How can I be sensitive to the condition of dyslexia?

My youngest step-son (now aged 48) has struggled with dyslexia all his life. His solution was always to use his formidable verbal skills. Always uncomfortable when writing, he does best by chatting and phoning.

He can easily memorize long blocks of dialog while watching a movie only once. He can still repeat most of “Dirty Harry” and the early Bill Cosby monologues.

Your writing skills don’t matter. He will not be able to imitate them.

During my years in an independent day school environment, I worked with a number of dyslexic students, all male as it happened. I administered untimed PSAT and SAT tests for them. Without the clock running, they did well. The writing sample was a challenge but if they were allowed to tape their essay, again they did well.

Ask him what works.

There are verbal application for desk tops and phones. He may be able to put that in his computer. He will still have to go over it because I have not come across one that has perfect voice recognition. An accent or different pitch can sometimes give you a different word.

@gailcalled: Thank you for sharing your experiences. I wasn’t hoping to find out how to improve his writing skills, but how to communicate with him in a way that makes it easier for him.

@Pandora: Voice recognition, thanks for the suggestion!

Ask him whether he finds reading your emails easy or not. Or if he prefers to talk to you.

My step-son also got impatient when he had to read any kind of text. He always opted for speaking and listening and still does.

I believe there is a product called Dragon Naturally Speaking that you can install on a computer and it will assist him with both reading and writing. In other words, it can be used to compose an email to you by just speaking, and it will read your email back to him via the computer’s speaker. Computer stores that carry a lot of software often have promotions of this product, so you can get it at a discount.

Oh, and he can also use an iPad with Siri to have the device read emails to him. I know this works, because I have one. Also, he can dictate and Siri voice recognition can write the email for him. This works pretty well, too.

I don’t what to do with adults since I was a child when I was helped with my dyslexia but all I remember about it was my parents having me read everything. It will always be harder for him as will as other dyslexics to read or write because dyslexia never goes away but you just have to push through it.

My first boyfriend was dyslexic. It was very hard for him. Because we were young, we would write each other letters. He was very ashamed. I tried to help him. I think the best you can do is not make it an issue. I mean, it doesn’t need to be an issue, it doesn’t effect anything for your relationship.

@gailcalled: Thank you. I asked him yesterday, and he said he now has little problem reading. It’s reading out loud that’s still challenging for him.

@2davidc8: Thank you for the suggestions!

@RockerChick14: Thank you for sharing your perspective.

@Headhurts: Thank you. Part of why I asked this question is that it looks likely we’ll be making this a long distance relationship for a while, and I wanted to figure out ways to communicate with him that won’t be difficult for him. I certainly don’t want to make it seem like a problem and do not view it that way. It’s kind of the same as if he wanted to find out other people’s experience dating diabetics (as I am one).

@bookish1 Has he mentioned it all to you?