Normal, Average, and Foxy Business

Or Coming out - Epilogue


February 2010 has started much milder than the end of 2009 and January 2010. I woke up yesterday morning to the sight of a pheasant going about his pheasanty business on the green that my bedroom window overlooks. Spring may be coming.

I often see pheasants there on weekend mornings, and more often than not I actually see several of them together, the most was last spring when seven of them (hens and cocks) were inspecting the green for over an hour. This is one reason I opted to live on the edge of a village rather than in the Big City: I looking at the spread of miles and miles of countryside from my sitting room, I like the sight of greenery, of fields, of trees as I commute morning and evening – during at least 8 months of the year, as in the dead of winter leaving and returning in the dark is unfortunately my lot.

But January did not want to let go of its reputation for coldest month ever. The last weekend of it offered nights with a sharpness that reminded us Winter was not gone or dead and buried yet! Thus Sunday morning found my village encased in a thick crust of frost that did not melt until well after noon.

Though I do not like mornings, I love weekend mornings, when I can laze in bed with a book and a large pot of coffee, leisurely feasting on both. So there I was mid-morning last Sunday when, as I refilled my jumbo cup, I looked out the window to check on the frost, and I saw this:

He took his time, patrolling the green in a seemingly systematic way, probably picking up scents, trails, and proof of various prey’s activities.


Being in the country, this should not have surprised me. Yet it did: though as I said I have often seen pheasants in this same spot, this is the first time I have witnessed a fox there. Because, contrary to what we may think, foxes do not particularly like the country. They much prefer cities. In fact the highest concentration of fox population in Ireland is in Dublin. In particular they are found in the greatest numbers in very specific areas of the city, where there is plenty of food to scavenge and lots of large gardens with hedges and bushes to hide in.

So what we think as “normal” (e.g. foxes live in the countryside, there is no wildlife in the cities) is very much a false premise. How many such thoughts of Normality are erroneous? Do we confuse “Normal” with “Expected”, or do we confuse “Normal” with “Average”?

Some months ago I found myself spending some time with a group of people with various types of disabilities, and we came to discuss the perception of Disability, and then moved on to what is a “normal” person. One man there reported on a simple study that for him had put a lot of things into perspective. I do not have all the precise details of this study, nor who carried it out, etc... So what follows does not purport to be highly scientific. However what I remember is this: the study took 100 “normal” people, e.g. representing a cross-section of society and not claiming to have any disability. They were asked 7 simple questions concerning daily tasks, such as for example “Can you read or drive without the assistance of aids such as glasses or contact lenses?” – meaning: do you have “normal” vision? Anyone who answered NO to any one of the seven questions was directed to one corner of the room, the others who answered YES to all seven questions were sent to another corner. Once all 100 people were thus questioned, the YES corner had an impressive total of... two.

Just two people were “normal”, the other 98 needed the aid or assistance of an implement or a devise of some sort to carrying out at least one daily task we all take for granted. This truly puts the notion of “normality” into perspective. And it brought me to wonder if what we call “normal” shouldn’t be redefined as “average”. Take vision: if we expect most people to have “normal” vision: e.g. to see near and far without the need for any assistance; If on average 50% of people can read without glasses, and if on average 50% of people can drive without them, how many require glasses in neither case? Logically, it could well be 25%. This minority becomes the norm. Our society is constructed on our perception of The Norm, on averages that we conveniently forget to combine.

The over-use of “the average person” has brought us such spread of aberrations as:
- exam marking-schemes (retaining zillions of one-liner facts and figures and regurgitating them at lighting writing-speed can favour only one type of student),
- fashion ideals (in reality, how many people look with those models?),
- slip-screen TV programmes - ask someone who is dyslexic to follow a news report while simultaneously reading the name of the interviewee with all his credentials in one corner of the screen and important facts bearing value to the interview at the bottom of it, both going at different speeds, and his or her reaction you may help you to understand what I am talking about.

I never considered myself “abnormal”. However I no longer consider myself “normal”. I see me as me. I still would not advertise in a working environment my reading / writing / sequencing / retaining-information peculiarities, but I have been much more at ease with them in the last year or so. And when it comes down to it, Dyslexia is only one aspect, along with other facets of myself, of what makes me... me ;-)

As Elbog mentioned in his comment to my last post, Cathal’s diagnostic has certainly shifted my perceptive on what I may view as The Norm, to an extent that I often stop myself, as I am about to utter what I would have previously thought of as the truth, and soften my thought by rephrasing it. In fact, the word “normal” is on the endangered-words list of my vocabulary. When trying to “educate” people around me I never say “normal children do this, or have that, where as children with DS...” Instead I say “Children with DS tend to... and children who do not have DS tend to...”


Shift.

Like foxes thriving in cities.

Coming Out? Chapter Two

I recently learnt that John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, e.g. one of the world top business people, belongs to my club as me, and has apparently been very open about it. This got me thinking. A little research later, and I realised that a large number of business people are also members, such as, but to name a few, Richard Branson (of the Virgin Airline and Virgin TV fame), the Naked Chef himself Jamie Oliver, and Ingvar Kamprad (who?... actually, he is the founder of Ikea). In short, people we would consider to be successful.

But this club is not only for business people. “Great” thinkers, writers and painters can also be found: Hans Christian Anderson, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso. Quite a lot of artists and media people of all types as well – ok, I’ll drop names again, all in a tumble: Anthony Hopkins, John Irving, John de Lancie, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Noel Gallagher, Jay Leno, Ozzy Osbourne, Keanu Reeves, Guy Ritchie. And sports people as well, for example Jackie Stewart (had to slip in someone connected with Formula One here, could not resist). And I remember hearing a couple of years ago an interview with one of our Boyz, namely Shane Lynch, where he said he is one of us too.

I am not saying that I feel proud to be associated with every one of these people, some I would certainly not describe myself as a fan of. However this list is interesting as it shows that our club encompasses all walks of life, all levels of intellect, both genders, and overall between 5 to 7% of the population. Our club is Dyslexia.



The Dyslexia Association of Ireland defines dyslexia as follows:

Dyslexia is manifested in a continuum of specific learning difficulties related to the acquisition of basic skills in reading, spelling and/or writing, such difficulties being unexplained in relation to an individual's other abilities and educational experiences. Dyslexia can be described at the neurological, cognitive and behavioural levels. It is typically characterised by inefficient information processing, including difficulties in phonological processing, working memory, rapid naming and automaticity of basic skills. Difficulties in organisation, sequencing and motor skills may also be present.


Another definition I found states:

Specific developmental dyslexia is a disorder manifested by difficulty learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and adequate sociocultural opportunity... Dyslexia is diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence.



So how did it manifest itself for me?

As a child learning to read and write, the first problem I remember (I may have encountered others before this, but I simply do not remember) was not understanding why my teacher kept giving out to me while pointing out mistakes in my spelling: I simply could not see them. Even though I knew the difference between b and d, between m and n, between p and q, when I read them as part of a printed word, each pair got all mixed up when it came to writing them down, and then reading back what I had written. I simply could not see the difference. Similarly, I could correctly write a c or an s, a g or a j, but could not “speak” the difference within each pair when spelling out aloud – this is still with me now, I always have to stop and think; the fact that the sounds of the letters g and j are inverted between English and French makes it even harder for me. The other thing that caused me major difficulties was reading aloud. Even though I remember learning to read fairly quickly, it was fine as long as it was “in my head”. This to a point that by the age of 8 I used to go down to the public library several times a week, and take out the maximum number of books allowed, all the while reading my own books at home over and over again. But once asked to do read aloud, stumbling or coming up with different words than those on paper were the norm. I remember my frustration as I knew I could read but could not prove it, and the sense of ridicule as I was forced to struggle in front of the class in school.

Apart from my appallingly bad hand writing (described as “spider-feet” while in primary school, and it is still pretty awful), my spelling remained incredibly messy, and uneven; by this I mean that I would rarely repeat the same mistake twice, it just seemed to strike at random. While I was growing up, the French education system had a great scoring system for spelling: the children were given a dictation, marked over 20 points, and either one point or half a point was deducted for every mistake, depending on its “severity” (I kid you not!). I remember my mother being told by a teacher, in front of me – I was by then in secondary school so probably about 11 or 12 – that I had achieved her overall record of minus 25 over 20! How about that for confidence-building? Would not consistently reaching zero have been enough to show there was a problem?

Retaining information, learning texts by heart, or dates, or names, or simply learning my “tables” (multiplication, etc...) were particularly difficult – there goes the sequencing bit. The written and the oral did not connect. A link was missing somewhere. When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was finally diagnosed and directed toward a lovely woman who taught me to read, to write, to spell, to manage numbers, from scratch. She gave me little tricks, so simple yet so valuable that I have totally integrated them. She did her job so well that I could not actually explain now what most of these tricks are or how they work, because they have become part of my way of thinking and of handling written language. What I know is that reading aloud has been, and still is, a major problem, especially if I have not seen the text before – and by this I mean not seen EVER, or not seen in the last 10 minutes, depending on the day. This can be a great source of anxiety, striking at the most unexpected time. Yet I know that, if I slow down, if I breathe in and out as I read, if I focus on each word instead of the whole sentence, I’ll do it, and no one will ever know. And if I trip, well, I trip and that is that!

The other thing is that the advent of computers, word processors, spell-check, etc… has greatly helped my writing. I am not sure how or why, but I know that I find it much easier to type than to write long-hand, and that it easier for me to spot where things go wrong when it’s on a screen or a printout than my long hand. To a point where I came to wonder if I was “still” dyslexic. Until I took a very simple (even simplistic) little test I found on the Dyslexia Association of Ireland website, a test directed at adults. Here it is, with my answers:


“The following is a list of questions for any adult who thinks she/he may be dyslexic.

• Do you dislike reading aloud? YES, YES, YES.
• Is reading new material difficult? YES.
• Does it take you a long time to read a book? YES, though I do read a lot.
• Do you sometimes pronounce words incorrectly? YES, YES, YES. In both languages!
• Do you have problems with spelling? YES, though it’s not as bad for me in English as it is in French. But when one word is similar in both languages but not quite, I struggle, big time, and can end up with a new word combining both spellings.
• Did you have difficulty at school and did you do less well in written exams than you feel you should have? OH YES, oral exams were always so much easier... as long as I did not have to read aloud, of course!
• Do you find it hard to write letters, reports, or even to take phone messages clearly? LETTERS AND REPORTS NO, BUT PHONE MESSAGES: YES! If given a name or phone number, I always need to get the person to slow down, I repeat the letters or digits as they are given to me, to buy me time to process (one of my little tricks, apparently). But if someone leaves a message on my voice mail with a number, I have found myself listening 6, 7 or even 8 times to ensure I have it, and have it right, because I can take down only a couple of digits at a time… bloody nuisance!
• Do you have problems with sentence construction and punctuation? NO! Hmmm! ;-)
• Do you get phone numbers wrong? YES, YES, YES.
• Do you confuse 'left' and 'right'? YES, AND TUESDAY WITH THURSDAY, AND WEDNESDAY WITH FRIDAY, ETC… (Different days in French!)
• Is your handwriting hard to read? That is an understatement. If I do not focus on my writing, not only others can’t read me, but I can barely read myself at times!
• Do you find it hard to see the mistakes you have made in written work? OH YES, especially if hand-written!
• Do you have 'good' days and 'bad' days? DEFINITELY! Some days are a real struggle. And tiredness makes it worse because of lack of focus.
• Do you find it hard to remember things in sequence? YES!
• Do you find it hard to remember new facts, names, etc? YES, YES, YES.
• Do you get confused with times and dates? BIG TIME! ;-)
• Did you find it hard to learn by 'ordinary' teaching methods? NOT SURE WHAT IS MEANT HERE. What I know is that I must write down EVERY THING, every scrap of information that I know I need to retain. Then I know where I have filed the document it’s rewritten on (hard or soft copy), and can retrieve it easily when needed, again and again until it sinks in – another little trick!
• Do you forget quickly rather than learn slowly? ABSOLUTELY! This is probably why I could never cram for any exam I took, and God knows I sat quite a few over the years! Learning has always been a long haul process, with a lot of repetition, a lot of going over things, until things do sink in and stay there. And I am taking about facts to be learnt and retained here, rather than logical processes or cause-and-consequence type of information (these have never been a problem). Last minute of scanning through something has always been useless, as the information is gone almost as soon as it came in. To this day, I prepare for important things like meetings, presentations, etc... as far in advance as I can, to go back over as much as possible.
• Does someone else in your family have similar learning problems? APPARENTLY YES.

Many people will say yes to some of these questions. Some people will say yes to many of them. Counting up, my answers are “YES” to 18 out of 19 questions. I am not saying this is an absolute diagnostic, but… I would call it confirmation of an earlier one. Any doubt I may have harboured has been dispelled, I “still” am!



I have generally not publicised my dyslexia. Since my bag of tricks has enabled me to function pretty well for years, there is no need to highlight it. I get by very well without revealing it, especially in a work situation. It is probably also due to the fact that I feel I would appear “different”, that people may not understand that I can do every thing I am supposed to do, that it does not “handicap” me. Down to the point, I feel that the perception others have of me would change if they knew. In short, I am probably prejudiced against myself.

Learning of the numerous members of my club as I listed above, some of whom I do truly admire (but I won’t name them, that would be telling too much for today!), showed me it is one diagnostic, like another, it does not reflect on me as a person, or on what I can or cannot do. So reading and spelling may be a difficulty for me? This does not stop me from having a love of words, a love of the written form of language. So remembering names and numbers, facts and figures may cause me a little hassle? This does not stop me from being pretty good at what I do, no matter what it is, if I may say so myself (blowing my own trumpet, etc...). So reading aloud is not my forte? Ah, but a lot of other things are...! The big question is: How do people see Dyslexia? How would an employer consider a prospective employee if it is written on the CV as one of the “talents” or “achievements”? Because I consider my adapting to a world so dominated by the written word, and adapting so well, as one of my biggest achievements. Do we talk enough about it, dispel the myths? I am very conscious that my own silence has been contributing to maintaining them all these years.

Having said this, I find reassuring the fact that it is a spectrum, it confirms they are variations between people, and even within me from day to day. Strangely enough, doing the little test above, researching Dyslexia in the last while, has actually got me thinking that someone working with me may also be on this spectrum, as some signs are unquestionably and repeatedly showing. So I have been wondering if I should start stepping out a little, at least with this person. You know, recognition and all that. Something to ponder upon...

Because every one of us is different. We each have our own way of processing information, of processing our thoughts, and of using the talents we have and the skills we have acquired. As long as we can communicate, in an effective manner (e.g. the message I send is received as intended, and vis-versa), then the way we do it is in essence not relevant.



Just one thing in conclusion: if I leave a comment on a blog every now and then, as I know I have done, where the words don’t seem to make much sense, where “typos” go a little over the top, please do not think that I was typing while under the influence of some alcoholic beverage or some funny pills. No! No such luck!

Just be patient with me. It simply means that I am having a bad day, or a bad hour, and that I did not use my “safety net”: I rushed in and typed the comment straight into the comment box, instead of taking time to draft it on a Word document first, checking it out thoroughly, and then copying and pasting... Goodness! All my secrets are out now!