We are introducing a series of videos about Dyslexia awareness, teaching and learning strategies, accommodations, computer programs and resources for children and adults. If you are interested please email us at: khope@dyslexiavictoria.ca”.

We are also planning to have some webinars and involve people in the discussion portions of the webcast.
We welcome you to join us!

Cheers! Happy New Year!
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Life Strategies offers customized seminars, workshops, courses, and keynotes. Topics include psychometric assessment, work-life balance/sustainability, team strengthening, workplace diversity, career management, and employee development.

Our course offers insight into Dyslexia: what it is, what causes it, and how it affects learners and employees who are Dyslexic. Participants will also learn how to screen for Dyslexia and related issues and plan accommodations for the workplace and adult learning environments.

This online course is targeted for:

• service providers,
• employment counseling services,
• human resource managers,
• managers & business owners,
• literacy tutors,
• Dyslexic employees,
• and anyone who wants to understand a Dyslexic adult or employee’s needs in the workplace.

Life Strategies is also offering our course with a special introductory offer with a  25% discount.

Our link to the course is: www.lifestrategies.com

We hope you check it out and we look forward to talking with you in the forums with the course!

Cheers! Happy New Year!
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

What is the Cause of Irlen Syndrome, and Why do Colors Help?

    “Although the exact cause of Irlen Syndrome has yet to be established, it has been shown to be a visual-perceptual problem, most likely originating either in the retina of the eye or in visual cortex in the brain. The following is a hypothetical explanation, based on current research into this syndrome.

   In the visual system, there are two separate visual processing pathways, the Magnocellular, or Fast, and the Parvocellular, or Slow.  The Fast pathway does not see colours, and is responsible for discerning movement, depth, and high contrast images.  The Slow pathway determines colour, fine details and resolves low contrast images.  The Fast pathway is also responsible for inhibiting the slow pathway when the eyes are moved, so that the image of what was previously being looked at does not persist.  It appears that in people with Irlen Syndrome, the Fast pathway is disabled to some extent.  This seems to affect the ability of the Fast pathway to inhibit the Slow pathway, which in turn results in images persisting when the eyes are moved. As a result, the brain perceives overlapping images. In severe cases, when the brain tries to interpret these images, it perceives images that aren’t there. The individual may “see” letters moving on the page, blurring, or forming strange patterns. In less severe cases, the misperceptions do not occur or may be suppressed, but the brain expends more energy in processing the images than is required by most people, resulting in headaches, eyestrain, and/or fatigue. These problems generally get worse the longer a person tries to read, or do other visually intensive activities.

    Bright lights, fluorescent lights, or glossy paper will often make the problems worse, as the extreme contrast will increase the problem of persistent images.  Irlen Syndrome manifests itself most strongly when reading words or music, because of the repetitive patterns on the page. When the eyes scan across the page, the patterns of words on the page and persistent images will jumble in a manner that is difficult for the brain to interpret properly. In the Irlen Method, the individual is assesed with a wide array of colour filters, singly and in combination, to find the most suitable colour.  The colour filters appear to act by blocking some of the light which would normally activate the Slow visual pathway, in effect taking over the inhibitory role of the Fast pathway, and thus appear to reduce or eliminate the persistent images.  The filters stop the confusing signals from being sent to the brain, and the individual will see the page more normally and easily.  This treatment may also be helpful to individuals who experience other related problems, such as faulty depth perception or night driving difficulties.”

“White” white boards are often very difficult for Dyslexic students. The boards are a great tool for mind mapping, drawing out explanations of new concepts for them, brain storming and more visual/kinesthetic teaching methods which are ideal for Dyslexics. The whiteness of the board however for Dyslexics experiencing Irlen Syndrome can be very difficult for them to see writing on.

We have been looking for products to make non-white boards for home, classrooms, and personal use. We have found a chalkboard paint in many different colours and a sealer that goes over paint and creates an erasable marker board. Perfect for creating a background surface that is the student’s Irlen colour.

Hudson Chalkboard Paint (www.hudsonpaint.com)

Walls Love Ink Sealer (www.wallsloveink.com)

Check out their websites and ideas.  We found all kinds of possibilities on their sites and googling images for chalkboard or white board projects.

Also I found a recipe to make your own chalkboard paint in any colour your want on Martha Stewart’s blog.

Custom Colors How-To

Start with flat-finish latex paint in any shade. For small areas, such as a door panel, mix 1 cup at a time.

1. Pour 1 cup of paint into a container. Add 2 tablespoons of unsanded tile grout. Mix with a paint stirrer, carefully breaking up clumps.

2. Apply paint with a roller or a sponge paintbrush to a primed or painted surface. Work in small sections, going over the same spot several times to ensure full, even coverage. Let dry.

3. Smooth area with 150-grit sandpaper, and wipe off dust.

4. To condition: Rub the side of a piece of chalk over entire surface. Wipe away residue with a barely damp sponge.

http://www.marthastewart.com/271574/custom-color-chalkboard-paint

So we are going to start making small chalk and erasable boards for our Dyslexic Irlen sufferers, 24″ x 30″ non-white erasable or chalk boards or as big as needed, paint entire walls to really great creative. Dyslexics are extremely inventive so they will probably love a project like this and a great background to work on schoolwork!

Cheers!  Happy Holidays!!
Karey Hope deGraaf
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

The drive to view the place took us about an hour so we took that time to sort of roll some ideas around.  Karey and I spend a lot of time researching new techniques to help teach Dyslexics. While doing so we find information concerning studies about Right and Left Brained thinking and related topics. Karey had her laptop open to an article about how the Right Brain and Left perceive information differently. At first I thought this was just stuff I already knew and sure enough, most of what we talked about was familiar to both of us. Then I had an epiphany. Well maybe not an epiphany but I did make a connection I hadn’t thought about before.

As I have mentioned before I don’t consider myself  Dyslexic but I am very Right Brained and as a result I share many views about the difficulty of understanding abstracts with Karey, who is Dyslexic.  Karey mentioned something from the article she was reading about “2 + 2” and how this concept is perceived differently by the Left and Right brain. Can you imagine that, the Left and Right brain can actually come up with different answers to the question: what is 2 plus 2?

‘The mono-semantic nature of the left brain is consistent with its syntactical and arithmetical functionality. Broca’s area, or the language processing center of the brain, is a complex of nerve cells that structure a thought into a syntactically correct sentence. Broca’s area is predominantly in the left hemisphere, even for left-handed people. The scattered and poly-semantic thinking of the right brain is not very good at producing language or arithmetic. To the left brain, 2+2=4. To the right brain, maybe it is 4, maybe not. The right brain will eagerly search for scenarios in which 2+2 does not equal 4, and might be disappointed when it doesn’t find any.‘
Brack—March, 2005.
http://neuropolitics.org/Conservative-Left-Brain-Liberal-Right-Brain.htm

To just about everybody it is  well accepted that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but maybe not. One of the things I sometimes point out to people at our workshops is an example of how abstract our English language is. When we print the symbol 2 on a chalkboard or Smartboard we usually say this is the NUMBER 2. It is not the number 2 but rather the NUMERAL 2 and it represents a group of 2 things. Sure this is a tiny little distinction but an important one.  There is a very real difference between a symbol that refers to something and the actual concept described. So let’s look at the equation 2 plus 2.

When you add two groups of two things of course you are going to come up with four objects. But that Right Brain of mine went a different way. If you actually look at what the equation is says, put the symbol 2 and put it with the other symbol 2. So, 2 plus 2 equals 22. Does seem like a little thing to you? Yes it does and most teachers would have hard time accepting the logic of what I just described. So what is my point?

Right Brained individuals and dyslexics think on lots of different levels, they are always looking for connections to ideas. Processes can be improved, ideas can be looked at from different directions and many times a concept that seems pretty obvious to some people are not obvious to others. Right brained thinkers always look for these connections, they can’t help it.

This is a great ability when “out of the box” thinking is required which is often in the real world outside of school. But if a Dyslexic student looks at “2 + 2” and thinks “22” and they can if they misunderstand the instructions, they are marked wrong. Some of these children will bravely argue a point like this and get shut down. This can be confusing to them on one level but can also shut them down in the classroom to the point they start believing they are stupid. In the UK this is called RSI which stands for Repetitive Statement Injury and means if something is said enough times to someone they start to believe it’s true.

Thank goodness for Left and Right brained thinkers; different answers to the same question can just be considered creative.

Happy trails!
Howie deGraaf
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online
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No excuses I just haven’t been writing as often as I should. BUT I did get married. Yes, Karey Hope and I got married on July 30 at 4pm in the back yard of the home where I grew up in Duncan, British Columbia, Canada. Karey and I did most of the planning of this event and it took up most of our time for May, June and July as well as doing the work we do with Dyslexia and this website and blog. We had in-laws and relatives from as far South as California, and as far west as Denver Colorado. It was a lot of fun and took a couple of weeks to finish visiting family and friends. We hope to post some photos on our website, as soon as we get them organized.

So not an excuse, just letting you that we have been distracted from our writing duties and now we are back on track. By the way, Karey and I have waited since 1978 to get married. That is definitely a story that bears explaining at another time but just know that there were a few delays over the past few decades but we finally got it right. Like it says in the invitations to the wedding:   “Howie and Karey are FINALLY getting married.”

Karey and I do a lot of research on Dyslexia and Right Brained learning styles and we find lots of great information and we come up with our own ideas too. Earlier this week I started reading the book; “Right-Brained Children in a Left Brained World” and it is fascinating. The author, Jeffrey Freed MAT,  is an educational consultant who has tutored and helped thousands of ADD and Gifted students. This book is interesting for me for a couple of reasons; it is written in a fashion that makes it a joy to read and it says so much of what we believe.

We are learning that there is a lot more in common with ADD, Dyslexia and other learning “disabilities”.  Jeffrey makes it clear that being very Right Brained leads to all kinds of learning issues. These learning problems are just behaviours that are the result of being taught in a fashion that is inappropriate to Right Brained students. The problem with these children is not with how they learn but rather how they are taught.

He tells the reader about many techniques he uses to help his students, many of them are almost exactly what we recommend to parents and teachers. I have heard from some of the teachers who attend our Professional Development workshops that our teaching methods are just good basic teaching. Jeffrey says the same thing but the important thing to remember is what both Jeffrey and we realize that we are working with students who process information differently.

Sometimes we meet with teachers who would be grateful  to just be given methods that work for specific children based on the label put on them by professionals who do the Psych-Educational testing. Having the methods to teach specific groups of students is only going to work if you know what that child is all about.

Jeffrey makes it clear in this book that we can’t label these children by the behaviours they exhibit that are result of the frustration of being taught in a manner that makes no sense to them. We can’t focus on the deficits that are used to create the labels used to name the learner. We need to focus on the incredible learning strengths of these Right Brained learners.

This is a great book to put on your reading list because it helps put Dyslexia as a particular learning style into a positive light; there are simple methods that do work with these learners. The methods are easy to duplicate, take no specialized training and can be done with materials readily at hand.

Karey and I have mentioned in earlier blogs that one of our goals is to update our books to reflect the new knowledge we are gathering in our research. We do intend to do that in the near future but after reading Jeffrey Freed’s book I realized we have a resource available right now that can be used as a teaching template for Right Brained learners. The methods we recommend for Dyslexic students are also going to be very useful for ADD students.

Along with the many recommendations and resources we include in the teaching programs we create for our clients there is a section we call the “14 Steps to Teach Dyslexic Students how to Spell and Read”. Parents and teachers have told us that the “14 Steps” is so effective as a teaching tool that they have had tremendous success with it by itself.

We are going to incorporate it, along with other methods we have discovered, researched and tested, in the soon to be updated books we publish but we believe it is important to offer it now. So, for parents and teachers who would like a resource that is simple to use and requires no additional training or materials to help with their Right Brained learner we are offering it right now.

You will find it on our website on this link:
“14 Steps to Teach a Dyslexic to Spell & Read”.

I hope I haven’t presented this as a sales pitch just to sell our products because that is not our goal here. As we have said a couple of times our aim is, and always will be, to get you the best information to help you succeed, not just to make a buck. When I read this short manual,”14 Steps” Karey created I realized that these resources need to be presented to parents and teachers now.

Here also is a link to “Right-Brained Children in a Left Brained World” by Jeffrey Freed

Cheers!
from Mr Howard deGraaf & Mrs Karey Hope-deGraaf,
Happy trails!

This information is usually presented sequentially, step by step, eventually ending up at a conclusion or result. The left brain students accept the information that is presented to them, follow the directions and are not necessarily concerned with the reason or meaning of the lesson. They memorize the information from the lesson and the steps necessary to get a correct result.

An example would be long division. It is not unusual for a teacher to go through the steps of long division and instruct the students to follow their directions. A teacher can  further confuse this process by breaking up the discussion and practice of the steps over days rather than in one lesson. The students are told if they follow these steps exactly, their work and answers will be correct. The left brain learner accepts what the teacher says and follows their directions. They practice the steps, memorize the process and learn to do long division without necessarily understanding what they are doing.

The right brain dominant thinker or Dyslexic will have difficulty with this type of presentation of new information or new skill sets from beginning to end. The result is frustrating for the Dyslexic student; they don’t comprehend it, remember or retain it, or are able to apply this knowledge to their classroom work.

This lesson is missing a number of components that are important to a Dyslexic student. There needs to be:

• an overview or “big picture” of what the lesson is about
• a connection to something the class has already learned
• a physical demonstration, video, story, discussion of its purpose, etc to bring the  subject alive for the students and give it a meaning or reason to be learned
• start to give exercises practicing the subject
•  be sure to give and use completed examples of these exercises
• go over their completed work, correct it and discuss with the students what they don’t understand
• carry on the study of the lesson by creating class projects and connect this information to new concepts

So Dyslexic students need the “big picture” first, meaning or reasons, connection to real things by physical demonstrations, practice and connection to new ideas. Without this process, they are often lost in the class. Their confusion with teaching methods that do not use these elements can also cause anxiety and fear. Anxiety and fear shuts them down so nothing gets through to them.

The presentation of new information needs to be applied or related to “real world” examples the student has experienced before a Dyslexic can begin to understand it. Also if the information cannot easily be imagined, tasted, smelled, seen, heard or felt these students will have a difficult time trying to comprehend it.

Dyslexics do not easily absorb information they do not know the meaning of or reason for. In other words, if a Dyslexic is being taught long division they need to know what it is – “the opposite of multiplication”.

Multiplication is “adding in groups”

Division is “subtracting in groups”

This becomes the “big picture” or overview for the beginning of the lesson. This is the meaning of division. Then a short discussion follows focused on When? Where? How? would division be used.

•  at Christmas when sorting presents and dividing them up
•  at a birthday when cutting up a birthday cake
• picking kids for two teams to play a game

Next division would be demonstrated by using objects such as candies, apples, etc. The objects are presented in one big group and then divided into smaller groups for some purpose such as a certain number of candies in candy bowls.

Once the students have practiced dividing, then the brackets used in long division would be introduced. The students would be shown what each number position on the division brackets represents; the complete group, the number of objects in each group or how many smaller groups there are when divided up.

*Refer to example with dogs and dog houses in “Teaching Methods for Arithmetic Basics” in our Summer School Program E-Book on our website:

Dyslexia Victoria Online Summer Program

The Dyslexic student and many other students will be clear about what division means, why we use it and how to use dividing brackets to figure out a division problem.

This type of physical demonstration and explanation of new information is very important for the Dyslexic student. Any information they are given to learn in a rote manner will not stay with them nor will they be able to remember a sequence of steps in a process.

This method of teaching with an overview and physical demonstrations can be used for all subjects and should be standard practice in a classroom for all new concepts. This approach can be taken forward another step by taking concepts and reinforcing them for the student by running a similar theme through all subjects. This creates connections (neural pathways) in their knowledge base that strengthens their understanding of all their school work.

Example:

Main Topic: Thanksgiving

Language – creating a project with written material, pictures, posters, a story of the first Thanksgiving, writing and performing a play

Reading – reading a story about Thanksgiving

Spelling – a spelling list pulled from the story about Thanksgiving

Social Studies – the history behind Thanksgiving – writing a report about the history or a story with the Pilgrims as characters.

Science – how did the Pilgrims cook food for Thanksgiving and how is that different from our preparation of food today

– make recipes the Pilgrims or First Nations people would have made. This involves measurements, heat, types of heat, following a recipe like an experiment, etc.

Cook  – cook foods that the First Nations peoples and the Pilgrims would have brought to the feast.

– have a Thanksgiving feast with these foods

Arithmetic  – measurements in recipes, worksheets using Pilgrims and First Nations people for characters in word problems.

These teaching methods are not unusual. They have been kicking around forever to be used with all students, not just Dyslexics. I first learned about them in the 1970′s by a brilliant psychology professor  at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His name was Chuck Galloway. I owe much to him and his teaching methods. He taught us how effective this approach was by using his students as very fortunate Guinea pigs. Consequently the whole class of 400 students received excellent grades. The knowledge I picked up from that course has always stuck with me and I am very grateful to him.

Cheers!
Karey
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

By now you probably know that Karey and I don’t consider Dyslexia a Learning Disability.  Generally Dyslexia  is still viewed as a disability in most of Canada and America so we do realize many people are going to consider it so.  We are asked about Autism, Aspergers, ADD/ADHD and others because many other “LD’s” can have behaviours that present themselves as indicators of Dyslexia.

I was particularly interested as I had recently read a 35 page report written in 2009 from a medical association specializing in FAS/FASD. I read it about 3 times to see if there were similarities to Dyslexia and I wanted to see if there was some sort of crossover with our teaching methods that might be beneficial to FAS individuals.

The report I read painted a pretty gloomy picture of FAS/FASD and indicated most of the affected individuals were considered “brain damaged” and would need guidance for the rest of their lives. I’m paraphrasing here but I got the impression these individuals would have an almost impossible time achieving some sort of quality of life. Please understand this is only the first substantial piece of literature on this subject I have read and I’m sure there are thousands of people out there who have a better knowledge of this topic than I.  So with that little bit of information I decided to learn more about this topic and I was fortunate to find out about this local lecture series and especially the workshop about FAS/FASD.

The presenter  introduced herself , I’ll call her Rita, and she immediately had the participants do a perception test which seemed very familiar to me. Rita showed us a handout printed with a  series of letters and numerals that are often confusing to her clients, young adults and children with FAS.

She told us that these individuals often reverse these symbols. It came to me right then that she was talking about Dyslexia, at least some of the behaviours we often see with our clients. The perception test I mentioned earlier was almost exactly the same as an exercise our colleague and mentor Alan McDowell, a Dyslexia assessor and life skills coach from the UK, showed us when he does Dyslexia Awareness workshops for adult Dyslexics.

This exercise was about understanding how the left and right half of the brain perceive information differently.  I mentioned this to Rita and we realized that we were generally talking about how the brain takes in information and her descriptions were very similar to what Karey and I see when working with Dyslexic learning issues.  During the workshop I learned a lot about FAD/FASD and much of what I had read previously was very limited in scope. What I learned in this lecture was with patience and repeated attempts these individuals can achieve quite a bit more that people give them credit for.

Rita told me that a good way to understand individuals with FAS is to think of them as “10 second people in a 1 second world”.  Make sure the instructions are clear and concise and without multiple instructions at the same time and give them time to process. I’m not going to list all of what I learned that night but I will say I learned there is a lot that can be done for individuals affected by FAS. I realized many of the techniques we use when teaching Dyslexics  new information  can be used with these individuals also. I even pointed out to Rita that we use different colours for those often reversed letters and numerals and she agreed that might work well with her clients.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that lots of “LD’s” have many indicators/behaviours that seem similar to each other. Let’s not get hung up about how difficult it is to label one LD or another. I have spoken to service providers who tell me they don’t think Dyslexia exists because the symptoms are the same as whatever specialty they are trained in. Karey and I are more interested in applying whatever methods work for an individual. We are just looking for success with clients, not debating what label best fits each person.  We do believe Dyslexia can look like other learning disabilities but like other LD’s there are criteria that separates them from others.

Oh, by the way. Check out your local neighbourhood and see if a society or association that relates to a topic you are interested in, or something that affects you, is having Free Community Education lectures. It’s a great way to learn more about a topic from an expert in your community.

Thanks for listening

Happy trails.
Howie deGraaf
Editor and Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Most children reverse and turn letters upside down until about grade three. This is a directionality issue. “Directionality”  for a person is the understanding and awareness of where left, right, up, down, above, below, etc. are in relation to where they are standing or sitting at a given point in time.  Many Dyslexics have difficulty with their awareness of direction and often experience it their whole lives.

“Directionality” is also understanding directions for writing tasks such as “write your name in the top right-hand corner,” “draw a line under the word ______,” “draw a picture of yourself in the middle of the paper”. This confusion also extends to letters like b and d, n and u, p and q, m and w, any numbers with two or more numbers like 21 and 12. Some also write backward, from right to left and/or the letters appearing like ordinary writing seen in a mirror.

There is a little trick that often helps the Dyslexic student figure out which way their troublesome letters such as “b” and “d” go.

The letters are normally written in black text. This makes letters that are the same shape such as b, d, p, q hard to differentiate from each other. The children we work with often ask why these four letters are all the same shape.

The solution we use is colour. Dyslexics respond well to colour and by colouring the letters specific colours or making them out of coloured Play Doh or modelling clay they can differentiate them from each other more easily.

By making them out of Play Doh or other modelling mediums you help the child to kinesthetically “feel” the letters which helps them internalize the directions and shapes of the letters.

Also provide a cheat sheet for them to look at with the letters coloured. We suggest laminating a copy for their school desks and at home.

With these teaching methods and aids they will soon have the direction of the letters right. These kids are very visual and will generally commit these coloured images easily to memory.

Note: Make sure you use the same colour for each letter all the time. Otherwise they can get confused.

Cheers!
Karey
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Robert Burns’ poem, “Ode to a Mouse” has a line in it -

‘The best laid schemes of mice and men
Oft go awry,’

Okay, the poem is about other things but taken out of context of the poem, I think it really applies well here.

I always have to write lists and keeping looking at them and marking off those I have actually finished.  And hopefully I don’t get side-tracked making my list look pretty, more efficient, divided up into different types of tasks, on different coloured paper, using many different coloured felt pens to make things stand out, a fancy book to put them, a system to decide when to do the tasks and what order……. sigh…

For example, I took way too long looking for clipart to express visually what I think the theme of this blog entry is. I am always told I can’t just keep it simple. Oh well, this is my life and I love to play with pictures and words.  As do many Dyslexics!

The other problem is I often lose my lists and then I have to make a new one….sigh again…

Anyway here is the email. Let me know, if you are Dyslexic or think you are, do you recognize yourself?

A.A.D.D.- KNOW THE SYMPTOMS…..
Thank goodness there’s a name for this disorder. Somehow I feel better, even though I have it!!
Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. -
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
This is how it manifests itself:

I decide to water my garden.
As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.
As I head towards the garage, I notice post on the porch table that I picked up from the postman earlier.
I decide to go through it before I wash the car.
I put my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the recycling box under the table, and notice that the recycling box is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the recycling
first.
But then I think, since I’m going to be near the postbox when I take out the recycling paper anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.
I take my cheque book off the table and notice that there is only one cheque left.
My extra cheques are in the desk in my study, so I go into the house to my desk where I find the cup of coffee I’d been drinking.
I’m going to look for my cheques but first I need to push the coffee aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.
The coffee is getting cold, and I decide to make another cup..
As I head toward the kitchen with the cold coffee, a vase of flowers on the worktop catches my eye – the flowers need water.
I put the coffee on the worktop and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers..
I put the glasses back down on the worktop, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote control. Someone left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,I’ll be looking for the
remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.
I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.
So, I put the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.
Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.
At the end of the day:
The car isn’t washed
The bills aren’t paid
There is a cold cup of coffee sitting on the kitchen work-surface
The flowers don’t have enough water,
There is still only 1 cheque in my cheque book,
I can’t find the remote,
I can’t find my glasses,
And I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really
baffled because I know I was busy all bloody day and I’m really tired.
I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it,
but first I’ll check my e-mail…..
Do me a favour. Forward this message to everyone you know, Because I can’t remember who the hell I’ve sent it to.
Don’t laugh – if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming!!

Cheers!
Karey
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online