Diesel engine in petrol-driven world

Laughton King Photo/File

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Laughton King, from Whangarei, a well-known speaker on dyslexia.

As well as presenting a parenting seminar about his "With Not Against" approach to parenting, Laughton facilitated workshops for teachers and parents specifically about what dyslexia is, and how we need to be thinking about it for the children and adults that are affected by this learning preference.

We thought you might like to have a taste of what he shared, the parents and students that met with him certainly related to this message. Picture this: My diesel-fuelled bulldozer has been carefully designed and engineered for a certain purpose. It does not need to be rewired, recalibrated nor otherwise "fixed" - it will work perfectly as long as I fuel it with the diesel it was designed for. My bulldozer is not in any way deficient, nor is my digger, my tractor nor my truck. Neither is my brain.

Consider that the child who thinks predominantly in pictures (the classic "dys-lexic") is like a diesel engine - and needs to be fuelled with diesel. But, in that our schools are orientated around language function (a style we could liken to petrol) they are like petrol stations, supplying good quality petrol - but they don't do diesel.

My personal experience, and that of many diesels ("dys-lexics") like me, is that the very system used by our schools to educate us (language), has been the direct cause of our failure.

The teachers themselves are largely unaware of this, are doing their very best with the knowledge they have, and may even find this article that you are reading too hard to accept.

Most of our children do well in school, because the language teaching style suits them.

As a child I couldn't understand that some kids actually liked school! I envied them and the ease with which they handled school. But for those of us with diesel style, school is a nightmare, and at 65 my nightmares still persist.

The language style failed me and I failed as a result. But what is more, the support systems they then provided to "fix" my learning difficulty (Reading Recovery, and Reader/Writer support) were like fuel-injected petrol into my diesel engine - and guess who got the blame when it didn't work!

When we tell them they are "dys-lexic" we are telling them they are problematic, that they are deficient, and implicitly that they are less worthy.

The term is patently obnoxious and destructive. Personally, I prefer to be seen as a diesel, and as a pictorial thinker, and I am proud of this facet of my style.

Laughton King has a website where you are able to read this article in its entirety and look at the books he has written, http://dyslexiadismantled.com. He can be contacted on laughton.king@win.co.nz.

A big thank you to Harmony Edwardson for all the hard work she put into hosting the sessions that Laughton facilitated.

For more parenting information and free SKIP resources, contact Liza and Lynette at SKIP Whanganui: skipwanganui@xtra.co.nz or text/ph 027 626 1404.