ADHD and dyslexia are different brain disorders. But they often overlap. About 3 in 10 people with dyslexia also have ADHD. And if you have ADHD, you're six times more likely than most people to have a mental illness or a learning disorder such as dyslexia.
Some teachers and parents can mistake a dyslexic child for someone who is lacking intelligence. But the truth is dyslexia has nothing to do with a child's level of intelligence.
When ADHD symptoms are treated, the symptoms of dyslexia may improve, but this is only because everything that the person does, including reading, improves when they can sustain attention. While medication is an effective ADHD treatment, there is no medication that helps dyslexia.
Dyslexia is not a disease. It's a condition a person is born with, and it often runs in families. People with dyslexia are not stupid or lazy. Most have average or above-average intelligence, and they work very hard to overcome their reading problems.
Although ADHD is not considered a learning disability, research indicates that from 30-50 percent of children with ADHD also have a specific learning disability, and that the two conditions can interact to make learning extremely challenging.
ADHD is not on the autism spectrum, but they have some of the same symptoms. And having one of these conditions increases the chances of having the other. Experts have changed the way they think about how autism and ADHD are related.
Fifty percent of children and adolescents with ADHD also have some type of learning disability (LD), such as dyslexia or auditory processing disorder. An LD may explain why a child with ADHD on medication can sit still and stay focused and yet do poorly academically.
Dyslexia results from individual differences in the parts of the brain that enable reading. It tends to run in families. Dyslexia appears to be linked to certain genes that affect how the brain processes reading and language.
Both mothers and fathers can pass dyslexia on to their children if either parent has it. There is roughly a 50% – 60% chance of a child developing dyslexia if one of their parents has it.
The 4 types of dyslexia include phonological dyslexia, surface dyslexia, rapid naming deficit, and double deficit dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disorder where the person often has difficulty reading and interpreting what they read. It is neither infectious nor brought on by vaccinations.
What does this mean for dyslexics? In summary, stress and anxiety will prevent learning. Simply thinking about or remembering the previous experiences will likely illicit the same physiological response and prevent learning.
We often define dyslexia as an “unexpected difficulty in reading”; however, a dyslexic student may also have difficulty with math facts although they are often able to understand and do higher level math quite well.
Most dyslexic children have strong visual and spatial reasoning skills, so they tend to understand math concepts that are taught through manipulative or visual strategies better, although the issues with understanding concepts of time and sequence can still be a barrier.
One of the more advantageous qualities in many dyslexic people is their ability to think outside of the box. They come up with excellent, unorthodox ideas that are not only fresh, but lucrative as well. Critical thinkers: Another trait that some dyslexics possess is their ability to use logical reasoning.
People often confuse dyslexia and autism for one another or conflate them for their similarities. But they are two completely different disorders that affect the brains of people in different ways. While dyslexia is a learning difficulty, autism is a developmental disorder.
Dyslexics Struggle with Automated Processes
For dyslexics, however, these automatic processes can be more difficult due to poor memory recall. This may explain why dyslexics' bedrooms are often particularly messy!
Dyslexia is typically diagnosed in elementary school, when problems with reading and writing become apparent. Many children, however, may be diagnosed later — or never receive a diagnosis until adulthood.
Functional MRI reports abnormal activation patterns in dyslexia during reading operations (e.g., aggregated studies observed under-activations in the left hemisphere fusiform and supramarginal. gyri and over-activation in the left cerebellum in dyslexic subjects compared with controls).
In general, children with ADHD are right-brained learners. They prefer to learn visually — by watching or doing a task in an activity-based, hands-on format, not by listening to lectures, practicing drills, or memorizing. There are many ways to implement visual learning outside the classroom.
ADHD often occurs with other disorders. Many children with ADHD have other disorders as well as ADHD, such as behavior or conduct problems, learning disorders, anxiety and depression1,2.