Dyslexia and Orlando Bloom

Orlando Bloom made it big as an actor even though he came into this world with dyslexia.

One of the most popular stars today, Orlando Bloom who has played the role of Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean and Legolas in The Lord of the Rings. To kids everywhere, there’s no question: Orlando Bloom is the flavor of the moment. But to kids with dyslexia, the dyslexic actor represents an important role model as well.

Dyslexia Advocate

Orlando Bloom

Not at all shy about his reading challenge, Bloom has been an advocate for kids with dyslexia, telling them they can do anything they’ve got their hearts set on doing. Witness the 26 big film and television roles the actor has played since he first made a splash on the screen in 1994. At 37, Bloom can look back on his struggles with dyslexia and see how his disability made him more expressive and vibrant as an actor, in spite of making it difficult for him to read and learn scripts.

Inspiring Quotes

Here is a collection of Orlando Bloom quotes guaranteed to inspire you no matter what kind of day you’re having. Print them out and stick them to your fridge with a magnet. Every time you feel discouraged, renew your commitment to making the best of things by reading how Orlando did just that:

“You’re part of a very special club and it’s a gift and don’t let anyone ever tell you that you’re not good enough. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that because you struggle with dyslexia that you’re never going to make it in life, because it’s simply not true.”

Legolas Greenleaf, portrayed by Orlando Bloom

"It's not a disability; it's a challenge."

"Creativity is the key for any child with dyslexia, or for anyone for that matter. Then you can think outside of the box. Teach them anything is attainable. Let them run with what you see is whatever they need to run with."

"Don't laugh at your mates when they have problems with reading! Maybe they'll become movie stars and you'll want tickets to their premieres."

“I always knew that I wasn’t stupid. I felt like I was a smart kid, I just struggled with aspects of, of getting educated."

“Hold onto your dreams, take this obstacle and make it the reason to have a big life.”

"My mom used to tell me, 'If you read 50 books, I'll get you a motorbike.' So it inspired me to read a lot and work through my dyslexia. But I never quite got to 50. And I never got that motorbike!"

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Visual Stress is it Dyslexia?

Visual stress is what people experience after they view text for long periods of time. While the symptoms differ depending upon the individual, the most common symptoms are garden-variety headaches as well as migraines, eyestrain, and letters that seem to jump or move around on the page. Visual stress is rather common, yet often goes undetected.

Irlen Syndrome

Illustration of how sufferers of Irlen syndrome see text

In the case where there are reading difficulties and no underlying cause can be determined, it is worth a try to see if changing the background color for text relieves the symptoms. If so, this type of visual stress is called Meares-Irlen Syndrome, Scotopic Sensitivity, or Irlen Syndrome (within the U.S.). Researchers estimate that some 20% of the population suffers to one degree or another from visual stress. For many people, reading could be improved with the use of a colored overlay.

Self-Evident Improvement

Once the person suffering from visual stress can avail themselves of the proper tinted background, a number of reading-related aspects may be ameliorated. The right background can lead to improvements in reading fluency, speed, comprehension, and attention span. While researchers haven't quite determined why the change in background color makes a difference in reading, they do know that such improvement is self-evident and that customizing the proper color for the individual is crucial.

Colored Lenses

Colored lenses have also been utilized and have had a great effect. The prescription is made after the individual is assessed by a specialist in the field. The glasses are costlier than overlays but are more useful since they allow the user a greater field of vision. In the classroom, the lenses permit the wearer to see from the blackboard, the printed page, or from posters. The lenses serve the purpose of eliminating glare from whatever text the user is viewing.

Symptoms of Stress

Peer Pressure

On the other hand, sometimes the color preferences change, which necessitates a new assessment and yet another costly pair of colored glasses. Another issue to consider is the child's feelings about wearing these unusual spectacles in public. The child may not mind as an elementary student, but high school may contain social pressures beyond a child's' comfort level.

Trial And Error

The individual may benefit more from one color as an overlay but from a different color in the form of lenses. The color of the lenses can only be determined by optometrists or orthoptists who employ the use of a diagnostic device or through trial and error with a large number of colored lenses.

Not Dyslexia

While it's true that a large number of dyslexics suffer from visual stress, the two conditions are not to be confused. Colored overlays and lenses should not be seen as cures for dyslexia.

Related articles

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The Dyslexic Democrat

The polls were not good. A lot of people thought Kendrick Meek (D) should just drop out of Florida's U.S. Senate race. It looked as though Meek was not even going to move past 25% of the vote against the Republican nominee, Marco Rubio, or even past the incumbent Gov. Charlie Crist, running as an Independent.

Meek was not going to back down. It just wasn't part of the hulking 6'3" former A&M linebacker makeup. Meek is no quitter.If he had been a quitter, the rundown streets of Miami's Liberty City would have chewed him up and spat him out long ago, when he was the shy dyslexic child of a single mother who became Florida's first African-American Congresswoman.

State seal of Florida

Kids who grow up on mean streets know that defeat is something that must be prevented at all costs, or street credibility evaporates for good. So Meek struggled through a Dickensian-like battle for respectability. He graduated Miami Springs High School and with the help of a full scholarship became star defensive tackle for Florida A&M where he earned a degree in criminal justice. No small feat for a kid with dyslexia who bore the brunt of his classmates' teasing for being slow.

Football

Meek has said that because he was dyslexic, there were things he just couldn't do, but that football bridged the gap for him, keeping him motivated and still striving for an education. If it hadn't been for football, said the former linebacker, he doesn't think he would have made his way through college. Meek was diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade.

Dyslexic Child

Speaking about his disability, Meek described words that appeared jumbled on the page, and numbers that were transposed. Class work was a constant struggle. It was a trial to have to work long and slow at what, for other kids, seemed automatic. His classmates picked on him for taking so long to do his work.

Kendrick Meek

Natural Leader

Ken Riley, Meek's coach at Florida A&M remembered that Meek was a leader both on and off the football field. Riley said that Meek made such tremendous efforts toward coping with his dyslexia that no one suspected he suffered from a disability. Coach Riley described Meek as, "… extremely articulate and determined." Meek earned the appellation "clubhouse lawyer" from Coach Riley because whenever the other players needed any type of help or advice, Meek was the one to whom they gravitated. Riley described Meek as a "natural leader" who already knew he was going to go into politics.

Everyday Individuals

Meek spoke about the Florida constituency: "You do have an over-representation of poverty and hard times here," he said. "When you come from this kind of situation, working to correct it, you become a United States senator that carries the values of everyday individuals."

Stay Tuned

Meek may not have won the battle this time around, but is still fighting the war for the duration. Stay tuned.

Related articles

• Techniques and Tips for the Dyslexic Student (community.cognibeat.com)
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Special Diet May Lessen ADHD Symptoms

A new study finds that some kids with ADHD have diminished symptoms when they eliminate certain foods from their diets.

According to a study published in the February 5, 2011 issue of The Lancet, eliminating processed foods from the diets of children aged 4-8 with ADHD reduced symptoms in 78% of them. When those foods were reintroduced, two-thirds of the children relapsed.

mmmm donut ...

"A strictly supervised restricted elimination diet is a valuable instrument to assess whether ADHD is induced by food. We think that dietary intervention should be considered in all children with ADHD, provided parents are willing to follow a diagnostic restricted elimination diet for a five-week period, and provided expert supervision is available," concluded the authors of this study.

Sugary Foods

For a very long time, parents have felt that foods high in sugar may cause symptoms of hyperactivity, but the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) insisted that the evidence didn’t exist to support this theory. On the other hand, the evidence has been mounting that specific food additives may cause behavioral symptoms in children.

The researchers decided to test children to see if certain foods caused symptoms of hyperactivity. They studied 100 children from the Netherlands and Belgium. All of the children were aged 4-8 and had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The majority of the study subjects were boys.

Candy

The children were chosen at random to participate in one of two groups. One group was started on a restrictive elimination diet, while the second group acted as a control group and received advice only on healthful eating habits.

Those in the first group started out on the “few foods diet,” which includes only water, pears, vegetables, meat, and rice. The researchers made gradual additions to this diet, with wheat, fruit, and potatoes. The children remained on restrictive diets for 5 weeks.

Food Challenges

The kids in this same group then received two food challenges over the following four weeks, during which specific foods were introduced into the diets of these children. Foods were chosen in both low and high IgG food groups.

IgG is an antibody that is created by the immune system. Some practitioners of alternative medicine believe that IgG causes food sensitivities. However, this remains a controversial theory, not accepted by mainstream medical science.

Hamburgers and Fries

Of the 41 children who completed the restrictive diet phase, 78% were found to have reduced symptoms of ADHD in comparison with their controls, who showed no improvement. Nine children on the restrictive diet or 22% showed no change in symptoms. The scientists used an ADHD symptom scale that ranges from 0-72 points. A higher score represents more severe symptoms. The average reduction of symptoms in the children on the restrictive diet was by 24 points.

Thirty of the children who responded well to the restrictive diet were given the challenge test. Of those children, 19 relapsed in their symptoms. There was no difference between the children who received the low versus the high-IgG foods.

The upshot is that measuring IgG levels in children probably isn’t helpful but an elimination diet may reduce hyperactive symptoms in the child with ADHD. If you see your child with ADHD getting worse when he eats certain foods, by all means, take them out of his diet and see if it helps his symptoms.

Related articles

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An interesting video may change the way you look at your life

Some people are so negative it’s depressing just to be around them. No matter how hard you try to cheer them up and make them see the bright side of things, they insist that their lives are gone to pot and that there is nothing in their life that is right. It’s hard to tell what it is they’re trying to get out of life, or what they want from you.

Great Stuff

You offer them suggestions and they respond with a series of “buts.” You point out the really groovy stuff in their lives and they feel forced to tell you why those things aren’t really so groovy after all. You begin to feel that they prefer to be unhappy, dissatisfied, and negative.

There’s not much else to do at that point but give up before you lose your equanimity. You can’t force a person to change perspective. It’s got to come from within.

Raw Deal

On the other hand, kids with learning disabilities may become convinced that life has handed them some tough stuff to deal with. They did, to at least some extent, get a raw deal and deserve some understanding and patience. Sometimes you just need to offer them a different perspective. If you can get them to listen, try helping them break out of the blues by showing them this clip.

There’s a cute saying that when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. This clip is a good illustration of that. The words in the clip don’t change, but viewed from a different perspective, they have a whole different meaning.

That’s kind of like dyslexia, actually. A person with dyslexia may not see text the way other people do. That makes it hard to read.

Yes, it’s a disability. But with that disability comes a gift: the gift of learning to see outside the box. Because reading is difficult for someone with dyslexia, learning is done by other means.

Foreshortening (perspective)

The person with dyslexia has been handed a big problem at birth; but always having to get around the problem of reading forces the person with dyslexia to become a terrific problem solver. Maybe that’s why so many entrepreneurs and millionaires are dyslexic. When a big business problem arises, the dyslexic businessman or woman has already learned to stop and look at the problem from a different perspective. It takes some tenacity, but the solution is bound to make an appearance if only the problem-solver refuses to give up. A can-do attitude is the way to get to solutions, every time.

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Percy Jackson - Getting Kids to Read

Creator of Percy Jackson Offers Tips for Getting Dyslexic Kids to Read

Rick Riordan created his book series to help his son battle learning disabilities.

When author Rick Riordan’s son Haley was 7, he hated school. Haley had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. Reading and learning were serious challenges for him. Riordan relates that Haley used to hide under the family’s dining-room table to get out of doing his homework or to avoid reading.

Royal Blood

Percy Jackson - Image via Wikipedia

Riordan loved books and was desperate that Haley should love them, too. That’s why he started writing the Percy Jackson series, which began as Haley’s bedtime stories. Riordan gave Percy the same learning disabilities as Haley: ADHD and dyslexia; but the author depicted the learning deficits as indications of royal Olympian blood, medical conditions found only in demigods.

Today, Haley is 16 years-old. He walked into his father’s office not long ago, announcing that he’d just completed a 600-page manuscript. That would be a stunning accomplishment for any 16 year-old, but coming from Haley, the announcement was proof positive that the boy had turned the tide against dyslexia and had come to love the printed word. Riordan had won and Haley was the benefactor.

Long Journey

Over the course of the past nine years, Riordan’s protagonist became the main character of a five-book series. As Percy rose to stardom, Haley was taking his own journey. He came out from under the dining room table and instead of avoiding books, became an avid reader.

As Riordan looks back and reflects upon the success of the Percy Jackson series and Haley’s embrace of books and writing, he decided to share what he has learned about the process of turning children into bookworms. It boils down to four essential factors:

1. Provide an example. If you don’t take the time to read, it’s a good bet your children won’t, either. If your kids see you reading, they’ll follow your good example. Make reading a part of your family’s daily schedule. Declare the hour of 7-8 PM family reading hour. Have general book discussions. Discuss what makes a book or an author great.

Image via Wikipedia

2. Find books your children will want to read. A series is good because it will leave your child wanting to read more. Don’t worry about the caliber of the books your child seems to prefer. The main thing is to build a foundation—you want to get your child reading for pleasure. Make friends with the librarian at your local children's library and pick her brains about books your child might enjoy.

3. Think about your child’s reading environment. In general, you should offer your child a place to read where he won’t be distracted by noise. On the other hand, some children with ADHD find that fiddling makes it easier to concentrate. If squeezing a stress ball, for instance, makes it easier for your child to read, by all means, have him squeeze away.

4. Stay positive about the future. Children with ADHD and dyslexia can grow up to become successful. More millionaires than not have dyslexia. Adults with ADHD have the gift of hyperfocus and can stay focused on problems for as long as necessary, something the rest of us find difficult. People with learning disabilities have to learn to think outside the box because they have learning differences. As a result, they become excellent at problem-solving. The main thing is to get our kids through school so that they become free to find their niche.

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Internet Addiction

Plugged In 24/7

Is your child’s internet usage increasing as his grades (and personal hygiene) slip? Could it be he has an Internet addiction?

Kids are digital natives, born into the world of ever-evolving technology. Kids’ lives exist online as much or more than they do in reality. Digital natives can’t conceive of a world without cellphones, iPods, and the Internet. That’s why it should come as no surprise to hear that some teens report spending 7-14 hours a day plugged into their computers—way beyond the recommended Canadian guideline of two hours max.

Addicted

Still, Facebook can be a good thing, insomuch as it fosters social interaction. The problems begin when teens go out on a limb and engage in risky behavior just so they’ll have a cool status update for their “walls.” That’s when you know things are getting out of hand. Recent studies tell us that the more time a teen spends on social networking venues, the higher the level of his narcissism climbs. That should send parental alarm bells a ’ringing.

One U.S. health-care advocacy group, the Kaiser Family Foundation, issued a report stating that kids aged 8-18 spend more time facing their computer monitors, game and television screens, than they spend on any other activity except for sleep. The report says that kids access technology on an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes a day. This certainly is a contrast to the recommendations of the Canadian Pediatric Society that this same age group spend no more than two hours a day parked in front of a screen.

Susan Lambert, president of the British Columbia Teachers Federation, was shocked to hear that many teens are spending over 10 hours a day on computers. Lambert asks, "If you were spending an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes a day doing any single thing, wouldn't we be concerned?"

Addicted to the Internet

ADHD Link

One expert has noticed a link between Internet overuse and certain disorders, in particular ADHD and depression. Dr. Susan Baer, of the BC Children’s Hospital, where she is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in the neuropsychiatry and mood and anxiety disorders clinic, conducted a study on the topic and found that teens with behavioral and emotional difficulties were spending most of their free time in front of monitors and screens, averaging 7 hours a day on gaming stations, televisions, and computers.

But Baer also discovered that kids who spent lots of time on computers or at gaming stations but did not manifest addictive behaviors were not among those with a coexisting link to depression. "This was surprising to us and suggests that even though terms such as Internet addiction are controversial, there is a real difference between youth who are simply filling their free time with the computer, and youth whose use is more driven and problematic," said Baer.

Addiction Symptoms

Consult your physician if your child:

* Loses interest in academic achievement

* Feels angry and frustrated when denied access

* Feels depression and anxiety—longs to return when away from the computer

* Has sleep difficulties and changes in sleep patterns

* Neglects personal hygiene

* Neglects important responsibilities

* Spends less time with loves ones and friends

* Loses real friends while increasing virtual friends

Related articles

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