Hitchhiker’s guide to Dyslexia revisited

Last October we dedicated our Hitchhiker’s Guide to dyslexia as part of dyslexia awareness week. This year in celebration of the awareness week we are revisiting our guide and exploring how ROMBi is supporting children and adults with dyslexia.

Every year, individuals participate in Dyslexia Awareness Week with the goal of raising awareness and assisting others in better understanding more about the learning difficulty.

The focus of Dyslexia Awareness Week changes every year with this year’s theme being dedicated to "Breaking Through Barriers". Participants are encouraged to consider the obstacles that individuals with dyslexia might encounter.

ROMBi and Learning Difficulties

Last dyslexia awareness week ROMBi founder and educational specialist, Penny Georgiou, highlighted that experience in supporting learners to develop their organisational structures has shown that one of the most accessible and effective ways of doing so is through structured handplay, often with surprising results.

Penny went onto explain that “one common learning difficulty is associated with reading, where there may be issues with speed, accuracy and comprehension of meaning. This may be associated with apparent issues with phonics, or visual processing, or other discrete processing obstacles, some of which may also provoke headaches and eye fatigue.

In our work with learners, we have been using structured handplay via ROMBi to deliver structural information that the mind uses to build frames of perception that organise cognitive data in more relevant and complex ways.”

Breaking Through Barriers

Penny’s research indicates that the tactile experience of the puzzle’s structures taken in through the hands and fingers allows the mind to build a viable structure (perceptual frame) to stabilise eye movements, for example.

Some of the results that ROMBi users have reported give us some important information about what may be happening in the organisation of perception. Understanding this concept and the crucial role of perceptual organisation can really help individuals to begin to break through barriers and open new horizons.

For example, an individual’s eye may not be able to be sufficiently still in tracking letters along a line of text, which can cause letters to appear to be moving. This is a discreet symptom of visual processing issues. To address this, you can:

• Take up daily structured handplay including handheld puzzles such as ROMBi. This offers perception a stable structure to use as a starting point for focus. In this way, you can begin to experience greater control of what is happening in your life as well as being better able to respond.
• Develop points of consistency and structure in your life; meditative practice and structured handplay are simple ways to do so and can begin to improve things quite a lot quite quickly
• Consult your higher mind when you don't know what you don't know. Its ok not to know, this is a signal to open awareness to broader resources. Doing so, opens possibilities for receiving creative inspirations, clarity, new ideas for ways through that will not have come into your awareness before. Such ideas come with ease and good feeling, and can show you the way to think about topics which you wouldn't have known where to begin with. The more relaxed you are, the more you can receive viable ideas.
• You can even ask for clarity in how to approach something that you have no idea where to begin with, including study. Again, answers come to you in moments where you are relaxed, so cultivating that relaxation is valuable.
• Be open to exploring and discovering, for yourself, that there are many creative pathways to solutions for any issue whatsoever.

The preparation for study page on the Access 1st website has several basic starting points for self-care and putting yourself in the best place you can for being able to accomplish what you want to. Without your cultivating these inner foundations, your experience is more constrained than it needs to be.

This is a life journey, and as you establish a baseline of self care and appreciation for your resources and capabilities, your own inner intelligence can guide you step by step to solutions and helpers as they become relevant to your points of interest in timely ways. This happens naturally, as you allow your intelligence to work with you. The only thing that prevents this naturally flow is our believing something we desire is impossible for us in our lives, until we begin believing otherwise. Trusting your process and the ongoing learning that challenge bring, allows you to begin to seeing barriers disappear before your eyes.

For more information

Support the British Dyslexia Association in their mission to raise awareness of the realities of living with dyslexia. Download a range of resources from their website here today!

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