Dyslexia: BoyZone Shane Lynch speaks out

Shane Lynch has bravely revealed that when he left school at the age of 15 he couldn’t read or write.

As part of a new Channel 5 documentary called My Secret Past (due to air on Monday at 10pm), the Boyzone singer has admitted that his teachers thought he was a bad student and didn't realise he had a problem,

“I was kicked out of school at 15 for being lazy. I couldn’t read or write but I was too ashamed to ask for help,” Shane confesses.

The Boyzone singer was tested for dyslexia as part of the documentary and discovered that he is indeed dyslexic,

“The diagnosis makes my past more acceptable. I wasn’t lazy, I had a genuine problem,” he says.

Thanks to the help of expert tutors, Shane is now able to read to his two daughters Billie Rae, four and four-month-old Marley Mae.

Dyslexia: An alternative Definition

Olivier Messiaen: Synaesthesia - Music and Colours

Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992)



Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, widely regarded as a major composer of the 20th century.

Messiaen was gifted with Synaesthesia, whereby he perceived colours when he heard sounds and musical chords. He cited the importance and relevance of using these colour combinations in his compositional process.

His music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources); harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations.

Many of his compositions depict what he termed "the marvellous aspects of the faith", and drew on his deeply held Roman Catholicism.

Messiaen was deemed as 'a bit eccentric' and he had a particular fascination for birdsongs; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer.

He notated bird songs worldwide and incorporated birdsong transcriptions into most of his music.

His innovative use of colour, his conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong and his desire to express religious ideas are among features that make Messiaen's music distinctive.

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys

Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys—even when they perform worse on standardized tests? 

New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests that it's because of their classroom behaviour, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.

"The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as 'approaches toward learning,'" said Christopher Cornwell, head of economics in the UGA Terry College of Business and one of the study's authors.

"You can think of 'approaches to learning' as a rough measure of what a child's attitude toward school is: It includes six items that rate the child's attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization.

I think that anybody who's a parent of boys and girls can tell you that girls are more of all of that."

The study, co-authored by Cornwell and David Mustard at UGA and Jessica Van Parys at Columbia, analyzed data on more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

It examined students' performance on standard tests in three categories—reading, math and science—linking test scores to teachers' assessments of their students' progress, both academically and more broadly.

The data show, for the first time, that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favour girls.

In every subject area, boys are represented in grade distributions below where their test scores would predict.

The authors attribute this misalignment to what they called non-cognitive skills, or "how well each child was engaged in the classroom, how often the child externalized or internalized problems, how often the child lost control and how well the child developed interpersonal skills."

They even report evidence of a grade bonus for boys with test scores and behavior like their girl counterparts.

This difference can have long-reaching effects, Cornwell said. 

Read the full article here

Emotional Quotient (EQ): Good for Leaders and Autism

Experts in the field of leadership believe that truly effective leaders possess a high level of emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ) focusing on self and relationship management. 

It’s about social competence. Raising a child with autism can assist with elevating your own emotional intelligence.

The 5 Components of  EQ
Dr. Daniel Goleman, psychologist, brought EQ to the mainstream public in 1995. His research concluded that EQ is made up of five components:

1. self-awareness,
2. self-regulation,
3. motivation,
4. empathy and
5. social skills.

Those with a high sense of self-awareness understand how their emotions impact others and their job performance; they can regulate their feelings successfully. 

How we manage our emotions or regulate them makes the difference for leadership success. 

Goleman states that without EQ, a person can have the best training, analytical mind and be good technically, but won’t make a great leader. 

Some leaders possess these traits naturally; however, can EQ be learned?

How to Teach EQ
As Lori Ciccarelli started training leaders in the corporate setting with regard to EQ, she realised that there was not much offered on “how” to raise EQ. 

There are countless articles and books that address “what” it is but no real tools offered to improve EQ. 

Lori started thinking about tools used with Social Cognitive Deficit Disorders (SCDD) since it is about social competence. 

Over the decades these tools became ingrained in her as she taught her son, which in turn assisted in raising her own EQ. 

The best way to learn is to teach. Since the components that support EQ equate to social competence, then why couldn’t these tools used for SCDD work to raise EQ? 

Lori Ciccarelli started bringing forward these techniques in her leadership and customer service development trainings which have proven to be very successful. 

Those who attend her classes are, generally, excited to head back to their jobs with new tools for success.

• Empathy: Tools that have shown success include Michelle Garcia Winners’ perspective-taking behavioural map to enhance empathy. This tool helps one visually and concretely map out behaviors by showing “how” it can make others feel and the consequences or outcomes associated with them. Taking it a step further, you can ask your audience to develop a plan in which to better display empathy, the next time.

• Social Skills: Another effective strategy to help develop appropriate social skills was created by Winners; imaginary “friend files” in the brain. This technique helps store information about others to help initiate conversations. This interactive exercise of getting to know someone by interviewing them, writing down three items about that person, and then storing the information in an imaginary file in the brain help to initiate future conversations. Also, one can keep a journal or card index file to help organise “friend” information.

• Self Regulation: The Incredible 5-point Scale developed by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis can help regulate moods recognising and managing emotional responses. This tool focuses on the “how” by rating the mood on a scale according to intensity and matching it to solutions. According to the authors, how we act, react, and interact in difficult situations depends on our ability to quickly and efficiently assess what is happening and consider the consequences of our actions. This tool can be extremely effective.

As we focus on social competence for our kids with Social Cognitive Deficit Disorders, we can also benefit by raising our own emotional intelligence. A key to effective leadership.

BDA's Adult Dyslexia Report 2012

The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) has published a report examining progress on issues facing adults with dyslexia over the past four decades.

Produced to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the charity’s foundation, the document identifies a range of issues that continue to affect dyslexics negatively.

Access to written information in formats appropriate for those with dyslexia is cited as a prime example of how organisations are still failing those with condition.

While the requirement to provide information in alternative formats was enshrined in law with the Equality Act of 2010, the charity says that not enough businesses take heed of this and provide information in a way that dyslexics can use.

The Report, produced following consultation with over 100 organisations and individuals working with dyslexics, also points to some of the strengths that those with the condition enjoy.

The report says that roughly 20 per cent of our successful entrepreneurs are thought to be dyslexic.

Margaret Malpas, Joint Chair of the BDA, has called for an extension of the collaboration it secured in the production of its Report.

“I think we have a real opportunity here to collaborate to tackle the problems identified and resolve some of them”, she said.

“This would result in less cost and pain for individuals but also significantly reduce to the costs to society which are estimated at £1billion a year to the UK economy."

The BDA’s Adult Dyslexia Report is available here: 

Babies Absorb Sounds and Languages Traits in the Womb

Babies only hours old are able to differentiate between sounds from their native language and a foreign language, scientists have discovered.

The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought.

Sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age, and the new study shows that unborn babies are listening to their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth can demonstrate what they've heard.

"The mother has first dibs on influencing the child's brain," said Patricia Kuhl, co-author and co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

"The vowel sounds in the mother's speech are the loudest units and the fetus locks onto them."

Previously, researchers had shown that newborns are born ready to learn and begin to discriminate between language sounds within the first months of life, but there was no evidence that language learning had occurred in utero.

"This is the first study that shows fetuses learn prenatally about the particular speech sounds of a mother's language," said Christine Moon, lead author and a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.

"This study moves the measurable result of experience with speech sounds from six months of age to before birth."

The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Acta Paediatrica. Forty infants, about 30 hours old and an even mix of girls and boys, were studied in Tacoma and Stockholm, Sweden.

While still in the nursery, the babies listened to vowel sounds in their native tongue and in foreign languages.

Their interest in the sounds was captured by how long they sucked on a pacifier that was wired into a computer measuring the babies' reaction to the sounds.

Longer or shorter sucking for unfamiliar or familiar sounds is evidence for learning, because it indicates that infants can differentiate between the sounds heard in utero.

In both countries, the babies at birth sucked longer for the foreign language than they did for their native tongue.

The researchers say that infants are the best learners, and discovering how they soak up information could give insights on lifelong learning.

"We want to know what magic they put to work in early childhood that adults cannot," Kuhl said. "We can't waste that early curiosity."

Tim Roberts the Poet speaks of his Dyslexia

In this post I have attached an extract from Tim Robert's blog, describing how he discovered he had dyslexia, at the age of 45.

Tim  is a talented poet and you can read some of his poems here but for the rest, I will let Tim speak for himself.

"I was only diagnosed as being a dyslexic in January 2010. I was 45. It happened when I met a brilliant psychologist whose methods differed from anyone else’s.

When assessing me, very early on in our work, he asked me to give him an example of what made me really frustrated. I told him of a recent shopping trip to HMV. I wanted to find a DVD and its title began with an R but left the shop empty handed.

He asked me a few more questions. He then told me that his original job as a psychologist was in education in the early 1980’s and how he worked with kids with learning difficulties. He also told me that he was dyslexic.

Until then, I thought people like me ended up in the ‘stupid class’ - that is what it was named in my inner city comp in South East London. But here was a man who has this great title but is dyslexic.

​I was 7 when I was sent to stupid class. I was given a huge piece of paper and asked to write the letter S over and over again. I was asked to join the S’s together so as to join my letters up. I was told, at 7, that this was a huge failure of mine. My world would end if I could not join up a bloody letter."

You can read the entire article on Tim's blog site here

5 Things Parents can do to Help Children Enjoy Life

There is clear evidence that how parents interact with their children has a lasting effect on the kind of person the child grows into, how happy they will become and how much they will enjoy life.

Whilst at Chicago University, Kevin Rathunde conducted a number of family behaviour studies and observed that teenagers who had a certain type of relation ship with their parents were significantly happier, more satisfied and stronger in most life situations than their peers who did not have this relationship.

The optimal family relationship can be described as having 5 characteristics;

1. Clarity - Clarity of family goals should be unambiguous.
2. Centering - Providing Feedback on the moment or time they are in. Not pre-occupied with future careers or potential outcomes. 
3. Choice - Provide a Feeling of Control over choices but this also includes Consequences.
4. Commitment - Concentration on the task in hand. Becoming unselfconsciously involved.
5. Challenge - Provide increasingly complex opportunities for action or development

The presence of these 5 conditions make possible what is described as the "Autotelic Family Context," because they provide an ideal training for the enjoyment of life.

Consequences

It is essential that parents provide realistic encouragement, support and motivation to their children in all their activities, leaving room for them to succeed or fail on their own terms and to experience the consequences.

It is equally essential that parents refrain from sugar-coating and soft-padding the reality of life's ups and downs. 

Consequences are a part of life's rich tapestry and the sooner children understand that they are responsible for their own actions the better for them.

The parent is there to provide reassurance that their children are loved and belong as part of a 'family' who support and encourage each other. It is part of the responsibility and consequence of being a parent.

Olive Hickmott: Empowering Learning New Year message

Let me first wish you, my valued reader, a very prosperous and highly successful New Year in 2013.

I am sure you have spent some time in the last week reflecting on your life and family in 2012 and are planning a whole set of new adventures for 2013.

This week I received a message from my original guide and mentor, Olive Hickmott, from Empowering Learning, which may me reflect on how we got started on this path.

I would like to share this message with you and to let you know that Olive has Dyslexia herself but with great fortitude and determination, pursued a very successful career in engineering, before her retirement.

She is herself an example of a talented person with dyslexia developing into a self-determining, success story but not content with her own success she has spent the last 7 years coaching and mentoring dyslexic children.

Her aim; to help children break through their barriers to education and overcome their low self esteem; use the talents they have to learn in their own way, one that makes perfect sense to them; set them on a life-changing path of self discovery and development.

I invite you to read Olive's message. It says a lot of the progress being made in overcoming Dyslexia and other cognitive processing disorders and, I hope it will give you some more cause for optimism in 2013. It may even spark some new ideas and paths for you to follow.

"It is a very different world than when I (Olive) started work back in 2005 on literacy challenges. 

People are much more open to seeing different perspectives, identifying the exceptional talents of learning differently and overcoming the challenges. 

In 2013 we want all our exceptionally talented children and adults, who learn in a different way, to think about how they are being taught, to excel in their chosen areas, that are often very creative.

As our contribution to this, we are looking:

• to reach as many children and adult across the world as possible, so they can learn how to simply improve their literacy, numeracy, concentration and so much more, even when they have a diagnosis of Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, ADHD, Asperger's or Autism. - These new skills will further develop their exceptional (mainly visual) skills and eradicate many of the negative symptoms associated with these challenges.
• to assist families and Practitioners to be as successful as they can be in their communities.

To achieve this we are building a larger and stronger international community of people with the skills to teach people who learn differently. 

The level 1 Practitioner programme is now available as a single day in Hertfordshire, UK, as a set of live weekly tele-seminars and as a home study programme that you can access whenever is convenient for you, plus on-line coaching to answer any questions. 

Recently, we have trained Practitioners and parents on-line in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, USA, throughout the UK and in January we will be adding a Dyslexia school in Kenya plus our first practitioner in New Zealand. 

These are exciting times to join the team, you don't need previous qualifcations, just an enthusiasm to make a difference to others.

In 2013 we will see the results of the Practitioners' research projects in Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Ireland plus my literacy and numeracy research through the International Association for Health and Learning for a community of nursing undergraduates in England.

I also hope to have several practitioners replicating my work in different Universities across the UK. 

In addition we expect to get the level 1 programme its first international accreditation.

When you become a Practitioner, you will have all the tools you need to succeed:

• Free monthly Continuous Professional Calls
• Workbooks for literacy, numeracy and more in development
• An accreditation process and product discount
• Commission for referrals
• Free Youtube video introductions for your clients
• Access to an on-line training platform
• Low cost upgrade training for those trained before September 2011.

This is a readymade business that can give you immense personal satisfaction and make a real difference to peoples' lives."

I hope that was of interest and you can read more about Olive's work with Empowering Learning here.