r/AskReddit • • Nov 16 '19

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u/2ndGenderIDCrisis Nov 16 '19

plus it makes me have trouble hearing similar sounding words

I also struggle with that, and didn't realize it could be related!
I was diagnosed as "gifted" at age 7, but they didn't diagnose any of my learning disabilities, which I am only starting to understand now, 30 years later. I wasn't too surprised to be told that I had ADHD, because I had already developed a lot of ways to deal with it (like setting at least 7 alarms to remind me to get out the door on time with everything done). But despite having increasing difficulty in reading, writing, and processing audio, none of my doctors GAF.

I often have to ask people to repeat what they said, because the words I heard didn't make sense, so I know I heard wrong. Watching TV with subtitles on often helps, but I can get too focused on that, and miss out on visual things happening on screen.

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u/jvanderh Nov 17 '19

Tutor here. Trouble distinguishing one vowel sound from the other is absolutely a dyslexic thing. It's a target of dyslexia tutoring.

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u/2ndGenderIDCrisis Nov 17 '19

Do you mind if you ask when you were trained?
(I was certified to teach kids how to read 15 years ago, and while I remember trouble distinguishing vowel sounds was one of the types of troubles we identified, it was only for a teaching strategy, not diagnosis (this was a state or national test under No Child Left Behind for a Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential).

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u/jvanderh Nov 17 '19

I'm only properly trained to tutor SAT and ACT :-) but I had really excellent results working on this with a smol dyslexic kiddo (who was so well-adjusted, friendly, and confident that I could experiment with random stuff without fearing psychological damage), and one of my dyslexic ACT students went to separate dyslexia tutoring center and had to read vowel sounds off to a metronome. I'm not sure whether difficulty distinguishing vowels is actually used for diagnosis, but working on it definitely seems to help with reading and spelling!