Helping Dyslexics to write within an hour
Even if I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a dyslexic specialist I can't help but attract many dyslexic students to help! I currently work with a range of dyslexic students from the ages of 5 to 55.
It is an absolute joy to see someone effortless write their first page in an hour. I remember only too well how hard it was for me!
Why a Diagnosis of A.S. (Aspergers) & A.D.H.D. Doesn’t Seem Right
I have had a gut feeling over the last number of years that it makes no sense to me when I am contacted to take on cases with both a diagnosis of A.S. and A.D.H.D. For me it has felt like 'oil and water don’t mix.'
Over the last 6 years I have evaluated all the new students and clients of all ages spanning 5 to 75 years. I now see many strikingly clear patterns that explain my earlier feelings logically.
The first important point is that all A.D.H.D. students, regardless of age, exhibit what I see as multiplicity. This is the ability to take in information in all 4 learning styles. I wrote an article on this in 2012 when I first saw clearly why so many of the students who come to us struggle in conventional school. They simply don’t get to learn the material in enough different ways simultaneously and they get bored! It’s worth noting that we have never had a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. in any of our learning environments and that we don’t ever see the tell tale effects of A.D.H.D. behaviour. Another scary fact is that in conventional education we start to lose multiplicity from the age of 10 and in many cases it is gone completely by 15 - without intervention. We become the linear thinking people the system has created.
http://www.purplelearning.ie/news/multiplicity-do-we-lose-it-in-the-school-system/
I recorded a short video introduction to A.D.H.D. and behavioural effects we see including Diffuse Focus™ where our attention is always being dragged away to hide what we can and cannot really do.
http://www.purplelearning.ie/news/what-add-adhd-are-really-all-about-explained-by-dr-naoise-oreilly/
So, where A.D.H.D. students show multiplicity - A.S. students are slightly more linear and show a very different set of Purple Processing Scales™. These are the scales I have developed to understand how we take in information from our world and how we process the information to retain it.
There are marked differences in the visual and auditory Purple Processing Scales™ for Dyslexia Spectrum, A.D.H.D., A.S. and so on.
I have always felt that there is a 'lost in translation' element to A.S. You ask a question and get a very different answer from the one you are expecting because the question has been interpreted completed differently.
You have never met a quiet A.D.H.D. student and you seldom meet what is viewed as a disruptive A.S. one. A.D.H.D. students tend to be remarkably good at presentation and general chat, whereas A.S. students tend to be very quiet and reserved - until they find their confidence or their subject.
Auditory learners don’t just need to learn by listening - they also have to talk out the ideas and ask endless questions - hence they are often seen as chatterboxes in school.
This means that A.D.H.D. students naturally have a form of self-expression. Whereas A.S. students, with their different Auditory profile, can lack self-expression. This is why it is so important for us to help these students to write their inner thoughts and ideas. A.S. students can be seen to have such whacky ideas that their writing is not always received well in response to conventional school work and they can lack structure. Also, A.S. students, before they gain confidence, can appear to give you the answer in the shortest number of words - which matches their confidence in speech. We have developed ways to overcome these traits very quickly. Ironically, A.S. people can go on to be amazing writers - and with certain use of their Purple Processing Profile they can learn to spell much easier than people on a pure Dyslexic spectrum! Of course, there are many people coming to us that have an Auditory Processing Disorder (A.P.D.) who are wrongly diagnosed altogether. Understanding personality of course plays a vital role in all of my work. I don't think it is possible to separate out understanding of personality and understanding of processing. You have to look at both together. This is why at all of my initial sessions I am creating a profile for both, Purple Profiling™.
So, I was correct 6 years ago - there is a world of difference between an A.S. and A.D.H.D. diagnosis and they don't have the same Purple Processing Scales™ - which I have now proven! Expression is key to all of our successes.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly, Expression Developist™.
P.S. For the record, I don't even believe that Aspergers and A.D.H.D. exist in the ways the establishment view them. My new challenge is to start debunking these areas in 2015!
CBS: San Francisco Psychology Expert Advises Students To Pick What They’re Good At
Link to C.B.S. News San Francisco Bay Area Psychology story on my work featured November 2014:
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly
Why Talking Doesn’t Change the World – What I Have Learned in 6 Years, Dr. Naoise O’Reilly
Why is it so hard to change the perceptions of dyslexia and other conditions in education?
It would be so easy if all you had to do was talk about your story or be academically brilliant to change not only how others achieve but perceptions of what they can achieve.
I have always wondered why ideas of what dyslexics can do have not changed with all the successful famous people from Jamie Oliver to Albert Einstein. If all these people had done so much before me, why was I told at 17 I could not do any of it and that going to college was and I quote, "above my status".
If only what you had done could change the perceptions of how others approach the next generation.
One of the biggest frustrations for me was it never mattered what I had done before - I was always judged at the next stage of education. So even though I got over 500 points in my leaving cert and was in the 25% of the country the year I sat it when I got to college, lecturers refused to help me with notes because "I shouldn't be there and sure what was I going to do in the future anyway" and when I got a 1st for my degree and went on to my PhD I was given a lecture on the pyramids of education in my viva as to why I didn't deserve to be there at this level. It never mattered at any level what I had done before or what others had done before me. There was still a concrete idea that I couldn't be academically successful.
But almost 6 years on since I started my own education projects to develop methods to change education I now understand why I didn't want to be a motivational speaker. Why my approach has all been about action.
In order to really change the patterns of generations and the educational blueprint that has built up over decades you have to create an experience for people. They have to feel and know the difference.
In order to be truly successful people have to experience what it is like to learn differently - they have to understand how they absorb information, how they process it and how they can be truly successful.
Yes, the methods seem very simple to me and are easily applied to all as they are universal but the crux is that they have to be applied to real people. Then for every person I help to see differently and every family that is successful or every business they will approach the next set of people in a new light. I was told recently that "you have made me look differently at my employees and I can see how they learn now" and this was from working with someone's child. But by understanding their own child in a different way now from experience they see their own employees differently. I have always thought that business had the ability to drive education and that is why I work across both sectors now.
When I set out almost 6 years ago I had three objectives:
1: Literacy and intellegnce not in the same sentence.
2: Make school more enjoyable for everyone.
3: Make companies understand how everyone works differently and stop focusing on the difference.
I guess I have added a 4th one - to make everyone successful.
Almost 6 years on I have a set of methods to apply universally to the whole world to do just this - but it'll never be about me just talking about them. It's all about making as many people as possible experience something new that will gradually change the world over time. You can never go back once you have looked at people in a new light. You can never expect a dyslexic to be defined by their reading age once you have seen them get 9 out of 10 in the spelling test or 44 out 45 in the maths test. You now expect them to achieve academically and in life.
I have never been one for talking about what I'm going to do - I always just did it and now I understand why that action changes the blueprint for the future.
I'm an expression developist now because I express myself often but I give this ability to others too.
Dr. Naoisé O'Reilly.
See-Saw Learning™
- See-Saw Learning
This is why I keep our students doing a "play" program over the summer. There is no point undoing all the progress they have made in a few sort weeks of holidays!
