Dyslexics Learn to Rearrange Lives in a World Seen Differently

.ecnetnes siht--kaeps dna--ees dlouw htimS soleD yaw eht si sihT

The above is a mirror image of a sentence that reads: This is the way Delos Smith would see--and speak--this sentence .

“I finally decided that I do everything forward and you do everything backward,” Smith, who is dyslexic, said at a recent conference for the learning disabled held at California State University, Northridge. “And that’s very important for my self-esteem.”

Smith, 51, told those gathered at the conference sponsored by CSUN’s Office of Disabled Student Services that he has turned his disability into an asset in his role as a budget economist at the Conference Board, a business-supported New York research firm, and as author of “The Federal Budget Watch,” an economic analysis newsletter distributed to government and businesses.

Although he has trouble with language skills, he said his dyslexia, in which the right side of the brain that thinks in images and symbols predominates, actually helps him to see the big picture in the federal economy. “You visualize the spending of a trillion dollars and see where it all goes,” he said. “That’s the fun of it.”

Four hundred people attended the conference at Northridge, where 111 students--double last year’s number--have been identified as learning disabled, according to Marshall Raskind, a learning-disability specialist with CSUN’s Office of Disabled Student Services. The office sponsored the conference.

Raskind said the campus has attracted more learning-disabled students because of a $63,000 grant from the state Department of Rehabilitation, which enabled the hiring of two full-time learning disability specialists.

“Once you hang out a shingle . . . there’s going to be a flood of people,” Raskind said.

Dyslexics are included in the general category of the learning disabled, which constitutes from 3% to 5% of the general population, Raskind said. Among the more famous people with learning disabilities were the late New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner and actor Tom Cruise.

Smith, keynote speaker at the conference, is sponsoring a scholarship for a learning-disabled student at CSUN that is to be awarded March 27. Smith said he is giving the $500 award because he wanted “to ease someone’s burden and inspire somebody because so many dyslexics are in incredible pain.”

“I’ve seen learning disabled people with great talents who have spent their entire lives fighting society,” he said.

Still Can Write Backwards

Being “very, very severely dyslexic,” Smith said he spoke backward until he was 9 and still can write fluently backward. Dyslexic people sometimes reverse words or letters and are called “learning disabled,” a group which includes those who have difficulty speaking, listening, reading and writing and performing mathematical calculations. Because of this, they often are mistakenly thought to be of lower intelligence.

Raskind said CSUN has one of the largest disability programs in the 19-campus state university system. This includes the National Center on Deafness, which has the highest deaf student population of any public university campus in the United States.

At the conference, Smith told learning-disabled students that language skills must be learned, no matter how difficult.

‘Mechanics Can’t Be Ignored’

“The mechanics can’t be ignored because you pay too much of a price,” he said. To refuse to overcome language difficulties in the non-dyslexic world can result in what he called “educational horror stories.”

CSUN learning-disabled students shared some of their “horror stories” at the conference.

“The hardest thing was reading out loud in class,” said Jeff Stein, 36, a graduate student in recreation. “The anxiety was just so high, I would make myself ill.”

Stein has completed two bachelor’s degrees, although he says his language and spelling skills currently are at a junior-high level and his math skills are at a fifth-grade level. He said his verbal and reading comprehension skills are much higher.

“I can’t write the word ‘right’ to save my life,” Stein said. “When a word has an i , a t or an h , forget it . . . There were times when my hand would sweat and stick to the paper. But if you asked me to talk, I would have blown everyone out of the water.”

CSUN learning-disabled students also share fears of filling out forms where words “jump around on the page,” chalk boards with writing that looks like “chicken scratches” and missed social cues.

Even the simplest tasks can be forbidding, many said. Dina Ackermann, 27, a graduate student in special education, said she has difficulty operating bank automatic-teller machines. “I keep pushing the wrong buttons,” she said.

To help students with learning disabilities, the CSUN Office of Disabled Student Services provides graduate student assistants who meet with learning-disabled students on a weekly basis, helping them with writing and studying. The office also organizes a support group for learning-disabled students to share common experiences.

Stein said the office provided someone to help him take the Writing Proficiency Exam, needed for graduation.

“Writing is not my long suit, not by any stretch of the imagination,” Stein said. On the second try, he passed the test by one point.

Helps With Placement

CSUN’s Office of Career Planning and Placement also works with the Office of Disabled Student Services in advising students in resume preparation, interviewing techniques and internship programs.

“The biggest fear for an employer is, ‘How much of my time will it take to train a person with a learning disability?’ It’s all dollars and cents,” Lucinda Aborn, career specialist for deaf and disabled students, said at the conference. “The employer needs to know what kind of training accommodations can be made in the beginning that will help speed the process along. The student and the employer have to work together.”

Smith advised students with learning disabilities to be careful in telling future employers about their problems.

“With an employer, you can’t really talk about weaknesses until you’ve proven your strengths,” Smith said.

Disability Was Obvious

Smith said he was sent to the Orton Dyslexia Society at an early age where he was taught to speak and write “backward”--that is, from his perspective. The society, located at Columbia University, is the only program that combines a neurological, educational and psychological approach in treating dyslexia. He said one of the advantages to being severely dyslexic was that his difficulty was obvious.

“You do not hide mirror writing,” he said. Others whose disability is less noticeable may not get the assistance they need, he said. As a result, Smith said, the learning disabled are often labeled “lazy or stupid.”

“Actually, every human being is learning disabled,” he said, but “society doesn’t say everyone who can’t sing or dance is learning disabled.”

He said that learning-disabled people can become “very angry and frustrated.”

“It’s so important to let go of the anger because you have to build up the self-esteem for your strengths,” Smith told the students at the conference.

Analyzes Federal Budget

In his work analyzing the federal budget, Smith works with huge figures and studies the effects budgets have on segments of the population.

His dyslexia results from a right-brain dominance, the same phenomenon seen in people who are left handed. The right side of the brain deals with pictures and symbols, while the left side deals with language. In Smith’s case, the right-brain dominance is so pronounced that he tends to think primarily in pictures and symbols, which he said actually assists him in working with the mind-boggling, trillion-dollar figures in the federal budget.

“Maybe in economics we should talk backward,” Smith joked.