A Story That Celebrates How What Makes Us Different Can Also Be Our Strength
Anthony Carroll, who goes by the nickname “Harries,” has made a name for himself and even become a celebrity for his talent and skills as a lifeguard. In his new picture book, he tells the story of how, as a child, he was bullied and made fun of for not being able to read or write. He is dyslexic.
Harries is a lifeguard on the world-famous Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia and has been a series regular on Bondi Rescue, anunscripted TV series, since its beginning 19 years ago. He has been a lifeguard for nearly 30 years and has rescued an estimated 6,000 people in that time, many of those rescues documented in Bondi Rescue.
Behind his popularity as an adult celebrity, is a child that felt out-of-place and left out because he struggled with reading and writing. Harries wasn’t able to write his own name until he was in third grade. He was discouraged when people told him he had a disability. While he struggled with school, he found that he had natural talents that he could explore. He became a fast swimmer and record-holding surfer. As an adult, when he began lifeguarding, he found that his spatial awareness and quick reflexes helped him to save lives every day. After decades lifeguarding, he has honed those talents so that he can tell if a weather change will create dangerous conditions or where a cry for help is coming from.
“Everyone has something special to offer this world,” Harries says. “Sometimes we need to search a little deeper to find whatever that gift might be.”
Harries wanted to write a picture book for kids who are struggling the way he struggled as a child. With the help of his wife Emily, who cowrote the book as he still struggles with writing, Harries’ mission is to demonstrate the power of staying positive and looking forward to find your special place in the world. He also wants to encourage kids to be accepting of others and to appreciate the differences in other people while embracing their own unique talents.
In his inspiring story, Harries wants to make clear that he sees his dyslexia as an asset in saving lives. What made it hard for him to learn to read and write are skills that help him be the best lifeguard he can be.
Book information:
Harries: The lifeguard from Bondi Beach ISBN: 9781923011205 Price: $19.99 USD | $24.99 CAD Ages: 5 to 9 Available wherever books are sold
Today, ubiquitous unsavory incentives and unnecessary diversions steal away beautiful memory-making family times. Have some of your long-trusted family ties seemed to vanish? Have you entered what sometimes feels like an inescapable revolving door? Have you felt alone and bewildered in this whirlwind world? Have you lost time to read classic literature together or to study the holy scriptures, worship, or pray? Have you noticed others who seem to be reflecting your same experiences?
Distracted moments turn into lost hours and lost days. Blink twice and the precious ones here today are gone tomorrow. Do you need a nurturing and confidence-building approach to bond with your cherished children? Are you looking for a way to get back on track to champion their thoughts, beliefs, and dreams and to be their most trusted, but silent and unnoticed, mentor?
Answers may be nearer than you think. Have you given space in your life and in your abode for precious pets? If so, then good luck is just around the next corner and is hastening to help. Indeed, soon your dogs or cats or rabbits will be scampering in or your ponies or horses will be galloping forth as silent helpers. Well, sometimes they aren’t so silent. Nevertheless, as I said in Writing about Your Pets #1, to encourage parents, homeschoolers, and teachers to bond with their ’tweens and teens, “Pets, in a way, are our greatest teachers. Write about how your pets are happy just to be with you. To sit with you in silence, to ride along with you, to walk or run with you, or to play with no regrets about yesterday and no frets about tomorrow—that’s your happy pet modeling the beautiful concept of living in the moment.”
Undeniably, pets gratefully accept whatever moments are given to them. They do not toss away today with worries. Neither do they throw away tomorrow with negative thoughts. Pets are like enlightened teachers, who have studied far and wide and have learned to guide us by their honest words, good works, noble intentions, and honorable traditions. As we care for our pets, they not only demonstrate how to live in the moment, but also they show us unconditional love which is a mostly missing commodity on planet Earth.
So, if you and your pre-teens or teens share a common bond that treasures your pets, then let your pets, their antics, behaviors, characteristics, and daily habits become the topics for fun writing adventures that you can share. Writing about Your Pets #1 offers a bountiful array of writing prompts, questions, suggestions, and ideas to help you get started. Enjoy a quiet time together, for just a bit each evening, or as often as possible, to select a topic that your young writers-in-the-making choose to tackle. Chat about the many ways to explore and conquer each chosen prompt. Make sure your ’tweens or teens feel heard and seen and adored and can go away, with your blessing, to write until their hearts are content. On your next evening, or earliest chance, listen with complete attention while your young writer reads aloud the masterpiece composed the night before.
Soon, you will find that your confidence-boosting and thought-provoking times together become better and better. In fact, you can help your young writers to sort through and solve any worries, challenges, or threats that they may have needed to tell you about earlier but felt you had no time for them. Now, with a renewed trust in you, they can adopt you as a quiet, unseen mentor. They will feel empowered.
Getting families together, in the short term, to share a meeting of minds to recognize and vanquish current problems and to prevent possible oncoming perils is a major objective of Writing about Your Pets #1: Questions & Prompts for ’Tweens, Teens & Beyond. Beyond that effort, an even more important goal is to go forward to help build the habit of creating time to read, to be aware of the potential perils that may challenge the young and their families, and to find answers together that can serve your spirits in good stead in spite of the sometimes distracting, disenchanting, and disorienting times of today.
I admire all pets; and through the years I have shared home and hearth with a menagerie of dogs, cats, rabbits, canaries, parakeets, guppies, goldfish, colorful tropical fishes of many species, and turtles. In addition, I treasured my precious maternal and paternal grandfathers for their care of animals—my maternal grandfather’s glorious golden palominos, herds of dairy cattle, abundant turkeys, and other well-cared for farm animals and my paternal grandfather’s well-treated cattle, wealth of chickens, and other farm animals, as well. Also, just so you will know, the smart and cuddly cat, who appears on the Pets #1 cover sat in my lap and helped to calm the rush of time and constant distractions, so that I finally could share these words with you. I truly hope my heartfelt words voiced here and in Pets #1 can bring good tidings all across our world with their sincere hope for peace and better times to come.
Linda Davis-Kyle, of WritingNow.com, is an internationally published health and fitness and general interest writer who has been published in Canada, the United States, the Netherlands Antilles, Ireland, England, Bulgaria, South Africa, Bahrain, Qatar, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand in professional journals such as Modern Drama in Canada, Bulletin of Bibliography in Great Britain, Caritas in Ireland, and Studies in English Literature in Japan and in award-winning publications such as Chem Matters, Martial Arts Training, WellBeing, and World Travel Magazine.
Today, we dive into something deeply personal and incredibly important: the latest children’s book by Olivia Von Holt, “Words Tangled.” This narrative is not just another book; it stands as a beacon of hope and a tool for empowerment, especially for young readers navigating the challenging waves of dyslexia.
The Heart of “Words Tangled”
Crafted from Olivia’s own experiences, “Words Tangled” portrays the journey of a young girl growing up in two different cultures while grappling with dyslexia. This book aims to provide more than just a story; it’s designed as a strategic aid to help children and their caregivers understand and manage learning disabilities.
Why This Book Matters for Dyslexics
Dyslexia, a language-based learning disability, significantly impacts reading, writing, and spelling. Those with dyslexia often struggle with phonological processing, making it difficult to decode words, which affects their reading fluency and comprehension. “Words Tangled” introduces characters and scenarios that resonate with these challenges, making the invisible hurdles of dyslexia visible and comprehensible.
Tools and Motivation Embedded in the Story
A core element of Olivia Von Holt’s “Words Tangled” is the integration of multi-sensory learning strategies, which are crucial for readers with dyslexia. These multi-sensory teaching methods involve using sight, sound, and touch to help connect language to words, benefiting those who struggle with traditional reading methods. This approach aligns with educational strategies that emphasize engaging multiple senses to enhance learning and retention for children with dyslexia.
Overall, “Words Tangled” by Olivia Von Holt is more than just a book; it’s a journey and a tool designed to inspire, educate, and support not only children with dyslexia but also parents, educators, and anyone involved in nurturing challenged readers. By sharing personal experiences and expert insights, Olivia aims to empower and equip her readers with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed and thrive despite their learning differences.
For those interested in exploring more or purchasing “Words Tangled,” it is available on Amazon and directly from Olivia’s website at www.oliviavonholt.com. For further inquiries, Olivia can be contacted at [email protected], and for more interactive updates, follow her on Facebook. Join Olivia Von Holt in spreading the word and making a difference. Let’s open the world of reading to all children, showing them that with the right tools and understanding, every page is within reach.
The Dragon Defenders series of five middle-grade novels underwent its worldwide release on Amazon in February this year, with an overhaul of its text to make it dyslexia-friendly. In New Zealand, where author James Russell resides, the Dragon Defenders series is something of a phenomenon, outselling many of the major children’s book franchises. Over 50,000 copies have been sold in a country where just 5000 books constitute best-sellers. The books are unique in that they include digital content with the use of an app. Readers download the free app AR Reads (AR stands for ‘augmented reality’) from the App Store or Google Play onto any device.
In each of the Dragon Defenders novels, there are four or five pages where readers can use the app – marked with a symbol of a tablet or a phone at the bottom. Readers point their device at that page, and the digital content is unlocked. It may be that a code is cracked before the reader’s eyes, or a video plays a message from the bad guy. It can be a 2D or 3D animation, a news story, or a simple audio file where the user overhears a telephone conversation.
“No one had seen anything like it before,” says Russell. “It was intended as a bit of fun, but then something amazing happened. I started to receive a huge amount of emails from parents saying it was incredibly effective with their reluctant readers; the augmented reality was drawing them through the book.” Many of those emails came from parents whose children were dyslexic, and they were overjoyed to see their children voluntarily reading for pleasure.
View of the AR app in use
“I knew nothing about dyslexia,” says Russell. “Then, our son was diagnosed, and suddenly a whole world was revealed. A chance meeting with a dyslexia advocate in a library in Christchurch led to my learning about the types of fonts, spacing, kerning, and justification that make reading more accessible for dyslexic children and adults. My first thought was: why isn’t this universal, used everywhere, widely known? It’s the very definition of a no-brainer.” Russell sought advice from specialists and made the changes to his Dragon Defenders series so that when they were released onto the global platform, they were immediately accessible to those readers.
They’re also available on Kindle, and Russell was delighted to find that the app works just as well on e-reader screens.
Most folks today don’t write in cursive. Some people never even pick up a pen or pencil. Writing in cursive has become rare — yet reading cursive remains an important life skill, whenever:
family members still use cursive, or even send greeting cards that use cursive fonts:
teachers use cursive, or assign work that involves reading historical documents in their original form:
employers, supervisors, or co-workers use cursive:
store signs or logos use cursive:
Today, more and more children and adults — with and without disabilities — cannot read cursive handwriting, or can only partially and laboriously figure out a word or sentence in cursive, even if the cursive writing is clear and error-free (which is often not the case). These difficulties occur at all educational and socioeconomic levels.
In the USA, Canada, India, and many other countries, non-readers of cursive include most people 35 and under, as well as a surprising number of older adults who have often managed to hide this problem throughout life.
Worse yet, today’s millions of “cursive non-readers” (with or without disabilities) aren’t limited to those who were simply never taught cursive.
Even when conventional cursive training actually does lead to reading (and writing) cursive, those “successful” learners often lose the ability sometime between the year that they are taught cursive (typically Grade 2 or 3) and the year that they leave high school.
This situation was profiled in 2013 by one of Canada’s largest newspapers. The cursive non-readers whom that article were college freshmen. By now, almost eight years later, they must be in their mid-twenties: they have jobs, or are trying to get jobs, and probably some of them have families. (How will cursive non-readers help their children, if the school or the district or other administration mandates cursive instruction?)
Forgetting how to decipher cursive (or never learning how to decipher it in the first place) can happen anyone — but it more severely impacts people with dyslexia, autism, and other neurological differences that affect how we perceive and process the data that our senses provide.
People with various neurological differences (autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and more) are often very good at looking for patterns — and are extremely good at seeing patterns in the surrounding environment, without ever even having to look for the patterns! The patterns, especially visual patterns, simply jump out as them — or, I should say, simply jump out at us (because I have several of these “dys-”abilities). Therefore, we use visual patterns to try to make sense of what we are trying to learn — and we learn best when we are encouraged to use visual patterns.
However, students who encounter cursive are often discouraged from even trying to wonder if there are visual relations between the cursive letters and their printed counterparts. The two systems of writing, appear unrelated to each other:
Since it looks as if there is no relationship between most cursive letters and their printed counterparts, many learners frustratedly give up on even trying to use their visual/pattern-recognition strengths to “crack the code” of cursive. When the visual/pattern-recognition strengths of a learner’s brain are suddenly made useless, he or she may feel that his/her brain has stopped working and can no longer be trusted. (Such a learner may be said to have “form constancy issues.”)
Unfortunately, well-meaning parents and schoolteachers may accidentally push learners even further in that direction, by trying to reassure frustrated learners of cursive that “there is really no relationship between cursive and printing anyway, so don’t even bother trying to see a relationship or a reason or an explanation. Don’t even think that there could be a relationship between one style of letter and another. There is no relationship, nothing to find, is nothing to understand, so just memorize, don’t worry, and you’ll pick it up just fine, I’m sure.”
However, “just memorizing” (without understanding) is an extremely fragile and worrisome way of trying to learn and remember. What is memorized without comprehension is quickly forgotten, as soon as lessons are over — Especially in modern times, when fewer and fewer people write cursive (or even write by hand at all) in life after school the liabilities of “just memorizing” hold true for most people, to some degree — but they almost always hold true, to a huge degree, for people whose neurology differs significantly from the average.
When learners are told that “there is no reason, only memorization,” and when they experience no way of fully understanding the material that they must memorize , they lose trust in their own ability to even try to learn and understand: at a basic rote-memory level, and/or at any other level.
This is especially true when the subject is cursive handwriting, because — for many students learning cursive — the cursive textbook is typically the only textbook that is full of assigned material which they cannot read (although it is in their own language), but must still copy.
One part of the visual skills/form constancy problem is that the shapes of cursive letters are often inconsistent from word to word, in ways that can make words very hard to recognize.
Look at these cursive words:
In both words, the third letter is a cursive s — but the “same” cursive s is very different each time:
A learner who has memorized the cursive s in past (where it needs to start at the bottom) is likely not to recognize the “same” cursive s in post (where it needs to start at the top):
For any learner — but especially for one whose neurology is not the “average” that textbook publishers assume — all this can deeply shatter confidence and motivation.
Does it have to be this way?
Can we make cursive make sense to all learners — even if they don’t write cursive, or if they don’t write by hand at all?
What if we showed our learners how cursive happened?
A new book, READ CURSIVE FAST (National Autism Resources, 2021), takes this approach: offering three easy stages to lasting cognitive comprehension (not just fragile rote memorization) of what makes a cursive letter a G or a Z or an r or an s — and why. Now, learners’ visual strengths, pattern-recognition strengths, and cognitive strengths can work in synchrony instead of being neglected or frustrated,
Step One: Show how cursive letters happened!
When readers are allowed and encouraged to learn how cursive letters came about, remembering the cursive shapes makes cognitive/pattern-recognition sense, and does not have to rely solely on rote memory. Here’s an example for the letter G:
READ CURSIVE FAST uses a pattern-recognition/cognitive approach to “unlock” the visuals of every cursive letter. Some letters need to be cracked in step-by-step detail, while others can be “cracked” more simply:
When you see the print-style s hiding inside cursive s, you can see why the cursive s looks different after lowercase o versus the way it looks after lowercase a.
Building pattern recognition and understanding into the learning task makes for faster progress and greater retention, by providing another route to comprehension. Cursive writing is not the only path to cursive reading — for many students, it is not even a reliable path.
Step Two: Sustained Reading
Once students recognize cursive letters alone and in words and phrases, it’s time to build automaticity and fluency with longer texts. To accomplish this, READ CURSIVE FAST uses “cursive stories”: passages written in fonts that resemble increasingly difficult styles of handwriting. Here is the opening of one story:
___________________________________________
(The first four sentences of a cursive story from READ CURSIVE FAST.)
___________________________________________
The beginning of each story resembles familiar printed letters, but each sentence adds more and more cursive features, carefully easing readers into understanding increasingly complex forms of cursive.
Step Three: Reading Historical Documents
Once students can read present-day cursive with some fluency, they will eventually want or need to read our nation’s historical documents, many of which are written in very elaborate forms of cursive.
Today, reading historical documents is one of the most frequent reasons for needing to read cursive, but handwriting style variations in past centuries were even more frequent than they are today. This means that most students (particularly those with neurological issues) will benefit from practice with historical cursive samples once they are experienced in reading present-day cursive samples.
Therefore, READ CURSIVE FAST includes a section specifically on historical documents. Learners reach this point are usually pleased and amazed that they can now read historical material.
When we know how each cursive letter happened, we know (and we never forget) what makes the letter understandable. Whatever our own handwriting looks like, whatever style we use, or even if we never write by hand at all, we can make sense of every cursive letter we are shown what parts of a cursive letter make that letter make sense.
When cursive letters make sense, we do not need to write cursive in order to read it.
When we make sense of the interrelations of different alphabet styles — print and cursive and more — handwriting becomes …
As the author of READ CURSIVE FAST, I look forward to seeing and hearing your own experiences and thoughts on cursive reading issues.
“Half of the incoming freshmen at our business schools are now being required to take a basic course in writing because they cannot write a presentable letter, report, or proposal.” When David McCullough, twice Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, learned of this situation, he called it “a serious national problem.” Knowing that dedicated teachers, devoted homeschooler parents, concerned grandparents, and trusted private tutors and mentors around the world advise, coach, demonstrate, and practice their young learners in the art of writing, you shake your head and say, “No. It just can’t be.”
Feeling Perplexed by Such an Observation
McCullough, of course, is not fabricating a wild story. Consequently, after a bit, you acquiesce. After all your hard work to teach your students, though, you not only feel puzzled but also feel betrayed. You lament right out loud, “The very thought of such grim results seems impossible.” Your associates, who, like you, also worked diligently to teach their young learners to write well, they had believed – agree. Another member of your teaching team asks, “How in the world is this astonishingly dismal result possible?” After your thoughts settle, your team begins to ask, “Well, then, what measures can we implement to assuage this predicament in the future?”
Searching for Solutions
Once you accept McCullough’s words as true, your teaching team concludes that perhaps your young learners are in the half who mastered what each of you had presented. After all, you constantly had taught your young learners to think positively, to visualize their success, and to expect the best. Now, momentarily, you and your colleagues were thinking negatively.
Teaching the Parts of Speech in a Fun Way
By beginning to enumerate what you had done to prepare your students to write well, you began to get on track. You had taught lesson after lesson to impart to your students grammar – the parts of speech and their definitions -using not only color-coded words but also colorful, memorable characters. You also enumerated and explained the cooperative roles and relationships of the parts of speech. Each member of your teaching team also had relentlessly reviewed the mechanics of the English language—capitalizations, punctuation, contractions, and spelling. Your students were so versed in grammar and mechanics that some of them told you they reviewed your lessons in their dreams at night. Your basic teaching lessons and exercise practices have served your students well. Yes. You now begin to realize that your methods have blessed the memories of your learners.
Using the Power of Colorful Mind Maps to Bolster Memory
Because Mind Maps can so beautifully organize information succinctly, they enhance memory with impressive staying power. Their branches relate to each other in such a way that each and every branch helps to build the topic of the particular map. For example, the young learners can name a mind map as “The Parts of Speech.” Then, they can handwrite the parts of speech—verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections—onto their separate branches. Using attractive colors, drawing, and handwriting in cursive or hand printing join forces to make learning the Parts of Speech not only fun but also memorable.
Note: The Mind Map, as a larger printable .pdf, is available at WritingNow.comgratis.
Connecting New Information with What They Know Already
When students latch onto information that enlightens them, new related information fastens, in a sense, with the data already present. The concepts, then, in a way, begin forming a net to grab, hold, and store more input. Each new learning experience that can hook with the items already present continues the wonderful arrangement. The more relevant and related information students learn, the more they can learn, digest, and absorb. David Gamon, PhD, and Allen D. Bragdon, authors of Learn Faster & Remember More, put the thought more eloquently, “How well you remember depends on how much you already know.” Therefore, the incremental lessons you had taught fostered strong memories. Plus, connecting the three powerful forces—memorable mind maps, drawing, and cursive handwriting—creates a mighty memory treasure.
Enhancing Memory with Cursive Handwriting
Indeed, you had empowered the memories of your young learners in a fine way that some in society today seem to have forgotten. They had loved drawing colorful mind maps and then labeling the parts of speech in cursive. Your students had loved handwriting their assignments. The main trouble your students had was deciding which Parts of Speech Mind Map they liked more. Some liked a Words and Images Mind Map that defined the parts of speech. Others liked a Roles and Relationships Mind Map that showed how all the parts worked together. Others favored a Composing Sentences Mind Map or a Composing Paragraphs Mind Map to steer them to success with their forthcoming writing assignments. More advanced students resonated with the Writing Tips Mind Map. In all cases, they had loved that the vivid colorful characters and color-coded words that made learning not only endearing but also enduring. WritingNow.com provides printable versions of the noted Mind Maps and additional ones from its ebooks to download and enjoy as a gratis bonus.
You did not throw aside handwriting as outdated or outmoded. You did not see handwriting as some relic from the past. Instead, you honored its use for sustaining memory. Moreover, helping your young learners to enjoy practicing their cursive handwriting yielded lasting profits for them.
Speaking for the Practice of Cursive Handwriting
Neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre, PhD, equates the action of handwriting with “meditation” because she says it perpetuates “mindfulness.” Angelika Troller-Janesch, Vice President of the Carinthian Dyslexia Association in Austria explains that taking notes by hand supports memory and helps students preserve what they learn. Livia Pailer-Duller, PhD, CEO of the Austrian Dyslexia Association, a colleague of Troller-Janesch, concurs and shares that handwriting fosters fine motor skills. Plus, she says handwriting boosts the entire learning process. Both teachers emphasize the importance of not allowing digital experiences with computers, tablets, and cellphones to bring about the extinction of the art of cursive handwriting.
Teaming Handwriting with Computer Generating Your Compositions
While computer-generated assignments certainly speed the reading for hardworking teachers, it can be a useful practice if young learners will compose their first drafts by hand. Then they can type their work using a device of their choice. Doing both processes likely team up to expand their memory of the material. Multiple viewing gives time to ponder what they first composed. Plus, as the students continue in this way, errors very well may pop up and beg for correction.
Consequently, students learn in an instinctive way that they cannot simply sit down and write or type their essays in half an hour and think they have finished. They must learn to revise. This polishing practice attunes them quickly to the idea that it takes work to make their essays smoother and smoother. Revising also enhances preserving information and critical thinking.
Learning to Plan for Their Next Day
In your listing of the many aspects, concepts, and projects you had used to help secure their successful writing, you and your teaching team had encouraged your young learners to let each sunset, remind them to pause and reflect on their day. After their appraisal of the passing day, you suggested that they plan for their forthcoming day to help bring big dividends. If upon review some days their efforts went awry, you, doubtless, helped them learn to release the negativity. You pointed out that counting the aspects of their day that did go well would be of great use. It was your hope that helping them to make it a habit to write out their plans for their coming day would become a lifetime ally. You also hoped that if they would allow the sunset to be their daily reliable reminder “to be grateful for the passing day and to prepare gratefully for an even better day tomorrow” doing so could foster their good health emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Finally, you hoped that creating mind maps, engaging in fun drawing, and using cursive handwriting, along with so many other worthy strategies that you taught with care would weave together to help your young learners love their writing and make it their best friend for life.
About the Author
Linda Davis-Kyle is a fitness, health, education, and general interest writer whose articles have appeared in professional journals such as Modern Drama in Canada, Notes & Queries in the UK, Caritas in Ireland, and Studies in English Literature in Japan and in periodicals such as WellBeing in Australia, The Star in Bangladesh, and Healthy Options in New Zealand. She is the author of the e-book Getting Ready to Write: Reviewing English Grammar.
Sources
Aguirre, Claudia. “Does writing by hand sharpen your creativity?”
McCullough, David. “Dialogue with David McCullough (on John Adams).” With Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Library of Congress. Special Event, February 12, 2014. youtube.com, April 3, 2014. 59:50-1:00:13 and !:00:18-1:00:32.
Accessed 18 April 2020
Pailer-Duller, Livia. Personal communication. 30 January 2021. Troller-Janesch, Angelika. Personal communication. 30 January 2021.
In this groundbreaking book written for both lay and professional readers, Dr. Harold Levinson, a renowned psychiatrist and clinical researcher, provides his long-awaited follow-up work about truly understanding and successfully treating children and adults with many and diverse dyslexia-related disorders such as those found on the cover.
This fascinating, life-changing title is primarily about helping children who suffer from varied combinations and severities of previously unexplained (“inner-ear/cerebellar-determined”) symptoms resulting in difficulties with:
reading, writing, spelling, math, memory, speech, sense of direction and time
grammar, concentration/activity-level, balance and coordination
headaches, nausea, dizziness, ringing ears, and motion-sickness
frustration levels and feeling dumb, ugly, klutzy, phobic, and depressed
impulsivity, cutting class, dropping out of school, and substance abuse
bullying and being bullied as well as anger and social interactions
later becoming emotionally traumatized and scarred dysfunctional adults
Feeling Smarter and Smarter is thus also about and for the millions of frustrated and failing adults who are often overwhelmed by similar and even more complicated symptoms—as well as for their dedicated healers. Having laid the initial foundations for his many current insights in an earlier bestseller, Smart But Feeling Dumb, Dr. Levinson now presents a compelling range of enlightening new cases and data as well as a large number of highly original discoveries—such as his challenging illumination that: “All the above dyslexia-related manifestations are primarily ‘inner-ear’ or cerebellar-vestibular—not cerebrally or thinking-brain— determined and so do not impair IQ and have a favorable outcome.”
And an “ingeniously clear” and explanatory theory of symptom formation, including the triggering of phobias and anxiety, has been formulated by Dr. Levinson using a simple analogy: “I can rapidly but transiently induce the entire dyslexia syndrome in perfectly normal individuals by spinning them around until their brain signals become dizzy or scrambled. And then mandating they perform varied reading, writing, conentration-demanding…tasks.” In other words, dyslexia is recognized to be a complex multi-symptomatic syndrome encompassing all of the above mentioned symptoms—and many more. Clearly, it’s not just a pure reading disorder as now also recognized by the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) diagnostic manual, DSM-V.
This syndrome results when diverse normal thinking brain and related processors fail to descramble the “dizzy” or distorted signals received from a fine-tuning signal impairment within the inner-ear and its supercomputer—the cerebellum, man’s lower “little brain.”[1]
Most important, all the dyslexia/inner-ear based impairments and their symptoms were discovered by Dr. Levinson to respond rapidly and often dramatically when treated with simple and safe inner-ear enhancing medications and nutrients—thus enabling bright but dumb-feeling children and adults to feel smarter and smarter. In addition, by clarifying and more effectively utilizing a diverse range of educational and non-medical therapies which enhance inner-ear and/or cerebral compensation, all dyslexics can be best helped.
Using the above mentioned spinning analogy in order to better explain improvements, Levinson states: “The dyslexia-like or inner-ear/cerebellar syndrome triggered by spinning normal individuals till dizzy signals arise can be minimized or prevented by pretreatment and/or treatment immediately following symptom formation, using anti-vertigo or inner-ear-enhancing meds and non-med therapies.”
Additionally, Dr. Levinson discovered and similarly treated the relatively “minor” inner-ear/cerebellar dysfunction found associated with ASD or autism as well as traumatic brain injury and other major disorders. This enabled overall improvements, albeit the primary impairments persisted.
In summary, this book’s content is highly unique. Its many patient-derived insights are fully capable of explaining and successfully treating all the known dyslexic symptoms and their determining mechanisms as well as clarifying all data and theories characterizing the dyslexia syndrome—including the frequently overlapping attention deficits and phobias. Significantly, most all of Dr Levinson’s highly original inner-ear/cerebellar concepts—considered “decades ahead of their time”— have been independently validated via hundreds of referenced neuroimaging and other studies.
To order this “life-improving” book from Amazon or its publisher, Springer, log onto Dr. Levinson’s website: dyslexiaonline.com
Feeling Smarter and Smarter: Discovering the Inner-Ear Origins and Treatment for Dyslexia/LD, ADD/ADHD, and Phobias/Anxiety by Harold N. Levinson, MD
1 This theory was considered “ingenious” because it replaced and resolved several long held mistaken concepts—previously leading to scientific dead ends and paradoxes. For example, it was mistakenly believed:1-that dyslexia was a pure reading disorder of primary cerebral origin, despite its typical “symptomatic impurity” and the absence of cerebral neurological signs as well as the presence of only inner-ear/cerebellar signs, and 2-that all the many non-reading symptoms found among dyslexics were considered “co-morbid”—meaning they were/are believed due to separate non-dyslexic cerebral-related processing impairments—rather than due to a common inner-ear/cerebellar origin akin to the way the diabetic syndrome is caused by a common underlying insulin deficiency. So the illuminated paradoxes to be resolved were: 1-How could dyslexics have normal and even genius IQ’s and improve if they had so many separate and irreparable cerebral processing impairments? They couldn’t! Indeed, their IQ’s would approach zero, 2-How could dyslexia be due to a primary and irreversible cerebral impairment akin to Alexia in the presence of only inner-ear/cerebellar neurological signs and mechanism? It can’t! , 3-How could spinning, which destabilizes only the inner-ear/cerebellar signals, create all the dyslexia-related symptoms and how might inner-ear-enhancing meds “cure” them? This would be impossible if the dyslexia syndrome was of a primary cerebral origin affecting multiple sites of primary brain functioning.
It was about three years ago when I started doing my dyslexic blogs and pod casts with comedian Mark Simmons. For me at the time it did not matter whether people read or listened to it (other than my mum of course) because I was just doing it for me. I guess it was a way of putting pen to paper or pressing record and just getting stuff off my chest and putting them out there in a notional black hole that maybe one day someone may dip into.
However, it surprised me when people started to comment on them and started to engage feeding back their stories. It soon turned out that I was not the only one that was forced to wear coloured glasses and eye patches and being placed in classes branded as special needs. It made me feel better in myself that I was not the only one who was going through this.
So from that I decided to write to my dyslexic man crush, Jamie Oliver! Why wouldn’t he be anyone’s man crush, he is driven, successful, focused, you could take him home to your mum and you would not go hungry!!!
Mouse in the Manger was illustrated and formatted by Ashley Otis. She incorporated the following elements that would be appropriate for children, and make it easier for them to read:
Colored font that is simple and enlarged. Arial font is a good choice.
The lines should be spaced apart, so the eye tracks on each line.
There should be no “breaks” or hyphens in words at the end of a line.
No right justification that might create irregular spacing between words.
Using short simple sentences is how rhyming stanzas are constructed, so a rhyming story is already kid-friendly.
I write by inspiration, so how did I get started on Mouse in the Manger? I remembered the mangers in the stalls in Grandpa’s barn where I released two baby mice. Here’s the whole story:
Upstairs in the big farmhouse where I grew up there was a large storage room. Halfway down the long spooky dark hall was a door on the left with a step down into the storage space.
A pile of old mattresses way back in the corner gave me a place to curl up to read or dream, or listen to the blowflies buzzing by the window. I was lying on the mattresses reading a Dick Tracey Big Little Book when I heard a faint squeaking. I traced the sound to a chest of drawers on the other side of the room.
The squeaking stopped when I slowly pulled the bottom drawer way out. There it was! Tucked way in the back of the bottom drawer was a wad of shredded paper, wool, and cloth bits fashioned into a perfect rectangle so it exactly fit the space. I hoped the shredded paper wasn’t one of my favorite comic books! Was this a mouse nest in our chest of drawers?
I carefully parted one end of the nest, and pulled the top back to see inside. Wow! There, nestled in the smooth interior compartment were two tiny baby mice. Their pink skin had no fur, and their eyes were not yet open.
Oh, oh! We had caught a mouse in a trap in the work room downstairs. Could that have been their mother? I called Mom to see. Mom told me that it didn’t matter if mother mouse was gone or not, because now that I had touched the nest, my scent would be there, and she would not return.
Obviously, mice were too destructive to have living in the house. And, it would be impossible to feed such tiny things, even if we did want to save them.
I didn’t figure on Mom’s incredible compassion for little creatures, and her ingenuity. My sister had a baby doll with its own little baby bottle that actually worked. With Mom’s patience and steady hand, she managed to entice the baby mice to drink a milk and honey formula from that little bottle. Daddy just shook his head in disbelief. Mom nursed and cared for those tiny mice until their fur had grown, their eyes were open, and they were trying to climb out of their box.
I let them go in the barn next to the mangers in the stalls where Grandpa had kept the big work horses. The barn was the perfect place. They could do no harm, and there was no one to harm them. They scampered free to live happily ever after!
Hmmmm, a mouse in the manger. A rhyme popped into my head. What would a mouse be doing in the manger? Looking for food, of course. As the story developed, I wondered if there were too many children’s books about the Christmas story. Researching, I discovered mine was different; it was in rhyme, scripturally correct, and reasonably credible.
My books have study guides with questions and answers which the Executive Director of the American Dyslexia Association told us also helped dyslexic children with comprehension and retention.
Ashley Otis began working on the illustrations, formatted the book, and got it ready to print.
