Dyslexia - a modern disease?

[fastfreddy]

It seems as though dyslexia can be blamed for almost anything these days...

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-237...

From bad spelling to incorrectly quoting important statistics, it seems.

Was this always the case? I seem to remember a time when dyslexia was known about but not used as an excuse, as it seems to be now. Or am I being harsh and unfeeling?

[Tadite]

I'm dyslexic. In all honesty whenever I read anything written prior to standardized spelling I wonder how much the seeming random spelling of words in those days was caused by dyslexia.

Not that it is the end of the world. The computer age has really changed the life of a lot of people.... thank god for spell check.

..

now if the damn grammar check worked better!

[Don1]

No, I've had it for 33 years now....

[posterboy]

tnuc!

[voyds9]

It seems dyslexia also creates an inability to press the erase button.

He gets mixed up in question and answer sessions, what a great MP.

[OnTheOverrun]

I used to have a guy work for me who was dyslexic and he used it as an excuse not to do certain reports and spreadsheets. Oddly enough he was always the first one to spot even the tiniest mistake on his payslip.

[Monki]

It is definately used as an excuse by a lot of people. At uni I remember a lot of students paying for a "dyslexia test" so they could have extra time on exam papers

Sadly the frauds cause issues for genuine sufferers. I have the same issue as a result of migraines

[hidetheelephants]

I suspect that in reality all this guy suffers from is being a complete cock. BNP, UKIP for cretins.

[Kermit power]

My completely uninformed belief is that is certainly exists, but rather like back pain, for every genuine sufferer, there's a dozen or more fraudsters and malingerers.

[stigmundfreud]

its an excuse for lazy people to give themselves a reason for being thick. Huge difference between dyslexia and illiteracy

ADHD
etc etc

all the same

[hidetheelephants]

stigmundfreud said:

its an excuse for lazy people to give themselves a reason for being thick. Huge difference between dyslexia and illiteracy

ADHD
etc etc

all the same

The excuse du jour for morons to explain away the fact that, rather than doing that laborious parenting thing, have carried the 'laissez faire' concept to it's conclusion and have 'raised' what are in reality feral children. At this point, does considering mass sterilisation make me a nazi?

[stigmundfreud]

Nein

[raf_gti]

Genuine question but what is the difference between being dyslexic and crap at reading/writing?

[stigmundfreud]

raf_gti said:

Genuine question but what is the difference between being dyslexic and crap at reading/writing?

in the past, a st load. These days fk all

[raf_gti]

stigmundfreud said:

raf_gti said:

Genuine question but what is the difference between being dyslexic and crap at reading/writing?

in the past, a st load. These days fk all

Tell me about it, I went to join the RAC all these years ago and look where I ended up..

[EINSIGN]

Myself and my daughter were both diagnosed not so long ago. With coloured glass lenses (like Ozzy Osborne) we have both now improved.

I do think its generally all bks and used an excuse for a lot of things, including just being stupid, but there is a lot to be said for having your eyes tested by an expert such as http://www.jordanseyes.com/page10.htm

I failed at school miserably because I just couldn’t take the info in at an early age. Ended up being much better than most people in other areas. Now run a couple of quite successful businesses.

Various famous people are said to have it: http://www.dyslexia-test.com/famous.html

Ps. This posting was typed and checked in MS Word a couple of times first…

[colonel c]

OnTheOverrun said:

I used to have a guy work for me who was dyslexic and he used it as an excuse not to do certain reports and spreadsheets. Oddly enough he was always the first one to spot even the tiniest mistake on his payslip.

They told my parents that I was lazy at primary school because I could answer questions verbally but not write them down. I was even accused of cheating in maths because I could not show working out. (i did the arithmetic in my head).

Dyslexia was not widely recognized in those days. So I went through school branded as thick and lazy.
Dyslexia or perhaps the lack of understand of it has ruined much of my life.

Quite likely your college had real difficulty with certain aspects of his work.
I know that I still can't fill an A4 sheet with hand writing. Without a spell checker I'd be sunk before finishing the first line and you probally would not be able to read my handwriting by the end of the second. I's a real handicap.
However I wold have no difficulty spotting an error in my wage slip.

[Police State]

stigmundfreud said:

its an excuse for lazy people to give themselves a reason for being thick. Huge difference between dyslexia and illiteracy

ADHD
etc etc

all the same

ADHD is real, as is Dyslexia; but I agree with what I think you are trying to say... that a lot of people use it as an excuse for their children's behaviour. But you can't lump them all together and dismiss them with etc, etc.

[deevlash]

No doctor in the world can give any actual distinct symptoms for dyslexia. This video is very enlightening;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6031033294...
Its just a reading disability, it apparently requires intensive reading therapy at a young age to sort. All the crap about free laptops and yellow tinted glasses etc is nonsense. Turns out, shock horror, that some folk are just thick, although mummy and daddy wont like to admit that and the convenient "johnny isnt thick, hes dyslexic" thing is trotted out.

It seems that the whole dyslexia propoganda myth lets kids be labelled as "dyslexic" and that they'll have to love it with for life which is counter productive to actually helping out kids who are just a bit slow to start out with.

[OnTheOverrun]

colonel c said:

OnTheOverrun said:

I used to have a guy work for me who was dyslexic and he used it as an excuse not to do certain reports and spreadsheets. Oddly enough he was always the first one to spot even the tiniest mistake on his payslip.

They told my parents that I was lazy at primary school because I could answer questions verbally but not write them down. I was even accused of cheating in maths because I could not show working out. (i did the arithmetic in my head).

Dyslexia was not widely recognized in those days. So I went through school branded as thick and lazy.
Dyslexia or perhaps the lack of understand of it has ruined much of my life.

Quite likely your college had real difficulty with certain aspects of his work.
I know that I still can't fill an A4 sheet with hand writing. Without a spell checker I'd be sunk before finishing the first line and you probally would not be able to read my handwriting by the end of the second. I's a real handicap.
However I wold have no difficulty spotting an error in my wage slip.

No, this guy was just taking the piss and I ended up having to fire him when he started getting his expenses wrong, always hugely in his favour.