In Which It Can Feel Like Dyslexia Is Contagious

One little known characteristic of dyslexia is difficulty with word recall. Even though a dyslexic may know all the right words, it can be difficult for them to retrieve them at the right time.

One of the seminal works on what it means for your child to have dyslexia is Sally Shaywtiz's Overcoming Dyslexia. I read it soon after Squirrelboy's official diagnosis, and I saw him in so many of its pages. One cartoon in particular struck me. It pictures a little girl reading a book and picturing a volcano in her head, yet producing with word "tornado."

This is a really common thing for Squirrelboy. He'll say a word with a similar number of syllables, maybe even from the same category (tornadoes and volcanoes are both natural disasters, right?) but it won't actually be the word he's looking for. 

Both Squirrelboy and Mr. Engineer have mastered the art of circumlocution. If you don't know the word, you just talk around the word until your listener figures out what you mean. I'm familiar with this skill as well. When I'm speaking in Spanish or Swedish (both of which I speak proficiently but not at the level of a native), I sometimes forget a word and have to use words I DO know to describe what I'm trying to say.

This is usually something deemed acceptable by native speakers when done by a non-native speaker, and it's completely acceptable within our family circle though we're all speaking our native language, but it can be embarrassing when you're out in the world and can't recall the right word. I found a post on Facebook the other day that captured this perfectly.

This particular characteristic of dyslexia has made Mr. Engineer aware of the fact that there are a lot of dyslexics in the engineering world. It seems as many as half his coworkers are dyslexic. He'll tell stories about them all sitting in a meeting trying to figure out the right word for something. Eventually they sometimes just choose an alternate word and move on because they all know what they're talking about.

Weirdly, though I am not the least bit dyslexic, I seem to have picked up this characteristic over the years of being married to one dyslexic and raising another. In reality, I'm sure it's just a combination of my brain getting older (I'm 44 in case you want to know) and my brain being so taken up with the details of life that sometimes the words I want can't dig themselves out from the avalanche of other things in there.

At this point, Squirrelboy, with his interests in mountain biking and video production, has actually learned a lot of words I've never known. He doesn't often struggle to remember those words, though it does happen on occasion. Since Mr. Engineer has managed to have a successful engineering career despite his occasional need to resort to calling something a "thingamajig" because he can't find the word, I'm not worried about Squirrelboy in this respect. He'll make his way in the world just find, even if he calls the occasional volcano a tornado.