Episode 14: Dyslexia - Are we getting it all wrong?

I've never been in a car anything like this.

I mean a lot of people haven't because yeah, they're not very common, especially in New Zealand, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's going to know the right people to take you.

For a spin. Yeah, I know.

Before today, I don't know if I could have told you what a McLaren car even looked like. But twenty three year old Michael knows these cars intimately. He buys and sells supercars for a living. It started when he was just a little boy with a passion for cars and a goal to one day own a Lamborghini. So now when we're sitting here, do you know what's going on in the engine? Do you know all the like?

You know?

Yeah?

No, no, I know what you mean, Yeah, one hundred percent, Like the ghost bamped straight straight to what's happening in the engine and how the cars running and stuff as a sort of how I'm wired.

And are you visualizing it or are you visualizing it here?

Yep?

You know that's a skill that not many people have. A Yeah, but I imagine when you were little most of your life you didn't know that not everyone can do that.

Nah, nah, it's sort of I've only recently discovered it.

To be honest, we're learning more and more about the strengths of dyslexic thinking. Michaels used his to become really good at what he does, but if you looked at his academic record, he shouldn't really be successful at all. Michael dropped out of school at fifteen, but the experience of school and the pain it caused hasn't left him. I'm diving into the complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity. I'm not an expert, but my daughter is neurodivergent and

Three hundred thousand?

How do you get did you win lotto? I wish he didn't win lotto, And no, he wasn't helped into a supercar by super wealthy parents.

I bought and sold cars. I just hustled and stuff. I made my own way. My first business was car valet, so cleaning cars. I did it for people with Lamborghinis. I got good at it.

What is it that drew you to cool cars?

As long as I can remember, probably around the age of you know six, sort of a thing, you know, the little matchbox hot wheels cars, you know, I started playing with them, and then as I got older, I started to mess around with lawn mowers and engines, and then go carts, tractors and what not, and then started to learn more about cars. I'd see them out on the road and recognize them. Then it started, you know, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and McLaren's and whatnot. I just love it and I can't get away.

From when I look and I think about Michael at school and now with that car out the front, and what he's actually doing to make his money. It's just amazing. But I remember him.

Stuff that's Michael's mum, Jane. I actually interviewed her first for an upcoming episode on anxiety, and while I was at her house, I met her youngest son, Michael, a warm, charming twenty three year old with a story I felt needed to be heard, you know.

But still he's very, very anxious as a person, and he has these different phobias that he's dealing with. So he's still dealing with childhood stuff.

The childhood stuff stems from school and never feeling good enough. Part of Michael's motivation is to prove that he does have what it takes. It's a story so common for dyslexics.

If you see that on my hand there, that means success before thirty, the age of thirty, and that was there as soon as I could sort of get that tattoo. That's what drove me. That was my target before thirty. That's what I wanted.

Michael's showing me a small tattoo on the side of his hand which simply reads s B thirty success before thirty. For Michael, that meant getting his first Lamborghini, and he got it this year at twenty three. He bought an apartment too. This sounds like the tale of a kid who overcame his dyslexia and triumphed, but it's not really. It's about a kid who overcame a school system that brought him to his knees, and now he has something to prove.

You don't necessarily need school, because you know, back when I was in school, I left at fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fifteen year.

You've told me a little bit about it.

It was.

It was a horrible experience for you in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I can't threat enough a it was. It was. It was like a living hell being at school for me personally, Yep, it was bad.

Michael has profound auditory dyslexia, but in some he's gifted. His visual spatial skills and processing speed are exceptional, but he struggles with what we call the basics. So subjects like maths and English were a nightmare.

I felt like the dumbest person in school, and you know, taking someone like me with dyslexia, you know, through the paces and pushing them to do the tests. And if you don't pass this test, you're going to fail, and you're going to not you know, you're going to be implement homeless when you're older. Sort of a thing. It's pressure.

Michael has specific memories of school which still haunt him.

You know, when you're in class and you have to be silent, you're doing tests and stuff, and everyone's got their head down they're writing, you know, and then you hear sort of books start closing, and then people go up and give the book to the teacher at the front. And then I'd be on the first page, stool. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And it was the pressure from sort of the other people finishing before me.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

One day I found him under the desk in the bedroom as far away from the front door as he could possibly get, and he was curled up under the desk, refusing to go to school, and I could not get it out of him what had happened. And that's an example for a very dyslexic child who could not express himself to me. He did not have the words to say how he was feeling. He didn't know how to put that across to me at all. He was completely

But you were there to say every day, you're amazing, You're wonderful. A lot of kids don't have that. Jane knows a lot about dyslexia. It was her master's thesis topic and she's co authored a book about it. He tells me about a guy she interviewed who got very emotional when he told her about school.

He was describing school and he said he looked at me and he said school was just a place I ate my lunch. He never did anything at all in terms of his education really at school. And when he talked about there being one particular teacher, he said who got me. And then he's teared up and he started to cry because that one teacher who got him made all the difference to him emotionally as an adult. And

And so many say that. So many adults say that there was that one teacher that just understood them. No, I'm not an expert, but I feel like some people just have it. Then the empathetic people have it. And if you don't necessarily have that doesn't matter how much training you have. I don't know. Yeah, I like that comes down to the when you're dyslexic, every school day holds the potential for failure and shame in front of

So another living hell of mine. I guess you could ask mum doing.

Speeches, Yeah, tell me about that.

It was just that scared the living life out of me to have to stand in front of these people who I felt like, we're going to judge me for messing up one of my words, you know, you know, mispronouncing something or just sounding stupid in front of a thirty kids and a teacher. You know, sometimes even more. I was sort of always the quiet kid, not wanting to really talk to people. But then when I got into business, which I had an interest in dealing with people,

Was there a teacher or a situation or a subject or anything at school that gave you that was positive?

Oh? Not that I can remember, you know.

So there was no teacher that kind of went, Michael, you're actually you've got something. We know that teachers who take the time to understand neurodivergent kids can change their lives. And I am constantly blown away by the teachers I know who go above and beyond, always looking for creative ways to help the kids who are struggling. Michael didn't have that.

I remember sitting in school, you know, in front at the end of the year when you're doing any exams, and I was just thinking, just get me the heck out of here. I can't do it.

None of us want to fail. No kid wants to not be able to sit the exam. The system failed you. The school system completely failed you, and it's failing so many For me.

It created all the anxiety. You know, me being self conscious and you know learning things, and you know struggles I have today.

It sounds like you're super sensitive too. I am, which is a lovely quality, but it can work against you because you feel everything.

You feel it all.

Michael is thriving in a world that is so foreign to me, buying and selling supercars. This is a game with so much money on the line, you can't afford to get it wrong. And I'm curious to find out how he does it.

I picked them, well, I know what I'm looking at. I know what I'm buying, I know the numbers, and I work my way up to make profit.

So you do your research, and you look.

At immense research. Absolutely, yep, because you will lose your money. You'll buy out of emotion. See I never buy even the Lambeau, even though it's something I always wanted. I didn't buy that car out of emotion.

So you're looking you're trying to make that connection because it's all about I'm not even going to pretend, but there's But you need to know the details, don't you, because you can't miss anything.

Well, I want I want to know the detail.

Okay.

I'm so interested in the art of sales and negotiating and talking with people now, which I never was.

When you were at school. If someone had gone, he's really into supercars, let's create something around supercas have been easier.

Like when you said, sonya, when you said that the school system failed, Michael, I had a bit of a reaction, you know, because to actually really look at that and go, yeah, actually it really did. But if he had been offered something of interest him, if that had been an interesting environment, that's where I think that you would have excelled at school.

Like so many dyslexics, it's not just the reading and writing that's challenging for Michael. Maths, especially the basics, pose a whole lot of problems. In general, maths is taught in a very linear way, which doesn't work well for dyslexic thinkers. Michael hated maths in school, but in his job it's not a problem.

Like maths with me. I deal with numbers all the time because all the cars and whatnot. But that's because I'm interested, and that's because I want to.

So the numbers when you're dealing with cars, isn't a problem for you, no, See, isn't that crazy?

Yeah?

But if I'm doing it for some I don't know what you could say to just any equation. If someone oh, well, what's this, I wouldn't have a clue. Well how much did you buy and sell this car for? How much profit did you make out? Blah blah blah dang easy wow. And even though it's a numbers game and I have this dyslexia and these school problems, I'm deep in that it's because I have an interest in it.

See people need to know this, don't they They do that's all numbers, and you just go. You could have been the kid that goes, I'm never going to be able to do anything with numbers, but you found something of interest. I feel like there's a whole lot of kids out there that just go, I'm bad at maths and so that's and or whatever. I can't do anything with numbers, and they don't realize it was just the way.

It was talked to them buying and selling cars. Making profit is numbers. It's maths. Now that I've grown my interest, I found what I like. I can do it easier natural Now.

Yeah, that's great. But say I gave you a times table like a fast fax question. Say have I said to you, what's six times eight? Can't do it? Don't want to.

Give me a calculator I can other than that? No chance?

Could you think about it?

If you tried, it'd take me quite a bit for me. Give me the hardest equation supercar question you can think of. I'll do it. Anything else, I just don't want to do it.

Yeah, and for a dyslexic or for all neurodivergent, really, it's very hard to work at something when you don't know the why. Yeah, so maths and stuff around supercars, there's a why to that. Some in the field would call this struggle with maths dyscalculia. Others say it's just part of the dyslexic profile. Regardless, I think it's fundamental to know that the rote learning side of maths is likely to pose lifelong problems for a dyslexic learner. My

Actually, that's common for quite a few dyslexics. They will have the answer, but the working is not something that's good for them.

That's doctor Ruth Gibbons. She's a social anthropologist and dyslexic researcher. She featured in episode nine of this podcast, and her take on dyslexia is amazing.

The way it's taught in some countries overseas is that you just let the dyslexic come up with the answer, and then you teach them how to do the working backwards from the answer, rather than building up to the answer.

Wow. Yeah, do you think that happens in schools much?

No?

No, because it's that linear thinking again, is like you can only get the answer once you've done this, this is, and this dyslexic has already done all of those things and come up with the answer. Not all dyslexics, but some have that strength.

What is it about showing the working and doing the steps. That is difficult, Like how do dyslexics get to the answer.

It comes back to all those leading all that different pieces of information to bring it together. That's a natural way for a dyslextic to work. So when they're doing something like maths, they will be bringing those things all together to get the answer. They won't be doing it.

Linear, right, so that we're pulling information maybe from a past experience or just stuff that they couldn't actually write down.

Yeah, yeah, right, that's the natural way for them.

Ah, and then they get to it is wrong. It's quite extraordinary how minds work. It's like this high level thinking.

It absolutely is again not all but yeah absolutely. And when you're not taught to be dyslexic, but you're taught actually, yes you've got the right answer, but no, you've got the wrong answer because you didn't show all of your working in the correct way. Means that you're being told yet again that you aren't valuable, that you don't do things right, that you need to do things a particular way.

You know, the saying think outside of the box. That's sort of I'm not going to speak for others, that's sort of what I do. You know, people go down X, Y Z way, where I'll go complete, you know, back way. A lot of people say, well that doesn't make sense, but I still get there. It's just that it's just a different way of thinking. It is hard to explain, but we just don't go down the normal route.

So Michael had to read a book that was really difficult. So difficult I knew that a dystexic brain tends to this sounds very simplistic, but thinking pictures. So we got the book and we've got a three paper and we sat down and explained characters, what a plot is, and put it all in picture form right through the book. It took a long time, but we read the book book on paper and.

All through drawing pictures.

Through drawing picture Remember, we sat night after night to the end of the book. And then Michael understood the book completely. And then when he sat down to write down what the book was about, he had the whole thing down fast and clear and got excellence for it. But there was no way he was going to sit and read the book.

Michael has always been surrounded by books. His mum, Jane, is an academic, and he's the descendant of a very famous nineteenth century author, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Country of the Blind. HG. Well's your great granddad. So he's your great great granddad. If I pulled N.

HG.

Wells book out and said, can you read it? Where that freak you out?

Yeah?

I haven't read a full book in my life. If I was to read a book now, I will read the words fine and actually quite fast. But by the time I'm at the end, I wouldn't know what the heck I've read, not one, but I wouldn't know what the book's about. I couldn't say anything about it. It would make sense to you, guys, wouldn't make sense to me. Hand me a book about HG. Someone again, who I'm

That's just fascinating, isn't it. Do you find it fascinating?

No? No, it buzzes me out.

But I hope one day he does read The Country of the Blind. It's a short story by HG. Wells, and it challenges our perception of normal. Wells, just like his great great grandson Michael, wasn't afraid to push societal boundaries. It would be nice say this is exactly how a dyslexic person thinks and learns, but it's so individual, which in turn makes it so fascinating.

So for some dyslexics, the way that they access text will change, and the way they read is incredibly sensorially dense, so they get kind of sucked into the book and it becomes alive and they can feel things like if the wind blows in the book, they feel that on their skin. But other text is not that way. Other text is very not sensory, and they can struggle with that. So that can be a moment when or all becomes important.

And that's also difficult because you'll have I don't know, adults potentially saying, well, you did it in that setting, why can't you do it here?

Yeah?

And you can read the words of that book. Why can't you read that book?

Yeah?

Whereas for they're totally different things. Those words change.

So really, so interesting. It's not just that we're looking at it the wrong way. We can't actually look at something like dyslexia from where we are at.

We actually have to stand in your divisience and look out at society from that perspective.

To truly help dyslexics, to help every child be the best they can be, we have to find out more about them, how they learn best, what they love. In the meantime, the panic over our low rates of literacy continue. The debate about the best way to teach kids rage is on and the solutions are ever changing. Ruth calls it the reading Wars.

There's assumptions about how reading is learnt in the best ways to teach it if we do it only one way. For understand that all dyslexics will be better if it's all done this one way. That's not going to work. It's never going to work because for some people, yes, the words move on the page, For other people they do not.

Yeah.

You know, for some people FOLLICX, it's fantastic and it's really well for them. For some dyslexic phonics, it's a disaster and actually what they would rather have as a context. So if you go back to the original meaning of the word and it's roots and then teach it from there, are dyslexics better with it. So it's about finding what

Michael has talked a lot about how he needs to be interested to learn and the fact he needs time not just to work through any challenges, but to let ideas marinate. But in his school days it wasn't recognized.

This is due by tomorrow morning, because it's not a big project for me that's a week's worth of stuff, you know, after school. It just wasn't possible for me. And then you know, I'd go back to school the next morning. Michael was your with your homework? Don't have it? Why not? Because I couldn't do it. I really couldn't do it. And it was it's pressure again.

No, No, I know, I know.

I think the pressure is a really important point because I think when the pressure comes on, that's where the trauma triggers up, and that's when the brain then either goes into a panic motor or shutting down, and then there's no way a dyslexic person can gain words, to say anything, or to express themselves.

So I've seen.

Michael, when the pressure is on, I've certainly seen those triggers. But I also see that when you have time and you're given space and it all slows right down, then you come round to it and it's all been in there. It's just that once the pressure is off, those smarts come out, you know, and you can process again. I think pressure is a huge factor in this.

Doctor Ruth agrees that pressure at school causes kids to crumble, and as a lecturer, she sees it at university as well.

When a student comes to a point where they can't do what's required of them and they just shut down. You know, I have my students now write an email at the beginning of semester saying I've reached down moment. I can't cope at the moment, and just so they can send that email to me in that moment rather than having to write one from scratch, because you can't write one from scratch to that.

Wow.

So just explain that to me. At the start of the semester, you get every student to write like a draft email saying I've shut down yep, and all.

My new individuent ones, I recommend it. I recommend it because of their adults. Some do, some don't. Those who don't usually at the end of semester tell me that they should have done, so they do it next semester.

That's so easy, such a simple thing. But that would mean so much to those students, just even because they can then go Oh. So Ruth has said, our lecture has said that shutting down is not it can happen.

It's not.

I don't need to beat myself up about it. Number one and number two, she'll hear me when that happens, and you probably get less shutdowns.

Because of it.

Because of that, we also start the conversation. So, yeah, I don't get as many shutdowns because of it. That made very few shutdowns because of it.

Just just like this, compassionate ones help break the anxiety cycle because often the fear of failure or humiliation becomes a bigger obstacle than the original academic challenge. And Ruth says people with learning differences, like dyslexics, tend to be more sensitive to the world around them.

Even the little signals that people are making in their bodies. You're reading all this information all the time. Think of it as your nerve endings being on alert, and you don't get a chance to kind of decompress regularly. You're just loading this weight on top of yourself. That pain builds up in the body and then yeah, the shutdown happens.

Yeah, and you're adding to it. I imagine, particularly for dyslexics, if you've gone through the school system and deep down you feel you're not quite enough yep. So then as soon as that you hit a brick wall, say it an assignment you're doing, that voice comes in, Oh, here you go again, screwing up again.

Yeah, that negative self talk tape that gets built over your educational experiences year. It's just like it had to play and it just starts running through your head and then yeah, it just reinforces your sense of not coping and then you internalize this external not coping. Yeah, and just you shut down. You can't cope anymore, and you just kind of need to crawl away from the world and.

Reboot what happens.

So it's like, think of it as your nerve endings being standing on alert and being like a saw place, and then you just keep touching that saw place, you know, like a bruise or something. That's what can happen if you don't get that time to decompress, and that's then that pain builds up in the body and then yeah, the shutdown happens.

You must hear this a lot. I hear it a lot parents saying about their displexit kids. We've just got to get them through school. Yeah, it's not a question. I just wonder what your thoughts are there, because there's so much wrong with it.

Yeah there, Well, it's also it's societal societal expectations, isn't it that to be a good human being, to be a successful adult, you need to have survived the school system and achieved everything and ticked that box so you can now move into the next stage of your life rather than looking more broadly at why is it the survival system we've set up that this is what you need to do at school, and it is for people who are dyslexic and you're a divisent. It's life's fival.

Everything's invisible, all the efforts they're putting in. Yes, we can't see it.

No, no, we can't see it at all.

Did you get in trouble at school like behaviorally?

Yes, yeah, I won't go too much into it, but you know I got and I got in trouble because people shaming me for being stupid.

Okay, right right, Yeah, we don't have to go into that.

Because the teachers put me in that situation, right They didn't. They didn't, and I asked them, you know, can I go somewhere else to do this? No, you'll do it like all the rest of us. You know.

Yeah.

The reason I was that was because we know that the rates of dyslexia amongst prison and mates are crazy high, between about fifty and some people say eighty percent of prison in mates are dyslexic. Well, so there's this fork in the road looking back. Do you think I could have gone that? I mean, you got you're in the positive direction about you could have taken the other road if you hadn't had a supportive mum, if you hadn't had certain things.

Yep. Absolutely, it comes down to the point of you need a support system. Dyslexic kids need a support system to feel like they actually can do it. You know, some parents aren't. His understanding is my mum. When it comes to dyslexia and learning, some kids don't have any support, no help, no nothing, to the point where they're just they just start to hate and hate and hate because that's the only way to get it out. You know.

So we're constantly targeting what was perceived as a lack rather than perceived as the possibilities and the abilities of dyslexics.

But if we take the beautiful creative thinkers and from the age of five are telling them that actually they have these deficits in these really important important areas urocy and literacy. Then there are we going to get that beauty out of them, because they're going to come through with shame and anxiety and a really low self esteem.

And there are studies that prove that. Alexander Passe has done in research with dyslexics and he found over sixty four percent of dyslexics have PTSD and that was caused by their experience of education.

So it's educational trauma.

Yeah, it's educational trauma.

Are you angry about school?

Yes, yeah, angry. I'm angry because of it because I feel that, you know, doing anything any day to day tasks, when I feel pressure, I feel the same feeling that's what I felt in school, and that makes me angry. I can't get away from it at all.

Yes, yeah, you will. This is just the beginning. You know that, it is absolutely the beginning, and you'll be more empathetic because of it. You already understand that not all kids can do that. When you meet people in business, you're better at I imagine understanding how they best communicate. As an example, I.

Am angry from what school did to me, you know, because I couldn't help it back then. I'm angry what it did to me, But in saying what you said before, I put that anger, the anger towards like I'm going to get this done now.

And as Michael drives off and has super expensive supercar, I get the feeling he already has next time on No such thing.

As normal ironically, like I can't. Really It's quite difficult for me to write stuff that's not fiction. So I think I've taught myself to write fiction and I can kind of write an email, but that's about it. Like if I have to write anything else, I find it like incredibly difficult.

No such thing as normal as produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. The editor is Jamie Lee Smith. Arwen O'Connor and Mitchell Hawks are executive producers. Production assistant is Beck's War. The series is brought to you by the New Zealand Herald and Teen Uniform and it's made with the support of New Zealand on Air. If you like this podcast, please rate and review it. It helps people find it