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My story with Dyslexia is... I never realised I had dyslexia when I was a kid. I was a bright
kid, I wasn't stupid, far from it. I read "The Lord of the Rings", the full version,
aged 9. And then my mum decided to put us in school and that is when the trouble started
really. Before, there were things I found a little hard, that I needed to go over, that
you could not be expected to learn first go, but I never found maths difficult, grammar
is something I struggled with, but it is not something I found painful to learn. The minute
I went to school that changed and form one year to the next I went from being a perfectly
normal happy kid to being severely depressed kid that had all those learning difficulties.
It was miserable, absolutely miserable. I remember going into a classroom waiting for
the teacher to arrive and my legs would be shaking, I was scared, I was terrified, because
I knew that there would be something in that lesson that I would not understand, then the
teacher would get frustrated and the kids would start giggling and would say "Klaire
does not get it again!". It was embarrassing, humiliating. It completely destroyed my self
esteem. I then suffered from quite severe depression for years because of it. There
was a whole host of other things, maths, I could not do, I still cannot do it. I am considerably
better, now I can see the letters. Previously there was such a mental block that there were
some numbers that would move around the page, or sometimes I would not see. It didn't matter
if there was a line and I would take a pencil and tried to read each number. I would not
see it. There was such a mental block. Things like grammar, ugh... don't even get me started
on this, and it was very embarrassing because I tried so hard, I would get so frustrated
because I would work like a dog, you know, I spent hours and hours going over things.
I just refused to be told that I was stupid, because I knew that I wasn't. And I'll read
things over and over again. I'l do 4 times the amount of homework as everyone else, and
I would get so frustrated because I'll see people who would not do their homework and
they would walz into class, answer it and then the teacher would be "well done, you
really did your homework", and then I would hand in mine and she would yell at me and
said, "why are you such an idiot!". And I'll explain, "Look, I have done my homework, I
just don't get it", and I'll ask, "Can you go over this with me?", and she would say,
"Oh, you are just being lazy!", which was incredibly insulting for me because if there
is something I am not is lazy. If anything, I am a bit of a workaholic, I do not know
how to stop, because ....I always worked, because the minute I stopped, I would get
severely depressed, I was always depressed anyway, but for me work was a way to burry
my head in something and not have to try to handle all this confusion that was going on.
And I thought I was stupid for years, kids would call me freak and stuff and in the end
I started to accept it, I started to think, "Well, the teachers are telling me I am stupid,
the other students can do it, I must be stupid". So as you can imagine, my self esteem was
just gone. I cannot remember large chunks of my childhood because I blocked them out.
That was a coping mechanism, I didn't want to remember that, so even if it wasn't directly
intentional, subconsciously I still blocked out all those memories so there are huge chunks
of my childhood that I don't really remember. And then what happened is, when I was around
16 I think, my mum met an old friend who was one of the teachers at my old school, who
was a very nice teacher at my old school, and she asked "Oh, how's Klaire doing? How
is Klaire handeling her dyslexia?" and my mum was like, "What?" And then my mum was
like "That's it! Klaire is dyslexic!" Now, obviously, my mum knew dyslexia didn't mean
stupid, but that's all I ever heard from teachers, none of my teachers had ever diagnose me as
dyslexic, because to be perfectly honest, they just didn't care, they just thought,
"Stupid kid! Someone else can deal with it!" And what happened is that my mum came home
and she goes, "Klaire, you are dyslexic". And I had two reactions to that, the first
one was to break down and start crying my eyes out because suddenly I was something.
My understanding of dyslexia at the time was, I thought it meant I was stupid, but to a
degree, I didn't care. That scared me, because I though, "Oh great, it is confirmed, I am
stupid". But on the other hand, it was such a relief, because I though, "I am something,
you know, I am not a freak, I am not an abnormality, other people have dyslexia, I belong somewhere".
And that in itself was the biggest relief and my mum sat me down and said, "Hey, no,
no, you are not stupid, you've got a very specific way of learning and all this problems
that you've had, have come up because of the way you have been taught at school, it has
nothing to do with stupidity, far from it". And as it turned out, the family friend was
a Davis facilitator. The Davis course was set up by a guy called Ronald Davis, and he
is severely dyslexic, I think quite autistic as well, what he figured out, was that the
education system in dyslexics, causes a lot of trouble. Because there are two ways of
thinking. You can think using the left side of your brain, or the right side of your brain.
Now, dyslexics think using the right side of the brain. The right side of the brain,
is the part that learns through images; the left side of the brain is the part of the
brain that learns through words. So people who are very mathematical, very kind of regimented,
they tend to think with the left side of the brain. And then people who are like artists,
illustrators, musicians.... are right side brain people. And that is why you see dyslexia
coming up repeatedly in actors, writers, artists... and that is not in spite of their dyslexia,
that is because of their dyslexia. Dyslexia is not stupidity, it is a way of learning,
and those difficulties have been cause by the current educational system. It is like
teaching someone to......., let say trampolining for example, I did that for a good few years,
if you were not taught who to use your muscles properly, how to warm up, how to stretch,
how to bounce, how to do back flips,... you would hurt you body, you would fall and you
would get hurt. And education is the same, certain people learn in a certain way and
if you teach them in a way that is wrong for them, mentally, they are going to get damaged.
And that is what happened with dyslexia. And Ronald Davis, figured out a way to undo that
damage caused by the current education system. And the family friend, having trained as a
Davies facilitator, she was incredible and offered it for free. So I was incredibly lucky
just there. And it was about a week, and ... the differences with in one week, were just incredible.
I mean, I remember going in, after the second day, ......I am going to mumble a bit, because
it makes my brain go in a spin......but I had a migraine for years. It is not a headache,
it is a migraine. Just imagine a red hot poker in your head for years....that is what it
felt like, especially when I looked at a number or a maths book, it felt like someone had
a put a clamp on my head, it would agonising. And that is not even an exaggeration,... it
was painful. And the worse thing is..... is telling people this confusion and them thinking
you just don't want to learn, which is something incredibly insulting, because I loved to learn,
you know, I would be reading all the time, I read every encyclopedia, every thesaurus
I could get my hands on, and... on the second day, it just went! This pain, I had in my
head for years..I remember coming out and it felt like any minute I was going to flutter
off! I felt weightless, I felt amazing, and then little by little, things started to click
and I found very interesting things, like I found that I associated certain kind of
traumas to certain letters in the alphabet and that is why certain words gave me a lot
of trouble, or I'll flip my b's and my d's. For example d's, I associated them with death
and people that I love dying and not having any control and feeling helpless, and then
b's I associated with blood, obviously because of people dying and things like that. And
so those letters gave me a lot of trouble, and what they did is they figured it out,
what is causing those mental blocks. And it might sound silly, but they get you to do
things like to mould things like letters out of clay. And then, once you've moulded them,
you can see it, suddenly you understand that letter, you can see that letter in your head,
you understand how it works, it is amazing! It's like someone has just slotted in a missing
card and suddenly...you've got it! And it is like a light bulb goes on in your head
and after this week finished, it was..it was incredible, because I came home and the things
that just sent me into a spin, I could do! And it was incredible, and it gave me the
opportunity to do things.. I mean I couldn't have started my band, I couldn't have started
writing songs, I mean I wrote songs before, as a hobby, but I could have never gone ahead
and just started doing it professionally, or even have the guts to sing it to my close
friends, little alone other people! And it basically opened up a world of opportunity!
And I think that is what is so frustrating for dyslexics, knowing you have the skills,
the imagination to do these things, but then something restricting you from doing them.
Sometimes it is the education system, sometimes it is the block, the mental block that the
educational system puts in your head, and once that is gone, you feel like you can achieve
anything, and..I remember meeting Ronald Davis a few years later, and it was kind of embarrassing,
because... I wanted to go up to him, he was doing a talk all about dyslexia, his experiences,
why he started the Davis course, the amazing things it had done in other people's lives,
the experiences other people had had with it. It was primarily a talk he was doing for
teachers in how to recognise dyslexia in children, you know, how to teach them in slightly different
ways, and I remember going up to him afterwards and it was really embarrassing actually, I
wanter to be all calm and composed and, you know, tell him my story, you know, this happened
to me, thank you for changing my life! I say changing, really, I kind of credit that guy
with saving my life, because, I joke about it, but I often say that without that guy..
I would have lost it, I was constantly depressed, sometimes borderline suicidal, because of
this constant confusion going on in your head and he got read of it! And I wanted to say
thanks, but I could't, I just started wailing up and burst into tears! And it was really
embarrassing, I hate people seeing me cry. I won't even let my parents seeing me cry.
It's like, no, no, that is not happening! But I just burst into tears in front of this
guy and he started,. ..well, he didn't start crying thank God, because that would have
been awkward, if someone else starts crying, I start crying and then it never stops. Eventually
I just managed to blubber out "Thank you" and then went. But....Yeah.... ever since
I had this idea....because I was lucky, I was lucky that there was a family friend who
could do this for me for free. Not everyone could afford to do that. The Davis facilitators
have got to train for years, because every dyslexic is different. For me, my problems
are grammar, maths...I also had a lot of trouble being sociable, looking people in the eyes,
that is something that I still struggle with, but not near the degree that I used to. Now
I can look people in the eye, but... with maths, I need an accountant, I can't do it,
I still reverse numbers and ... you don't want to be reversing numbers when you are
paying your takes! But each dyslexic is very different so ...this Davis facilitators have
got to train for years in order to be able to know what approach to take with each person,
because each person is so different. You know, what works for one dyslexic will not work
for the other. And you can expect people..., is like asking a lawyer to offer his services
for free, you can't expect someone to do that. And by the same token, that are a lot of families
who would be restricted financially to be able to provide this for their kid. I thought,
this is crazy! You know, this is a life changing thing! Mental.. related things are so under-rated
and they affect you so much! And because it is not a visual thing, people can't see it,
people do not value it enough and it makes a huge difference in people's lives. So what
I did, I think it was six months ago, I wrote to the Davis ...., the guy running the Davis
course in the UK, and I said, look, this is my story, this is my experience, would it
be possible for you to set up a charity where I could donate money or raise money to help
families who financially could not afford this kind of thing! And they wrote back and
said, "We have been thinking about this for a while, let's do it"! And they did! They
did! And now it is set up, and that is basically what happened, my story, and that is why the
Davis course is so important to me, because it made a huge difference in my life and I
am hoping it would make an even bigger difference in other people's lives.