:47but they didn't know he had a learning disability.
06:51Scientific studies have estimated that
06:54at least 10% of the global population may have dyslexia.
07:00The prevalence of dyslexia reported elsewhere
07:03because we don't have the statistics here, can be from 1 in 10.
07:071 in 10 people may have dyslexia.
07:11At our school here, we have a prevalence of 1 in 4.
07:1625% suffer from dyslexia.
07:19We are not saying that the prevalence is higher at our school.
07:23We are saying that we are more likely to identify
07:27when a child has these speech and language problems.
07:34Unless these children get the help that they need,
07:37they will struggle through school and through life.
07:43We understand that such individuals will develop a frustration,
07:47will develop low self-esteem because of the environment.
07:51So generally we see that in addition to the fundamental signs and symptoms,
07:56you will have other signs like depression, like anxiety, personality disorders.
08:01A lot of educators are not trained for this.
08:04For example, looking at a class of 100,
08:07maybe a government school, a primary school of 150 people,
08:10and you have those children that score 20 on 20, 19 on 20, 18 on 20,
08:15and then you have some of them that maybe most of the time
08:19they score 1 on 20, 2 on 20, 0 on 20.
08:23The teacher will first of all find the class overwhelming.
08:26If that teacher doesn't even have the patience or is not well trained,
08:29he will find the class overwhelming and concentrate on the fast learners,
08:33forgetting that in every learning milieu you have fast learners,
08:37average learners, and slow learners.
08:39And they tend to stigmatize these children.
08:41Even the parents of the children, they tend to insult these children.
08:45You will hear teachers, why are you so dull? Why are you so stupid?
08:48I read somewhere about a famous man of God, Miles Monroe,
08:53who was stigmatized by his primary school teacher.
08:55The man told him he would never become anything in life.
08:58He insulted him and said he was so stupid and dull.
09:01But finally the man became one of the greatest writers of our time.
09:05So he had a learning disability, no doubt,
09:08but the teacher didn't know and he thought the child was dull.
09:13There is no dull child.
09:15So these children are stigmatized and insulted by teachers.
09:18Some teachers go to the extent of beating these children,
09:21causing fear in the children.
09:23Most of these children, if you ask their parents,
09:25the children find it difficult coming to school.
09:27You find parents forcing their children to pick up their bags and go to school,
09:32but the children will keep on crying. Some will fake illness.
09:35You have even parents who are so oblivious, who are so ignorant,
09:39and the parents tend to insult their children.
09:41Your dullness is from your mother. Your dullness is from your father.
09:44And you are unable to do anything. You reason like a sheep.
09:48Help for children with dyslexia is not a one-size-fits-all
09:52due to the complexity of the condition.
09:56The first treatment, be it for parents, be it for educators,
10:00is that of attitude, the attitude of the adult.
10:03If the attitude of the adult is a positive one, that child will thrive,
10:07will be able to develop some resilience in everything they do.
10:11With the learning disability, it's a lifelong disability.
10:15It's a lifelong disorder. Generally, the patient has to live with that.
10:20The approach that is available is also multidisciplinary.
10:25It starts from the type of education that the child will have to benefit from,
10:31to more complex medical procedures like cognitive behavioral therapy,
10:38psychotherapy to accompany the child, and all that.
10:41In terms of a teaching approach, some scientists in the U.S.
10:47developed what is called a multi-sensory approach.
10:51We know that when information is received through diverse senses,
10:59the brain retains the information better.
11:02When a problem is identified, specialists need to come in to pick up on some of those.
11:09You can have speech and language therapists.
11:12The other ways, apart from teaching, is now the medical aspect.
11:16In the medical aspect, we have a psychologist that will have to come into play,
11:21and of course we have a neurologist or a psychiatrist.
11:25It's important to note that at times, learning disabilities can be part of a bigger disease in play.
11:34For example, studies have shown that patients suffering from what is called
11:38attention deficit hyperactivity disorder will also have learning difficulties, dyslexia.
11:52This problem is not for one person.
11:55It includes the home, it includes specialists,
12:00and it includes the teachers in the classroom.
12:04When you have an indication that a child may be suffering from dyslexia,
12:10these stakeholders need to be in agreement.
12:15When they are in agreement and the resources are used,
12:21we can say that the child will be able to manage the problem very well.
12:30Although studies show that 80% of people think dyslexia equals a low IQ,
12:37this is not true, as the learning condition is not synonymous with retardation.