Video: When Capable Readers Struggle: The Hidden Impact of Stealth Dyslexia
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When Capable Readers Struggle: The Hidden Impact of Stealth Dyslexia
Does your child read at grade level, but take far longer than expected to finish assignments, avoid reading despite high curiosity, or experience severe burnout after reading tasks? In this presentation hosted by REEL2e, expert speakers discuss stealth dyslexia—a presentation where high intelligence and advanced vocabulary allow gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) learners to compensate so effectively that their underlying reading challenges go unnoticed.
Key Topics Covered:
What stealth dyslexia looks like in bright and twice-exceptional learners
Why traditional school screeners frequently miss capable readers
How hidden reading struggles present as avoidance, perfectionism, fatigue, or behavioral issues
The impact of co-occurring differences like processing speed, ADHD, and anxiety
Guidance on evaluations, school advocacy, and identifying targeted support
Featured Speakers:
Dr. Lisa White – Psychologist at Summit Center providing strengths-based psychoeducational and neuropsychological evaluations for gifted/2e youth.
Teresa Nair – Parent Community Program Manager at REEL, 2e advocate, and M.Ed. graduate in Cognitive Diversity from Bridges Graduate School.
Learn more about upcoming events and educational resources at REEL2e.
#TwiceExceptional #2e #StealthDyslexia #GiftedLearners #Dyslexia #ParentAdvocacy #Neurodiversity
Read the transcript
Yael: Welcome everyone to tonight's talk, When Capable Readers Struggle The Hidden Impact of Stealth Dyslexia. I want to make sure that everyone knows that Spanish interpretation is available. Abby, if you wouldn't mind sharing that in the chat. In case you're not familiar with REAL, we are a nonprofit that ensures neurodivergent, twice-exceptional students thrive by raising parent and educator awareness and understanding of practical research-based strategies to address their educational needs successfully. And what do we mean by 2E?
Yael: Many of you may already know. But we discuss it as a combination of yellow distinguishing strengths, high ability, or potential in one or more areas, combined with complex challenges such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, or others that combine to make a green student, and because they have both these strengths and challenges at the same time, they both need to be addressed simultaneously, which makes them complex learners to support in the classroom, as you have probably seen. Real offers a lot of support services for parents free of cost, including this expert speaker series that you're attending tonight, a monthly parent support group with different topics and breakout rooms, a private Google group of over a thousand local parents who you can ask and answer questions with Parent toolkits, and Abby's going to put some of these in the chat if her cat moves. And many online resources, including guides to IEPs and assessments, school guidance, and a list of schools And for a fee, we do offer small facilitated learning groups and one-on-one consultations.
Yael: In addition, we offer educator services. We do professional development in many local schools. We do our introduction to 2E or learning different simulation workshops. So you can bring us to your school. We also offer a lot of online resources, recorded talks, and a newsletter for educators This year, we have a campaign called See the Whole Child where we are trying to make more people aware that the way we see our children shapes the way they learn to see themselves.
Yael: And when we look beyond their challenges and focus on their strengths, we can unlock their full potential You are in our winter spring event series, which has only two more talks left, but the recordings of all the others are available on our website. Next Monday at lunch, we have our introduction to 2E Understanding 2E learners when strengths and Challenges Coexist, so that's a great one if you're more new to 2E And then on November 10th, we have some amazing speakers talking about helping neurodivergent kids build friendships. And on November 12th, we have our final parent support group of the year where we have Dr. Danica Maddox speaking about how to help your child with self-awareness.
Yael: You RCP to all those on our website And we'll put some of these links in the chat, but you can connect with us on socials and see all our recordings on YouTube. So without further ado, I will introduce our speakers. Dr. Lisa White has worked with gifted and Tui children, teens, and families for nearly 20 years and has been part of Summit Center since its founding in 2009. She provides strengths-based psychoeducational and neuropsychological evaluations as well as parent coaching and educational consultation to help families better understand their child's profiles and find supportive learning environments.
Yael: Dr. White's clinical interests include the social-emotional needs of gifted and TUI learners, ADHD, learning differences and the unique experiences of Tui girls and teens. Through her work with families, schools, and parent communities, she is passionate about helping TUI learners be understood, supported, and empowered to thrive. And Teresa Nair's Parent Community Program Manager, is the mother of two vibrant 2E kids and is 2E herself. She holds an MED in cognitive diversity from Bridges Graduate School.
Yael: Teresa has a diverse professional background, including roles as a classroom teacher board member for organizations that support the disabled communities in Silicon Valley and a consultant So take it away, Teresa.
Teresa: Thanks. And actually, folks, you don't get hear a whole lot from me tonight, which is okay, because we've got this amazing expert, but we wanted to take a moment to kind of introduce tonight's topic, because this was an interesting one for us to kind of come to as an organization with Real. Our team at Real was talking about, you know, the lineup. Yael puts together such an amazing lineup of speakers and topics that are important and timely for our community. And we got to speaking as a team about whether or not we're meeting the needs of the dyslexic families in our community.
Teresa: Do we need more resources? Do we… how can we support more? And we got to looking, and we have some really great stuff. I don't know if Abby will be able to put any of our past speakers in there. We've got some really great speakers On dyslexia and even some articles, but we felt like something was missing, and within that conversation, Stealth Dyslexia got mentioned And as an organization, as a team, as moms familiar with this, we kind of all said, well, you know, is there enough to do like a whole night event on Stealth Dyslexia and we didn't know, we weren't sure.
Teresa: And so, of course, what do we do at Real? We then asked the experts. So, we got Dr. Lisa White to come and kind of join us for a brainstorming session And even said to her, like, do you think there's enough to do an entire event on Stealth Dyslexia And she's like, well, I'm not sure, let's talk about it a little bit further. And I chimed in, as I often do, as a parent But I also chimed in as just a neurodivergent person myself.
Teresa: And I said. You know, can I tell you my experience and can I go all the way back to the beginning because this is in some ways important to me. So I myself was categorized as a struggling reader I was always a year, if not maybe two years behind my age-based expectations or grade levels, however they put it. And I knew throughout my entire school career that I struggled with reading, but I loved it and fell in love with it And so, I always joke that I'm a Tui wannabe, because back in the 80s and 90s in Iowa, we did not have those neat titles.
Teresa: We didn't have those neat labels. We had other labels That included things like struggling reader, challenged academically. All of these crazy things. So fast forward. And I was telling Dr. White, when my son started to struggle with reading many, many years later when I became a mom, after being in the classroom And working in gifted schools and in the neurodivergent communities, and I saw my son starting to struggle He was 4 or 5, and I pegged it.
Teresa: I was Like, hey, something's going on here, right? We need to get a full neuropsych eval done, right? I had I had that privilege of knowing and understanding and seeing his struggle, and we did within a year or so, by six years old, he was Diagnosed with a learning disability of dyslexia and 2E. He has a huge asynchronous profile, which many of our kids do.
Teresa: So one of the things that we were told often was that it was early. This is great. He can get supports. We have remediation. And it was kind of one of those things where we were like, okay, okay, this is going to be fine, right?
Teresa: We can we can do this He continued to struggle, but we had options, we knew what to do, people were guiding us Fast forward again a couple more years. And I was sitting in a parent-teacher conference for my daughter, who is two years older than my son. So she's probably 11, maybe 12 at this time. And the teachers were saying to me, gosh We are so impressed with how hard she works.
Teresa: She is so tenacious when it comes to her reading and trying to keep up with her peers. She works so hard. We're so proud of how hard she works And I, as a mom, kind of stopped in, like, this light bulb went on, and I was like Wait a second. What I see is anxiety.
Teresa: I see a kid who is struggling with homework every night, but it wasn't around just like language arts and reading. It was science, social studies, math, you know, hate to spoil alert, but there is reading in all of those And so I was listening to the teachers, and they were telling me one thing about this kid who is tenacious and is working so hard, and I was seeing another thing at home. I was seeing a stressed-out kiddo who was working two to three times harder than her peers to get done homework that shouldn't have taken 4 hours. It should have taken 45 minutes kind of thing.
Teresa: And I was like What did I miss? She's at grade level reading And so we went back for another neuropsych for my daughter. And that's kind of when it broke open for me, because what I realized was that when we got her diagnoses, and it was much later. I had more anxiety myself.
Teresa: I had more questions myself. You know, we didn't catch it early. We didn't, you know, get the remediation early. All these things that we were supposed to do. But I still had a kiddo who was struggling, and so I said this to Dr. White And I was like I think there's a lot here.
Teresa: I have a lot of questions for you. And then we opened this up to you guys in this community, Reels community, and you guys sent in some amazing questions. And so that's why I'm really excited to say thank you guys For speaking out. And thank you, Dr. Lisa White, for being here, because I really think that she's going to shed some light on this for us about what it means when we see the hidden impacts of self-dyslexia. So, thank you for letting me introduce this on such a personal level, but also hopefully a valuable one. So, take it away, Doctor
Dr. Lisa White: Okay. Thank you, Teresa. That was great. And you like you brought up so many topics that I'm going to touch on. So that was a great introduction. All right, hi. Thanks for joining me.
Dr. Lisa White: I'm Lisa White. I'm a licensed psychologist at Summit Center, and I have so much to say about self-dyslexia I want to start out by saying there's a huge variation in kids, in 2E kids, in people with dyslexia, so everything I'm going to talk about here is not exactly going to fit you or your child's experience And although I could talk for like 4 h about this, I figured you might have other things you wanted to do with your evening. So I'm not going to cover everything in super detail. If you want to talk more specifically about your child, email my office to make an appointment.
Dr. Lisa White: We can talk one on one like I'm happy to do that Also, I talk really fast. I apologize in advance for that, but I have so much to say. And we'll have time at the end for Q&A, so please put questions in the chat. And I think Yael is going to moderate those. So let's jump in.
Dr. Lisa White: I want to start by giving you the biographies of a couple people. As I'm telling you about them, if you think you know who they are, put them in the chat. So our first guy was born in 1967 in New York City to a writer and a fashion designer. His home was a very literary environment, books and writing were very important. He had a very sophisticated vocabulary, but he had a hard time reading, and he pretended to read by memorizing word shapes like pictures, or he used deductive reasoning to figure out the meaning of a paragraph from context.
Dr. Lisa White: Lisa. He attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City. And the subtle signs of his Dyslexia were caught around first or second grade. He was able to work intensively with a reading specialist. He later earned a degree in political science from Yale and became a war correspondent and a live journalist.
Dr. Lisa White: However, even now, Anderson Cooper reports that reading does not come automatically or effortlessly to him, and under the pressure of live news and reading scrolling text on a teleprompter, he still occasionally… Oh, I'm not sharing my slides
Yael: Oh. No, sorry, I was
Dr. Lisa White: Oh, gosh, okay. I know there's a cute photo of this little boy to be shared. So Gosh, I don't know what to do then. Let's see.
Yael: If it looks like you're sharing, try stop sharing and then share again.
Dr. Lisa White: Okay, let me try that. Oh, I know what I did wrong. I know what I did wrong. Okay, right I don't have the option to share my slides. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Okay. Sorry about this, folks.
Yael: No problem.
Dr. Lisa White: Here we go. Okay Here's our little boy
Yael: There we go. Great. Thank you.
Dr. Lisa White: Okay, so we're talking about Anderson Cooper. He still mixes up his letters. He says dyslexia has actually made him a stronger, better journalist, because he has to process information deliberately and deeply, rather than just scanning past it. Such a cute little boy. Okay. Can you see that? Did that just switch?
Yael: Yes.
Dr. Lisa White: Great. Okay. Our next person is a woman born in 1948 to two physicians in Tasmania, Australia She had an early fascination with nature, collecting ants, observing marine life like jellyfish, incredibly advanced vocabulary and logical reasoning, which masked the fact that she couldn't sound out words. She looked like an academic prodigy because she had this very complex logic, which hid the huge effort it took for her to decode text line by line.
Dr. Lisa White: In college and graduate school, she gravitated toward biochemistry and physics. Because in a lab, her brain did not have to process dense paragraphs of text, and she could use her fluid reasoning skills and 3D spatial awareness to visualize molecular structures. She got her PhD from the University of Cambridge and did her postdoc work at Yale. And then in 1984, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered telomerase, which is the enzyme that acts as a protective cap on the ends of chromosomes This discovery unlocked the science of how cells age and replicate.
Dr. Lisa White: She notes that her dyslexic mind was an asset rather than a deficit in that it allowed her to see, like, vast interwoven biological landscapes and patterns that other people missed because they were looking at data too linearly She was one of Time Magazine's world's most influential people in 2007. And in 2009, she won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine for her discovery. So, two people's histories, they were very clearly 2E.
Dr. Lisa White: They very clearly had Stealth Dyslexia, and they went on to do amazing things. Okay, so although I'm going to focus on self-dyslexia, the majority of dyslexia is not self. So we're going to zoom out first and talk about dyslexia in general. What is regular dyslexia In 2025, the International Dyslexia Association defined Dyslexia as, and I'm abridging this from their much longer definition, a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties in word reading and or spelling that involve accuracy, speed, or both These difficulties occur along a continuum of severity and persist even with instruction that is effective for the individual's peers.
Dr. Lisa White: And then they go on to say that the causes are complex, and that it's a combination of genetic, neurobiological, and environmental influences. But dyslexia can involve a lot more than just reading problems. It can also be associated with, and I want to emphasize associated with and not necessarily like this is a This is a correlation, not a causality. Associated with difficulties in a lot of other areas.
Dr. Lisa White: So dyslexia can be associated with difficulties in handwriting Oral language, math, motor planning, coordination, organization, and other executive functioning, sequencing, orientation to time, right-left orientation, spatial perception, memory, eye movement control, lots of stuff. Dyslexia affects a lot of parts What is dyslexia feel like for people? It could be like reading a sentence. Where the letters feel unfamiliar and your brain has to like puzzle out the words one by one instead of seeing them as a whole.
Dr. Lisa White: It could be a sound matching delay where your brain struggles to connect the letters on the page to the sounds they represent. And it could be just that reading takes a massive amount of energy. Might have to reread the same paragraph multiple times to understand or remember it, and it's just exhausting. Some early warning signs of dyslexia and we'll a little bit later talk about signs of stealth dyslexia.
Dr. Lisa White: So this is more general dyslexia So, for little, little kids age 1 to 3 late talking, trouble learning nursery rhymes, or difficulty keeping a simple rhythm When they're a little bit older, like a preschooler, difficulty rhyming words, trouble learning letters, even letters in their own name mispronouncing common words. Like, they might say Betty Tear for teddy bear, like that kind of thing Difficulty with like rote facts like days of the week, colors, month of the year, difficulty with multi-step directions and confusing words that sound similar like cat and cot And then in early elementary school. Hard time connecting letters to their correct sounds, trouble sounding out simple single syllable words like hat Confusing letters that look similar like B and D. Substituting words when reading aloud, like saying house for home. Skipping small words like A or and a big one is avoiding reading tasks or complaining of like fatigue or headaches during reading.
Dr. Lisa White: So doctors Brock and Furnett ID wrote this groundbreaking book called The Dyslexic Advantage. And if you or someone you love is diagnosed with dyslexia, you should like run out and get this book immediately. It's audiobook and print book. They say that dyslexia is not just a disorder. It's a completely different way of thinking.
Dr. Lisa White: And they talk about what they call the mind strength of dyslexia Instead of viewing dyslexia as just a reading deficit, they had research that showed that the dyslexic brain is wired for what they call macro level big picture processing. And the difficulties with reading and spelling are just, like, the trade-offs of a brain that is optimized for different kinds of cognitive skills. The acronym MIND stands for the four core cognitive processing domains where people with dyslexia have strengths where they naturally excel. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on these. If you're interested in learning more, read or listen to their book or look on their website, which Dyslexicadvantage.org.
Dr. Lisa White: So M is material reasoning, 3D spatial thinking. I's interconnected reasoning, system and pattern recognition N is narrative reasoning, episodic memory and analogies. This is using personal experiences, stories, and, like, examples, rather than just rules or rote algorithms. And Dia is dynamic reasoning, mental time travel and predictions Using Like, being able to think about the future and the past to figure out, changing scenarios.
Dr. Lisa White: Okay, that's a very quick overview on dyslexia. So moving on to what is Stealth Dyslexia and how is it different from regular dyslexia To put it very simply, Stealth Dyslexia is a hidden form of dyslexia where high intelligence, strong higher order language skills, and strong coping skills allow a person to mask their reading and decoding struggles. Our friends, Dr. Brock and for net ID of the Dyslexia advantage coined the term And they describe it as a condition that typically affects 2E or intellectually gifted people Because these people get the main idea of text through context clues or good listening skills Teachers and parents often miss the underlying reading issue and often blame the poor work on carelessness or laziness And then this is super interesting.
Dr. Lisa White: There's actually neurological proof that self-dyslexia exists In 2011, Dr. Fumiko Heft at Stanford did a longitudinal study using fMRI neuroimaging to track children with dyslexia and showed that children were able to achieve normal reading comprehension, even though they had core phonological deficits. They didn't use their like traditional left hemisphere reading networks, but Bypass them by using a different part of the brain. So, they use their right inferior frontal gyrus. There will not be a test on this.
Dr. Lisa White: Basically, they compensated for their phonological deficits using a different part of their brain, and this was the first definitive biological proof for self-dyslexia So what does self-dyslexia look like? So broken down by age. And sometimes these are subtle signs as it can be hard to spot early. The whole thing with cell dyslexia is that they compensate so well that they might fly under the radar for a long time.
Dr. Lisa White: So kindergarten to second grade It is very unusual to diagnose self-dyslexia this early, like very, very unusual. But some signs might be trouble with nonsense words. So they might read familiar words fine, but they struggle to sound out phonetically simple, made up words, because they can't rely on memory or context to get them When reading aloud, they might read aloud in like a choppy or labored way. They might skip small connector words like is or a or the They might swap words with similar meanings, like house or home, or guess a long word based only on its first letter.
Dr. Lisa White: When reading books with pictures, they often rely on the picture to guess words rather than looking at the letters of the word and decoding it They're often super aware that reading takes a ton of effort compared to their peers. So they might avoid reading aloud. They might show anxiety around books, and they often really prefer being read to rather than reading On their own or to somebody else. A little bit older elementary school, third grade to fifth grade. This is when Stealth Dyslexia is hopefully discovered.
Dr. Lisa White: Not always, but hopefully discovered. So the most blaring sign of self-dyslexia is kids who have very sophisticated verbal conversations and, like, may look like a strong reader, because they can offer insightful commentary on what they read But when they're asked to write their ideas down, you get like short, very simple sentences with very basic vocabulary, because they're avoiding words they can't spell. They're happy to participate in class discussions, but they show anxiety or stomach aches or restlessness or stalling when it's their turn to read out loud to the class Their reading comprehension might test at or above grade level, but their spelling is really weak and inconsistent.
Dr. Lisa White: They spell words entirely phonetically or based on visual memory, and they miss like the structural rules. So you'll see phonetic spellings like S-E-D for said Or the same word spelled differently within a paragraph, or letters scrambled inside of Word, because they're trying to reproduce it like a drawing. Their handwriting is often illegible, disorganized, slow. And then usually around third or fourth grade, as books transition, like, from short stories with pictures to, like, chapter books without the context clues of pictures, their compensation strategies start to fail And they hit the wall.
Dr. Lisa White: They seemed fine before, but that's where, like, their grades may start to drop, they start to get more frustrated, or they just seem more exhausted by the end of the school day. In middle school, again, they might be able to like debate complex ideas in class and have an advanced vocabulary. But especially in middle school, you start to see writing like a single page essay becomes this like massive battle There's a ton of homework avoidance because the thought like translating thoughts to text is exhausting.
Dr. Lisa White: In writing, they choose simple words that they know they can spell. Like out loud, they might say the storm caused catastrophic damage, but on paper they write the storm was bad They might be bored with low level content, but not be able to keep up with reading at their interest level. And when reading, they, have poor tracking sometimes. They skip sentences, they lose their place on the page, they misread tracking words, because they read sometimes by scanning paragraphs for context clues rather than decoding line by line And then they definitely fall apart after school.
Dr. Lisa White: They've been holding it together all day, using a ton of mental energy, and then they melt down when they get home. In high school, lot of panic over time tests. You have these like high stakes time tests, AP exams, finals, the SAT. And under time pressure, their coping mechanisms break down even more. And so their test scores don't reflect their true knowledge With note-taking.
Dr. Lisa White: They cannot look at a board, listen to a teacher, decode the words, and write them down all at the same time. This is very hard. Their notes are often like blank or fragmented or illegible. And honestly, when they type notes like it's honestly not that much better. Teachers see a student who is, like, sharp and articulate, and so sometimes they're either not turning in work, or they're turning in sort of like what the teachers see as poor work The teachers say, oh, this kid isn't disciplined, or this kid has executive dysfunction, and they don't see that it's like a Dyslexia issue.
Dr. Lisa White: And then these kids often just get burnt out. Anxiety, low self-esteem, they start to think they're stupid because they have to work so hard It's hard to spot self Dyslexia early. So in standard Dyslexia, like, the difficulty with reading is obvious early on, but in Stealth Dyslexia they compensate so well that they fly under the radar for a long time, sometimes into high school So I only do testing with middle school and high schoolers, and I see a ton of first time stealth Dyslexia diagnoses And then, like Teresa said, it affects other subjects. It's a language processing difference, but You know, it's across the board in school In math and STEM classes, a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary words.
Dr. Lisa White: You can't guess them using context clues. Mitochondria, stoichiometry, like all these words that like nobody can guess. Misinterpreting word problems. Like, even if they're really good at math logic, they might have a problem with long math word problems, they might skip small words or misread, like, less than versus greater than, and that can really trip you up, obviously And then because, dyslexia impacts sequential working memory, they might lose track of multi-step equations, mix up steps in a geometry proof, for example, or Even though that they… even though they understand the math itself fine In history and social studies, these classes require a ton of reading and memorizing timelines and names and specific dates.
Dr. Lisa White: So they might be able to understand the overarching themes of like an era during a history class, but on a test they don't do well because they can't retrieve a specific fact or a date. In middle and high school history, they might have timed essays. And like I said before, like they're coping mechanisms just break down in time tests and they have this like short insufficient writing that doesn't match their understanding. For foreign languages. Learning a second language, a highly phonetic or a non-phonetic language, French or Mandarin.
Dr. Lisa White: Super hard. They already have a hard time mapping English speech sounds to written symbols and doing that from scratch for another language can be like close to impossible And then they have to like memorize and write out foreign grammar conjugations, syntax rules, gender markers, like it's just, it's not good. the… the best thing we can do for high schoolers is get a foreign language waiver or have them take sign language instead. Art, music, and PE. Reading sheet music, visual is like visual tracking, spatial orientation, sequencing A lot of the same problems here as reading the book.
Dr. Lisa White: And then following multi-step directions. This can be in PE or like a lab, or like an art class Often, quick and oral instructions, and they might have a hard time with this. They might end up looking uncooperative, or they might end up looking kind of lost Okay. So people talk about dyslexia people with dyslexia masking.
Dr. Lisa White: So, with classic dyslexia, like I said, it's visible because the person openly struggles to read fluidly. But cell dyslexia like, it's defined by the ability to hide the phonological processing deficits behind the high intelligence and the vocabulary and the logic skills. So they're giftedness conceals their dyslexia and their dyslexia covers up their true academic potential That's sort of the 2E thing, right? Like that's sort of the two E story across the board.
Dr. Lisa White: Masking can cause, like, energy depletion and fatigue. It can cause an asymmetrical or what we call a spiky profile, like super high verbal skills and poor written work And it can cause imposter syndrome. People feel like they're tricking people because people say they're smart, but they know how much they struggle and feel dumb. And then, like we said, you know, when the volume of text outpaces their processing speed and their abilities to to mask, they… they can't do it anymore. This could happen, like we said, in third or fourth grade when the text moves from pictures and sight words to dense chapters or middle school and high school when the volume of reading goes up or college and adulthood when You know, there's just too much data for them to manage.
Dr. Lisa White: This kind of masking is different from something like autistic masking. Because Stealth Dyslexia hides like a mechanical processing challenge. And autistic masking is more of a like social and sensory weakness But both of them can cause fatigue and exhaustion. So I've mentioned processing speed. What does this have to do with processing speed?
Dr. Lisa White: They're closely connected because slower processing speed forces the brain to work harder In reading, this is sometimes called fluency. When you're looking at an evaluation, all the scores that say fluency mean they're timed. So if you have slow processing speed, it takes much longer to do the whole process of figuring out words from context, using vocabulary clues, and so on. slower processing and, like, poor motor skills. That is more ends up with short, fragmented, messy written work.
Dr. Lisa White: You know, if somebody's questioning you quickly, you're giving you multi-step directions quickly, and you have poor processing speed, you're likely to freeze up because your brain needs extra time to retrieve vocabulary. I do want to say that this might not show up as low processing speed score on the WISC. Those subtests are just copying or crossing out symbols, which some people would sell Dyslexia can do okay at. There's not meaningful information to process on the processing speed index of the WISC. So sometimes people say, you know, but my kid got a good processing speed score on the whisk.
Dr. Lisa White: They can't have low processing. They still can. So How do you test for Stealth Dyslexia? We had on the questions that people submitted, we have a lot of questions about testing for Stealth Dyslexia So sometimes psychologists or learning specialists can say that they do an evaluation that's just for dyslexia But for Stealth Dyslexia, it's very important to do a comprehensive specialized neuropsych or psychoed evaluation because you really want to look for that discrepancy between high cognitive and verbal ability which would be on an IQ test, and then those underlying phonological processing deficits.
Dr. Lisa White: Standard school screening tools do not take this into account. I'll go into this more in a little bit. But the parts of a good evaluation for stealth Dyslexia It would include a whole battery of tests and measures, and you need a licensed psychologist, a neuropsychologist, or an educational psychologist to administer this So first you want them to take a thorough clinical and educational history. You want it to cover developmental milestones, past academic performance And parent and teacher observations of how easily the child fatigues while reading, or how much they avoid writing tasks You want information on effort as well as scores.
Dr. Lisa White: This is super important. And then you want that cognitive IQ testing. This is a test like the WISC-V. This gives you baseline intellectual capacity and that very important verbal reasoning potential You want overall academic testing that covers reading, writing, spelling, and math. It's important to cover math because like we said before, math is impacted by self-dyslexia as well.
Dr. Lisa White: This test is usually the Woodcock-Johnson or the Wyatt And these tests also include phonetic decoding and pseudoword tasks, nonsense word tasks And that's decoding made-up words that they can't figure out by context. And then there should be additional tests for figuring out phonological awareness, memory, rapid naming, other phonological processing skills. This could be a test like the CTOP or the FAR You want to test of oral reading fluency.
Dr. Lisa White: This is a test like the GORT. And it tests accuracy, speed, and like board skipping, word substitutions when reading aloud. This also tests comprehension, which is good because then you can see that gap between comprehension and reading accuracy And then you want to test spelling in written language. This might be on a test like the FAW FAW. And here you can show weaknesses in mechanics relative to the high verbal scores.
Dr. Lisa White: A lot of places use a test called the towel T-O-W-L. I don't like it for self-dyslexia because you get a lot of points for having good ideas, and I feel like it skews the score So this is a lot of testing. This is like six plus hours of in-person testing. People who say they can do it in like an hour, like, no, that's not a good battery for Stealth Dyslexia Where to get an assessment?
Dr. Lisa White: Lot of places do assessments. But you want someone who believes in self-dyslexia and has a lot of experience working with 2E kids and self-dyslexia. Like, of course I endorse Summit Center as all of our evaluators have tons of experience with self-dyslexia But Real has a list of folks on their website also who do evaluations. In terms of lower cost assessments, there are a few places, but they might have long wait lists and there's no guarantee they have experience with Stealth Dyslexia And most of the lower cost places, you get a trainee, like an intern.
Dr. Lisa White: I will say that Summit Center also has trainees for a lower cost as well, and they definitely know about self-dyslexia The UC Berkeley Psychology Clinic does assessments by sliding scale fee. The intakes open at the beginning of the academic year, so things get booked up very quickly. The Wright Institute, also in Berkeley has a clinic that does testing with a sliding scale. The CSPP SF Bay Assessment Center, which is associated with Alliant University does assessments.
Dr. Lisa White: All of these that I just mentioned are done by graduate students and supervised by licensed psychologists The Children's Health Council in Palo Alto takes Medi-Cal and has a sliding scale I warn you against places like Linda Mood Bell for Stealth Dyslexia evaluations, because although they're lower cost, they don't do a full diagnostic evaluation with an IQ test, and they can't give you a clinical diagnosis, which means it won't help you with a 504 plan or an IEP. And also their primary purpose is to sell you their services, which can be helpful, but which are very expensive. If you're working with a Barton tutor.
Dr. Lisa White: They also cannot give you a clinical diagnosis. They just do an informal dyslexia screening. It often misses Stealth dyslexia Their screeners are also very short. They only test auditory memory and auditory discrimination. But Barton is great for remediation.
Dr. Lisa White: We'll talk about that in a minute. And you don't need a diagnosis to work with So why don't school screeners catch self-dyslexia? Like, wouldn't that be great if we could catch these kids early? Schools fail to pick up on Stealth Dyslexia because it's so stealthy. Like, that's the whole thing about it.
Dr. Lisa White: It's stealthy. They're using their high cognitive abilities, they're compensating for their deficits And usually they're meeting minimum benchmarks and not tripping triggers for academic concerns. School screeners are designed to pick up below grade level performance, not gaps between potential and performance And a lot of times, kids with self-dyslexia are, quote, like, reading at grade level, right? And everyone says they're fine, they're reading at grade level.
Dr. Lisa White: But it's not enough for a kid who has a very high IQ. And then teacher training programs focus on overt reading delays. They don't train staff to spot these like hidden learning profiles. Honestly, they don't teach them much about dyslexia at all, let alone Stealth Dyslexia Often difficulties don't become apparent until middle school or high school, and then they're not doing screeners anymore then.
Dr. Lisa White: Often problems like anxiety about reading or messy handwriting are often misdiagnosed as behavioral problems or like inattentiveness, laziness. Oftentimes screeners don't use nonsense words on their on their tests. They use real words in context with full sentences and passages, and these kids get the gist, and they do fine. And sometimes spelling tasks are multiple choice, which a lot of self-dyslexic kids can… can do fine on.
Dr. Lisa White: It's a lot easier to pick the right answer than to generate a correct spelling for memory And then screeners measure accuracy, not effort. They can't see how fatiguing it is. They can't see the slow processing speed. They can't see the anxiety that it took for that kid to get that average score. Stealth dyslexia is often confused with a lot of other things.
Dr. Lisa White: Most often, the challenges are attributed to lack of effort, perilousness, laziness, silly mistakes, lack of motivation, daydreaming, stubbornness, underachievement, aversion to schoolwork, and other really pejorative terms. But then there are things that it can be confused with or comorbid with. This is tough and you need a skilled evaluator to sort this out. A lot of TUI kids have more than 2Es. You can be dyslexic and also have other stuff Or your dyslexia can be confused with other stuff.
Dr. Lisa White: So, for example, ADHD. Stealth Dyslexia can be confused with ADHD Because kids with stealth dyslexia look inattentive. They skip lines when they're reading. They make like, quote, silly mistakes. They fidget, they stall when they're reading But they may be doing this because they're hitting a wall But also, ADHD is the most frequent co-occurring condition with all forms of dyslexia You know, self-dyslexia causes a language processing problem, but ADHD affects the executive functioning that's required to organize and sustain attention on all that hard processing work Dysgraphia, also known as developmental coordination disorder So Stealth Dyslexia might be confused with a student just having a motor-based writing disorder because kids with self-dyslexia often have poor spacing, poor handwriting, bad spelling mechanics But a student who just has motor issues can spell fine out loud or tell you when to use a comma.
Dr. Lisa White: But a child can have both. We see a lot of this, both messy handwriting and poor spelling and mechanics use This tips over into what we call a specific learning disorder in written expression. Some people still call it dysgraphia. Anxiety. Kids might be diagnosed with general anxiety disorder.
Dr. Lisa White: Because they freeze or panic or have physical symptoms like stomach aches or headaches before tests or writing deadlines. But if it's dyslexia, it would be super specific to dyslexia related tasks and not to sort of general the world. But they might have overall anxiety or depression from chronic stress of like masking a learning disability, feeling like an imposter and so on. So it could be general anxiety. Auditory or visual processing challenges.
Dr. Lisa White: This is a big one So Sometimes their language processing center has a delay with sounds and symbols. This is complicated, and I won't go into it too much, but it can be things like they're miss saying or misspelling D and B, but it has to do with language decoding, not capturing the sound. Or visual processing. Dyslexic brains do not actually see things backwards. This is a myth.
Dr. Lisa White: It has to do with dyslexic brains not discriminating left and right in letters. This is like complicated but super interesting. If you're interested, you can look up the illusion of letter reversals and self-dyslexia for more. But basically, like it can. It can be a separate thing from dyslexia or kids can.
Dr. Lisa White: Stealth Dyslexia can have auditory processing or visual processing disorders But I actually think this is overdiagnosed. And then dyscalculia, specific language disorder in math. Kids with self-dyslexia might be fine conceptually with math, but they might flip numbers, have a hard time with working memory. have a hard time with word problems, mix up symbols, or they can have both and be conceptually not understanding the underpinnings of math like, not understanding a number line, estimation, how fractions work, and so on. So they can have both dyslexia and dyscalculia, and quite a few kids do.
Dr. Lisa White: What happens if you don't treat Stealth Dyslexia? So first realize that there are a lot of people out there with undiagnosed stealth dyslexia who are living fine lives. I'm so frequently evaluating kids and the parents say, hey, that sounds just like me. And I swear the parents of Stealth Dyslexia are like frequently lawyers. But kids who are not diagnosed can develop apathy or school avoidance or anxiety, sometimes even disruptive behaviors in school, and there could be a loss of potential Not everyone believes in Stealth Dyslexia.
Dr. Lisa White: There are a lot of people out there who do not psychologists among them who do not believe in self-dyslexia. There's this one really snarky article from a peer-reviewed journal called Academic Questions Where they're talking about a paper titled High Reading Skills Mask Dyslexia and gifted children and the snarky author said 2020 vision might mask blindness and visually impaired children. So, so clever and snarky. So how do you respond to naysayers? So when dealing with skeptics, your biggest asset is that Stealth Dyslexia is a validated neurological profile.
Dr. Lisa White: It's not an opinion. So you want to shift the conversation away from feelings and opinions, and focus more on brain science, objective testing data, and professional consensus. So if you're talking to a teacher, you don't want to say, my child has a special type of dyslexia that you missed This would put teachers on the defensive You want to focus instead on the mismatch between their verbal IQ and their output. You can use the term 2E, but be careful. A lot of people don't know what it means or they misinterpret it and think it just means autism When they say, but they read on grade level.
Dr. Lisa White: You can say, yes, they have the high IQ needed to memorize whole words like pictures and guess the rest using context clues, but they can't actually decode phonetically. When they say they're just not trying hard enough You say it's exactly the opposite. They're working three times harder than their peers just to produce average scores. But be kind. Teachers are not trained in this at all, not really dyslexia at all, and definitely not So what to do?
Dr. Lisa White: School accommodations, remediation, and support at home. How to talk to the school So in elementary school, you know, the teachers see a kid who participates well and passes their basic reading checks. You want to shift the focus from grades to average. Their grades are fine, but their effort is excessive. So you can show them if you have a neuropsychic evaluation, you can show them that, but that doesn't always go so well.
Dr. Lisa White: You want to document the after school meltdown. So you want to maybe keep a little log detailing how long it's taking them to do homework. You know how hard it is for them to do the homework and show the teacher that while they hold it together at school like this is unsustainable. Ask the teacher to think about what the child can say out loud versus what they actually write down. So really point out that difference between their high level vocabulary and conversation and their simple writing And then, if the school says, but your child reads on grade level, ask specifically about chronological awareness and decoding nonsense words.
Dr. Lisa White: So you know. point out that they may not be relying that they may be relying on visual memory and and context clues to guess words and see if they can look more at phonological processing. In middle school, they shift from having one primary teacher to like a bunch of teachers. You want to focus on preventing the child from being labeled as lazy And you want to focus on how the increased academic demands have caused their coping mechanisms to finally break down Don't try and coordinate with six or seven teachers individually. Ask their advisor or the guidance counselor or the special ed person to try and coordinate this.
Dr. Lisa White: And focus on that while your child was able to get by an elementary school, they can't keep up with the volume of middle school reading and writing now. And that's why things are breaking down now. Also, middle schools want to blame everything on poor executive functioning. You want to point out that their messy binder, their missed deadlines, their low-quality essays aren't due to laziness or poor organization, but they're due to cognitive overload Unless, of course, your child also has ADHD or executive functioning challenges, and, like, they can certainly have both. And then communication.
Dr. Lisa White: You want to keep up communication with teachers and and catch those missing assignments before it snowballs and before they fall way behind. In high school, schools want children to take the lead, the students to take the lead. And you want to go from the driver to the consultant. So include the student in the 504 plan meetings, the IEP meetings, teacher meetings. Let them explain in their own words what it feels like.
Dr. Lisa White: Why note-taking is so hard, what it feels like when their brain freezes during a test. And then, you know, when you're trying to get accommodations, link it also to the fact that these accommodations have an effect on the sat act, AP exams And then build a relationship with the 504 or IEP coordinator. The teachers are going to change every semester, but hopefully the special ed person stays the same. So make that person your ally, and hopefully they can help you ensure accommodations are being implemented. So often I hear parents say that a school refuses to give a child with self-dyslexia 504 plan or IEP because they don't qualify because the grades are too high.
Dr. Lisa White: This is actually illegal. Under Section 504 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, an impairment does not have to result in failing grades to count as a disability. The law states that a disability is something that substantially limits a major life activity, and this could be reading or writing, compared to the quote average person in the general population, not compared to the student's own high potential So this can get sticky because the school can argue that compared to an average person, they're doing fine But the fact that getting the average grades requires an unsustainable amount of effort, like, maybe that can do it. But if you're getting nowhere, sometimes having the psychologist who did the evaluation connect with the school, that can really help. Make sure you have a paper trail for everything like email rather than in-person or phone conversations Have them put in writing why the district is refusing to provide accommodations, so on and so forth.
Dr. Lisa White: Okay, accommodations that might be helpful in school. I'm going to go through these quickly because there are a ton of them. Like, maybe take a screenshot. In elementary school, you want to reduce fatigue and keep the child from developing anxiety around reading and writing. So if they have an IEP, you can ask for specialized reading instruction You want, a specific program like Orton Gillingham, which can also be Wilson or Barton.
Dr. Lisa White: Those are based on Orton Gillingham And, it should target phonological processing and decoding, not just comprehension. Usually their reading comprehension is okay. You need the phonological processing Audiobooks for grade level content, not being graded on spelling or handwriting, just on content, reduced copying. So, like, no copying definitions or long sentences from the board. No unprepared cold reading.
Dr. Lisa White: Never force the child to read aloud in front of the class without advance warning. This one's hard to get. Oral or visual testing options, like, you know, oral responses or presentation rather than, like, fill-in-the-blank or short answer worksheet Alternative spelling assessments, this is also hard to get, testing them, using letter tiles instead of a spelling test. This is hard to get to. In middle school, you don't want them to fall behind.
Dr. Lisa White: Speech to text, text to speech Software that reads digital worksheets, that kind of thing. Extended time should really start in middle school. Front-loaded vocabulary. So if you're going to start a new unit with specialized vocabulary, the teacher should provide a list of the vocabulary definitions ahead of time Graphic organizers and templates for writing. Exemption from Scantron sheets.
Dr. Lisa White: So allowing them to circle the answers in the test booklet rather than bubbling in on a sheet because they often like make tracking or line skipping errors. spell check and grammar software In high school, official College Board and ACT accommodations. That's for the SAT, ACT, and AP exams. Note taking support. So this is a tough one.
Dr. Lisa White: You know, a lot of people say they should receive a copy of the teacher slides ahead of you know, in advance. This, like, rarely ever happens. You know, maybe they can be permitted to use a Livescribe pen, which is like an audio recording pen or recording software like Genio. But honestly, I find that the note taking support falls apart a lot Extended time, spell check and grammar software. This also gets sticky because it gets flagged as AI.
Dr. Lisa White: Schools haven't figured this one out yet. Alternative projects, so, like, instead of a long-form essay, maybe they do a video or an oral presentation. This is hard to get And then definitely priority testing environment, a quiet distraction-free testing. Remediation. Students with Stealth Dyslexia usually need the same supports as regular dyslexic students Phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, writing support.
Dr. Lisa White: And so you want a multi-sensory evidence-based program like Orton Gillingham Targeted spelling and decoding fluency practice. That's oral reading practice Teaching spelling and grammar rules separate from creative writing learning like word structure, prefixes, suffixes, root words to help with spelling, and then explicit planning for writing, breaking down writing assignments into small stages Using a mind map or bullet points, graphic organizers. And so the question is, who does this? So maybe they get a little of this in school if they have an IEP, but generally you need to supplement outside school with an educational therapist. You want an ed therapist, not a tutor, because anyone can call themselves a tutor, but an ed therapist has training, usually a master's degree in working with kids with learning disabilities You can find an ed therapist through word of mouth.
Dr. Lisa White: I think the real website has some and the Association of Educational Therapists, their website has a search function to find providers in your area. Support at home. To support a child with Stealth Dyslexia at home, you want to both build those phonic skills and preserve their confidence. Saying just practice reading more is not going to do it. That's going to cause frustration and burnout.
Dr. Lisa White: So you can provide audio books, which they can listen to while looking at the text. That's helpful. Graphic novels are helpful because they're more sophisticated plots without the dense blocks of text. If they like etymology, teach them like, you know, the makeup of words, learning about words. For writing I like the separate thinking from inking.
Dr. Lisa White: So talking through their ideas first, organizing those ideas before they get into actually writing them down in a in a draft And then don't correct their spelling errors in their drafts. It makes them want to use simpler vocabulary. And then, you know, manage this afterschool collapse, decompress before homework, have a snack, have a screen-free break, maybe some physical activity. Like I mentioned before, homework time limits, if it's taking an hour, like, draw a line on the paper, sign your name, and write a note to the teacher You don't have to do hours of crying at the kitchen table. And then teach your child about their twice exceptional and self Dyslexic profile.
Dr. Lisa White: We'll talk more about this in a minute Okay. Some people are recommended vision therapy, colored screens, or auditory processing therapy These are a real your mileage may vary. There are a lot of anecdotes about them working or not working, but I really like the phrase, the plural of anecdote is not data. So the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the International Dyslexia Association have all said very clearly, dyslexia is a language-based neurodevelopmental condition, not a visual problem And so I exercises cannot fix it.
Dr. Lisa White: Independent scientific evidence, there's no support for vision therapy, eye tracking exercises, or colored overlays to improve long-term reading or educational performance in people with dyslexia Relying on vision therapy can delay actual treatments and help like phonics instruction. However, someone can have both cell Dyslexia and a coexisting vision condition So if someone with Stealth Dyslexia also has an eye teaming or eye tracking disorder, their eyes are going to get tired quickly. They're going to have blurring, double vision, headaches, and in that case, vision therapy would help with the physical strain of looking at the page But once their eyes are better, they'll still have Stealth Dyslexia and still need reading support. You know, colored filters also, there's not any research that they help with dyslexia.
Dr. Lisa White: But they can help with visual stress Sometimes it's called Erlen syndrome. If, like, they're sensitive to the glare of, like, black text on white paper. You can change the screen to a softer view. If that makes reading feel easier, it's because It reduced the eye strain, not because it resolved the dyslexia Auditory processing therapy, same kind of thing.
Dr. Lisa White: It doesn't treat the Stealth Dyslexia, but it can help if the student has a like a coexisting morbidity. Auditory processing disorder is how the brain makes sense of sounds 70% of people with dyslexia do show some underlying auditory processing weakness But even if you have listening therapy and you learn the difference to hear the learn to hear the difference between sounds Auditory therapy cannot teach alphabetical rules, syllable types, phonetic decoding. Once you have the auditory training, you still need the structured literacy interventions. There are also those like sound therapy programs, like music listening programs that say they're going to cure dyslexia by like playing sounds through headphones no consistent reproducible evidence for those What if your intervention is late?
Dr. Lisa White: First, don't panic. Some people never find out they have Stealth Dyslexia. It's okay. Finding out late is better than never But, you know, a kid who with late diagnosed Stealth Dyslexia might, have, like, internalized feeling lazy or stupid or, you know, years of being told they just need to try harder. They might have the imposter syndrome we talked about.
Dr. Lisa White: They might have school anxiety or apathy But also, remediation takes longer in older kids because they've had more years of bad habits. But you can still give your child a relief of finding out at any age, and they can start accommodations anytime through college. In terms of your own guilt So maybe you missed the signs, you know, maybe you yelled at them to just finish their homework or try harder You have been stealthed by stealth Dyslexia like everyone else. There were literally no giant red flags to miss because that's the whole thing about self dyslexia.
Dr. Lisa White: Like, it worked the way it works. They masked and they compensated and they read at grade level and they looked basically okay, and you acted on the data you had which said that your child was intelligent and understood the concepts, which was true. So Take the guilt and turn it into advocacy. You can apologize to your child for pushing them to do things they really couldn't do, for not seeing their struggles, you know, but turn it into what you're going to do to help them in Okay, how to talk to your child about self-dyslexia. I think it's really important to talk to your child about their diagnoses.
Dr. Lisa White: Generally, they already know something is wrong. So if you're able to explain that it's a particular thing to do with their brain's wiring and it has a name and other people have it as well, it's way better than them just thinking they're weird and dumb. So of course you want to tailor the explanation to their age, but I always think it's a good idea to start with strengths and challenges. So everybody has strengths and challenges. Mom, dad, grandma, the friends, the dog, everybody.
Dr. Lisa White: Everybody thinks they're good at and things they're working on Mom is great at keeping everyone organized, but has a hard time following directions when she's driving. Their cousin is a good athlete, but can have a hard time keeping friends. The dog is great at snuggling, but has a hard time not chasing other dogs. They might be great at building with Legos and telling stories, but have a hard time sounding out words and remembering how to spell new words. Then you say there are other people who also have the same kinds of challenges as they do.
Dr. Lisa White: And when people have these kinds of challenges, we call it self-dyslexia. Have they ever heard the word dyslexia before? What do they think it means? And then you can talk about how it doesn't mean anything about how smart they are, but what actually is, and what you're going to do to help. For some kids who are like always exhausted by the efforts of school, you could talk about self-dyslexia in terms of an invisible weighted backpack Like they're running the same race everyone else is, but with this invisible weighted backpack that might make other people think they're lazy, but they're not.
Dr. Lisa White: They're just dealing with more. So you're going to do some things to help lighten the backpack. Okay, Celt Dyslexia in college. I have a whole presentation on 2E kids in college, which you can get for free on the Summit Center website. But in terms of self-dyslexia specifically Difficulties with executive functioning skills, taking notes, huge amounts of reading, high-stakes testing, and there are no IEPs or 504 plans, no scaffolding from parents, and accommodations in college can be hit or miss If you have like a small college with discussions classes, professors might be able to see that the student is like highly articulate and understands the material, maybe gets to know them and understands their disability.
Dr. Lisa White: But in like a larger school with large lecture classes, that's not going to happen Or some classes where it's just the test and papers So note-taking, same as it was for the high school kids, impossible to, like, look at a slide, listen to the professor, synthesize the information, and write or type the notes simultaneously. Not going to happen. The sheer volume of reading so so much reading, especially in the liberal arts program. A lot of specialized vocabulary in STEM classes. Lots of essays and papers in certain majors, group projects, other group members might think they're not pulling their weight.
Dr. Lisa White: And often in group projects now the members can comment on how the other members of the group did, and that's considered in the grade Testing, you know, those timed tests. A lot of schools now are going back to handwritten blue book tests in class essays to combat the use of AI, which is a total nightmare for people with self-dyslexia You can get accommodations, but if you have yet to be diagnosed, you don't have those difficulty with executive functioning challenges, and they don't have the structured environment of home. And then feeling different and wanting to hide their disability. And then what happens when a person with Stealth Dyslexia reaches adulthood?
Dr. Lisa White: Mostly it stops looking so much like a reading disorder. It starts looking like challenges at work and chronic mental burnout. So someone with self-dyslexia might be able to speak well in a meeting or pitch an idea, but they might have a hard time drafting an email or like writing a report might take forever. Proofreading a message might be anxiety provoking because they're afraid they made a mistake AI can help, but we all know there are problems with that Work that involves reading may take twice as long and leave them exhausted. They may worry about being put on the spot if they're asked to take notes or write on a whiteboard or read out loud.
Dr. Lisa White: They might trip up on unfamiliar names, which can be super awkward in meetings They might have imposter syndrome when they are successful. and at work. They're rarely accommodations. So adults with self Dyslexia need to find workarounds. But it definitely does not keep them from being successful, as we saw way back at the beginning of the presentation with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn So in conclusion, Stealth Dyslexia is subtle.
Dr. Lisa White: It is easy to miss, but it is real and the impact it has on those who have it is significant. I hope you've learned ways to spot it, to talk about it, and what to do about it. There's some further resources here, and I'm definitely available to talk more one-on-one if you're interested. My info is on the next slide Just the resources, the Dyslexia advantage, amazing, Understood is a website about all kinds of learning disabilities, rights law has tons of info about special education law. Beeline Readers a browser extension that does color gradient can make it easier to read.
Dr. Lisa White: Learning Ally and Bookshare have audio books for people with dyslexia. Goodnotes. I love Goodnotes. It's an AI powered iPad app that helps with note taking. It learns your handwriting and turns handwritten text into, like, typed text You can write on uploaded documents.
Dr. Lisa White: I love it. So great for high school and college students. And then dyslexia is a font that's supposed to be easier for people with dyslexia to read. I was amazed So, thank you. I think we can go to questions.
Dr. Lisa White: That was a lot, I know. Thank you for hanging in there.
Yael: That was amazing, seriously amazing. Definitely covered every single thing that I
Dr. Lisa White: I tried to pack a lot in.
Yael: We got everything in. But we still have questions. So, I… you may have touched on this, but what assistive technology do you recommend?
Dr. Lisa White: So we talked about audiobooks Definitely audiobooks Speech-to-text, text-to-speech For older kids like that, Goodnotes app that I talked about You know, there are some like Like there are some online like writing programs that are basically graphic organizers, but like on like, honestly, like the kind you can print out for free from the internet are fine. Like, I don't know that you need a ton of assistive technology. Like what you really need is phonological processing work to improve the skills rather than just using the assistive technology. But keyboarding.
Dr. Lisa White: Oh my gosh, I am like like all about the keyboarding, and kids need to learn how to type the correct 10 like with their fingers on the right keys None of… like, so many kids are doing this, like, Hunts and Peck thing, and some of them get pretty fast at it, but learning to type with their fingers on the right keys is like life changing. And once you learn how to do that, you can go much faster And with typing, with all the good, like, grammar and spell check AI issues aside, like, that's life changing. So teach your kids to type. A typing program that's recommended is typing agent They're all boring though.
Dr. Lisa White: They're all super boring. It's very boring to learn how to type, but it's a good summer project.
Yael: Okay, thank you so much. Those are great. What if my child doesn't want to use the actual book with audiobooks? Because audio books are now chapter books. So does it matter if they're listening to the book and following along or just hearing
Dr. Lisa White: I mean, it's more helpful if they follow along. But like better that they Read in some fashion than not read at all. I mean, when they're older, it will be more important for them to follow along in the text because they're going to have to like annotate and like do all this other stuff that the school wants them to do with the books. But especially when they're younger, like, better that they enjoy the book than fight with them about following along in the text and then not wanting to do it at all.
Yael: That's fair. You had mentioned that it's unusual for kids in K through two to be assessed, and this person says, my kid is in second grade, I'm convinced they are dyslexic. She cannot sound out words even though she knows all her phonograms. I think she has memorized thousands of sight words
Dr. Lisa White: Yeah, you know. Dyslexia is Not impossible to diagnose yet. Like, I was just talking to one of our evaluators at work who works with really little kids, and, like, she has a kindergartner that she was like, this kid is totally dyslexic. So You know, I… there are definitely the signs that are really young.
Dr. Lisa White: So if you're a second grader, like, definitely could get diagnosed. You know, it's it's hard to diagnose self dyslexia in a really young kid because they often don't have like many young kids don't have any of the skills But by second grade, yeah, you could… you could definitely see something.
Yael: Thank you. Someone says, I'd love to know if you think Stealth Dyslexia is different or the same as remediated dyslexia
Dr. Lisa White: I'm not sure what remediated dyslexia is. Maybe they mean non-stealth dyslexia. I'm not sure if the person who asked that wants to add in the chat, feel free Yeah, I'm not sure I'm not sure how to answer that.
Yael: Okay. Do you have any suggestions regarding challenges with math vocabulary? And how it should be taught for kids with Stealth Dyslexia
Dr. Lisa White: Yeah, I mean, I don't know that teaching math vocabulary is different from if they have to learn vocabulary for, you know, history or, you know, science or whatever. And by vocabulary, I think we're talking about the meanings of the words, as opposed to reading the words and the spellings. I'm not really sure what they're going for here, but You know, I think In some ways, learning to take the words apart if they're at that level of like morphology, you know, breaking down the words can be helpful. So Of course, my mind is not thinking of anything like subtract, right?
Dr. Lisa White: Like sub less than, you know, like that kind of thing. So that can be helpful. But honestly, like talking about them, I mean, these kids have incredible verbal skills, and so discussing them is going to be very helpful, so they know the meanings, and they know the words by sound, and by understanding First, and then attaching that to the actual written words takes it like like it's a lot to do the meaning and the reading at the same time. So if you can break it down a little bit, that might be helpful.
Yael: Yes. Thank you, Abby, do you want to jump in with your question?
Abby: Okay, fine. My question was the one about remediated, so just, you know, my daughter was remediated for 3 years very intensively, very early, and is now, when evaluated, presenting like an average reader. But it's clearly working harder than everyone else and has all the other markers in the way you described as stealth, you know. spelling errors, well, any… a lot of those things. So, I'm curious if you… would kind of consider that the same, you know, the same thing. So if somebody writes, you know, she's a remediated dyslexic, is that like a stealth dyslexic? I mean, she's always dyslexic, that's the thing. So, are they same, are they different in what ways?
Dr. Lisa White: Right. That's a really good question. And I'm not sure if we're just going to be splitting hairs here. I mean, again, like you said, like once someone is dyslexic, they're dyslexic. And a remediated dyslexic, I'm now understanding what you mean by that.
Dr. Lisa White: you know, oftentimes, if we evaluate somebody, and then years later we evaluate them again, and they've gotten a lot of, you know, help in between, their scores definitely go up. I don't know if that's exactly the same as a stealth Dyslexia, even though it might look the same on the scores. Because I… I think You know, I think… I think the output could look the same, but I think the fact that they started out differently might speak to different, like, brain processing of this.
Dr. Lisa White: Also, oftentimes kids with sort of more general dyslexia also have more troubles with comprehension, things like that. The kids with self-dyslexia don't have as much difficulty with Yeah. kids with Stealth Dyslexia are able to get the gist more that sometimes kids with regular dyslexia have a harder time with. Like, there's some other differences there as well. So again, like the output might look the same, but I I don't know.
Dr. Lisa White: I think There might still, I don't know if it's exactly the same.
Yael: So we have few questions about dysgraphia, and I know you touched, you covered this, but I think a lot of people have more questions about it. My son was diagnosed with dysgraphia, ADHD, phonological processing disorder in sixth grade. He felt stealth dyslexia to a T. Can you explain the difference between dysgraphia and stealth dyslexia?
Dr. Lisa White: Sure. I mean, Stealth Dyslexia is a phonological processing reading issue that can affect the use of like how they use mechanics, how they spell, so on and so forth In its like pure form, dysgraphia is a motor skills issue. Also known as developmental coordination disorder. So dysgraphia is a motor skills issue, and a kid with a motor skills issue that that affects handwriting, and it can also affect spacing and spelling and so on. But If a kid just has dysgraphia and not self-dyslexia, they could tell you how a word is spelled, or they could spell it with letter tiles, or they could tell you how you're supposed to use a comma, or they could potentially correct a sentence that is, you know, that is incorrect and and put in a comma where it's supposed to So, but you can have both.
Dr. Lisa White: You can definitely have both. So you know, like one is really just a motor issue, and one is the phonological processing and writing issue. But a lot of people say dysgraphia and they mean the content of writing. Also, it's very confusing. But Yeah.
Yael: Yes, that is how I've always understood it. So people also had questions while you were talking about the accommodations that are helpful. Someone said, what about persistent difficulties with spelling? Have you seen accommodations for that?
Dr. Lisa White: Yeah, I mean, I think grading on content and not spelling is probably the most common one, and that's mostly in like elementary school, you know, by middle school, they're typing a lot of stuff. In high school, they're typing everything. So elementary school mostly grading on content and not spelling. You know, on spelling tests Sometimes kids with cell dyslexia actually can do okay on spelling tests if they're, like, studying a specific list of words. They can often reproduce those words.
Dr. Lisa White: Like on a list. But then they can't spell those same words if they're using them in a paragraph 20 minutes later. But sometimes it's, if it's one of those, like, you know, listed spelling tests, they might actually do okay. But yeah, I would say the main accommodation is don't grade the spelling. And then you spell check later on.
Yael: And then someone asked when you said the specialized reading instructions, is that a separate class just for them?
Dr. Lisa White: Oh, no, so that you can… you only would get that with your IEP. And because it's a service, it's not an accommodation. And it's usually a pullout class in most… class. It's like a pull-out service in most schools. So, you know, maybe it's during when the rest of the class has reading, maybe it's during PE like it's whenever the school decides to pull out.
Dr. Lisa White: Sometimes they do push in, but most of the time it's like a, you know, the learning specialist or whoever it is, pulls the kid out of class.
Yael: So you touched on this, but I think we've all seen that a lot of schools are moving away from computers in class and back to having kids write on paper so that students don't use AI. And that seems to hurt students with learning differences. How do we navigate this new dynamic The utilization of a word processor has been life-saving for my student.
Dr. Lisa White: Oh my gosh, I wish I knew. Like I wish I knew because this is like This, like, nobody can figure this out right now. you know, there's all this new research on how bad this is for, you know, the screens are for kids, blah blah blah. But I think You know, computers can be a tool that you just use for word processing Or they could be something that you're on YouTube, you know? My husband and I were like thinking that someone needs to invent like just a word processor.
Dr. Lisa White: Like, can you turn a Chromebook into just a word processor And You know make it so it just does one thing And you can't access all this other stuff, and you can't do this, and you can't do that, and… and can it just be, like, an old-fashioned word processor? Because that would actually be fine, I think. It would certainly be helpful for kids with dyslexia for, you know, handwriting issues, so on and so forth, because the problem with the screens in the class is not the typing. The problem with the screens is in class is the YouTube and the online textbooks and all the other stuff So Someone needs to invent a word processor, like reinvent a word processor.
Dr. Lisa White: I think they'll figure it out eventually. I think right now we're just like in the depths of chaos with it.
Yael: Yes, agreed. Okay, someone said, what about sequential memory? Trouble memorizing months of the year was mentioned as an example. Is there anything you can do to help with that?
Dr. Lisa White: Yeah, months of the year, math facts, things like that. you know, it's one of those things that, like, yes, you practice, but this will always be a weakness. Math facts are really my thing on the sequential memory, because You need to know your math facts. You know, just knowing your math facts makes the rest of math go much faster. So and math texts are honestly like kind of a drill and kill thing.
Dr. Lisa White: you know you can make it as fun as you can possibly make it their online programs to work on it, so on and so forth. But it's just going to be harder like some things are just going to be harder. Like, but… but they can still do them, they're just going to be harder.
Yael: Makes sense. Is it worthwhile for adults with stealth dyslexia to be fully assessed?
Dr. Lisa White: I mean, why not? Like, I mean, sure, if you want to spend a number of thousands of dollars, like, sure, for your own knowledge, but honestly, like what what difference is it going to make in your life? Like if it's going to validate your feelings about your childhood and like Make you feel, you know, like you're a smarter person than you thought you were, and, like, you know, help you understand yourself better, like, great. It's not going to change that much in your life, and you want to go on vacation with all those thousands of dollars instead, and that would make you feel really good, then do that
Yael: Okay, one last question, and then I think we'll have to go, even though there's way more in the chat. When writing has both bad spelling and messy handwriting, but if they slow down, they can write clear. How do you explain they are not being purposely lazy
Dr. Lisa White: That doesn't sound lazy to me at all. I mean, that sounds like they're being careful I mean, it sounds like they're being careful
Yael: I guess when they slow down, it doesn't seem like they have a problem. So
Dr. Lisa White: Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. So, I mean, I think you talk about it a little bit in terms of processing speed, that when That they… they naturally have this sort of slower processing, and when they try to speed it up is when they make these mistakes. You know, it takes them longer to process how to spell, how to do the mechanics, how to do all those things. And they need that extra time.
Dr. Lisa White: But when they're rushed, they're not taking the time to process the correct way to do it. And they They… that's when they make mistakes
Yael: Okay, thank you so much, Dr. White. There are more questions, but if you would like to reach Dr. White to ask her additional questions. Her email is there, and Abby, I think you're going to drop some other Dyslexia links that Dr. White suggested in the chat. And please fill out our feedback form and hopefully we will see you again at another event soon. Thank you again so much. This was so informative across so many topics. I think we all learned a ton about a topic that I really have not heard discussed too much, so thank you so much.
Dr. Lisa White: Thank you for having me!
Yael: Lots of thank yous in the chat. Okay, good night, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us.
