Question: From childhood on I've had dyslexia.
T: Ahhhhhh!
Q: And it goes through the generations of my family!
My cousin's have ADHD!
We all didn't have an easy childhood.
School was a horror for me.
I always felt misunderstood and that nothing made sense to me.
What does dyslexia mean?
And are ADHD and dyslexia connected?
I have a trauma of being misunderstood by everyone.
T: Okay, ADHD and dyslexia
can, but are not always related.
All right, I've gotta stay on track
because this is like, a really good one.
Ready?
With dyslexia in and of itself,
what's actually happening is that you have a different type of brain.
Now we as people like to think
that everybody has the same brain.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
We have very different brains.
Our brains function in very different ways.
We think very differently.
The brain of a dyslexic is a visual spatial brain.
They cannot learn in the same way that other people learn.
They have a difficult time sequencing.
They have a difficult time with...
Working memory.
So what's very very critical
is to teach your brain in a different way than other people teach you
and this is why it's so hard in our mainstream schooling system
because the mainstream schooling system,
even how it was created to begin with,
is not created for the individual.
It's not created to maximize the potential
of the individual mind of the child.
It is a system that is designed to create a robot basically,
to fit into a system and to train that
part of that system to function in a way
that is the best of its, you know, capacity.
When we're doing this,
when we're approaching a child with this approach,
what we're trying to do is to like,
were looking at a car engine we've decided that everybody has to be,
like, the motor of the engine,
and we're saying: "Well, be a motor."
but what are you supposed to do if you're a belt?
Like, you can't be a motor if you're a belt.
and that's why everybody's failing, you know what I mean?
So what we have not recognized with dyslexics
is that they are visual spatial learners.
I'm going to teach you something about your brain. You ready?
If you've got this type of brain,
then you have to be learning multi-sensorily.
You have got to, to learn something and to convert it to long term memory,
you've got to learn it with your touch,
at the same time as your sight,
at the same time as your hearing.
Which is why you will find that that learning things on a screen
like through a video,
will work for you about a hundred times better,
than if you're just listening to it.
a hundred times better than if you're just reading it.
Like, if you involve all of the senses
in learning of one thing, it will be converted for long-term memory.
Knowing that, just I cannot tell you what that is gonna open up for you,
which is why, by the way, you'll notice this;
It's not really happening right now, I'm talking to you, but,
one of the reasons actually that I do so many demonstrations
when I'm doing my workshops up on stage
where I'm physically acting things out for you,
is because of people like you.
Because I mean all people learn better when all senses are involved,
but you HAVE TO.
So there's a demographic of people that quite literally HAVE TO experience
like everything, in a multi-sensory way,
in order to even understand something.
So that's what's going on with you.
The visual spatial brain is valuable as hell,
because you're the builders of society.
You make excellent engineers, incredible architects.
Because what you do is you see everything in 3d already.
And by the way, I don't have that kind of mind.
So I'm coming from the opposite side of the spectrum.
I cannot, it blows my mind what you guys can do.
If I'm looking at a hillside, I can't visualize something 3d there,
in order to figure out how to put the pieces together
to build that thing.
But your mind already goes there.
You see everything in that way.
Your mind does not work in a linear fashion.
So that's what's going on with dyslexia.
And it's our failure to understand how we have to teach
to that specific type of brain, that is making it so
you even tell yourself there's anything wrong with you at all
Language is linear.
Of course, it doesn't make sense to you.
Rant sorry, rant. Okay.
Where were we going with that?
Ok, so, now we're going ADHD, right?
Children who have brains that think that way,
Right?
These are children who are naturally
going to have a harder time paying attention
to linear teaching.
It makes no sense.
It makes you antsy, right?
And because you need to be learning,
in terms of your tactile sensations, as well,
You're a person who's constantly in motion.
Right?
Now, this is why I'm saying that they can exist separately,
because in the future,
we're not gonna use ADHD as what we do today,
which is a catch-all term, right?
With ADHD you're just catching all these kids
that have these symptoms.
And there are so many kids that have been labeled the ADHD,
that are nothing of the kind.
And this is why I'm saying, like,
if you have a visuospatial brain, if you have a dyslexic brain,
we need to actually consider that we're not seeing ADHD,
We're seeing a behavior that a child has,
when they can't learn in that way,
and they need to learn in a different way.
Now, for kids who we could say
do actually fit into ADHD, right?
And and it's an accurate diagnosis,
what's actually going on here is a regulation of anxiety.
With kids who have ADHD,
they come from environments of anxiety.
Without fail! Every time!
And what a kid is trying to do with the movement,
is to down-regulate.
It's like sensory integration.
They're trying to down regulate their nervous system.
And their attention issue is selective.
And this is what we don't get.
When a kid is in a state of stress,
and there's lots of stress around them,
what do they do?
They shut it down.
So this is a kid who's instantly gonna try to find one focus.
And they're not going to pay attention
to what they're supposed to be paying attention to.
It's almost like they're gonna condense their world as tiny as they could possibly get it
and be in their own little world fixated on whatever they want
to be fixated about in any given time.
They're trying to cope with extreme levels
of stress in their environment.
So, unfortunately, until you get the anxiety level of the parents,
anxiety level of the environment down,
and to give them more of a sense of personal empowerment
they will not expand that bubble to include the world in it.
So that's what's happening with ADHD.
And yet again, like usual,
most people are like but we can see like actual physiological differences.
Yeah, it's always gonna be the case.
Anytime you get a mental and emotional aspect
it's going to filter into the physical
and then you're gonna see the physical precursors.
You're going to see changes in biochemistry in all these things.
It's not a contradiction to, it's adjunct to.
But in my opinion, there is nothing that has been done
probably to children since the introduction of antidepressants
to children,
there is nothing that has come into this mainstream society
that is worse, than the medication of children who we label as ADHD.
It drives me absolutely up a tree.
So, another soapbox moment.
~ Deep Sigh ~
Sorry.
Blake: You need a second?
T: I need a second. It makes mad. Sorry.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com