My Life with a
Dyslexic Husband.
I met my husband Ofer at the University. We were both registered to an Economics class while studying for a MBA degree. While I was sitting in class trying to write everything the lecturer said, Ofer did not even have an open notebook. However, what amazed me was that when we were studying together, while I was trying to figure out what I had scribbled in my notebook, Ofer simply explained to me all the economic models we had learned. I was impressed.
When Ofer mentioned to me that he was dyslexic I didn't really know what he was talking about. I had heard the term dyslexia mentioned before, but I had not had any personal encounters with dyslexics. It took a while until I saw Ofer's spelling. The first time I saw it I simply could not understand what he had written. I also could not understand how such a smart guy could spell so poorly.
I remember asking Ofer once how can it be that his spelling was SO BAD. I told him that I am willing to invest the time to improve his spelling. I took a paper that he had just written, listed the words that were not used or spelled correctly, and told him that now we were going to learn together how to spell. Ofer said sure, he would give it a try, though he knew it was a waste of time. What was amazing that Ofer would misspell even simple words, and his misspellings were always inconsistent.
Ofer explained to me that the problem was that every time he saw the word differently. The letters were scrambled in a different manner each time he saw the word, so that it was difficult for him to memorize the visualization of the word. He also explained that he had great difficulties in breaking a word down to its phonetic syllables. After a few joint sessions, I gave up. I understood that this was not a productive exercise.
As we progressed in our relationship, I became more and more involved in his writing. Whenever he wrote something I would review it; otherwise his spelling would be terrible. And it is not that he did not invest time using regular spell checkers. The benefits of regular spell checkers are limited for people with dyslexia. Your spelling has to be very, very close in order to get corrected spelling. Ofer even went and purchased some leading and quite expensive writing assistant tools to try and help him. But no matter how much time he invested, the end result was a bunch of misspelled and misused words all jumbled together in a single sentence. Actually, Ofer wrote very concise sentences. He became an expert describing things using the minimum number of written words.
It is a known fact that intelligence has nothing to do with dyslexia. Many dyslexics are very intelligent people. However, one can not ignore the fact that many people are not familiar with dyslexia and they do associate poor spelling with either lack of intelligence or lack of professionalism. I have observed this behavior in Ofer's workplace. There is very little tolerance in the workplace if one has dyslexia. Many times it is either a conscious or sub-conscious intolerance. I eventually became Ofer's personal spell checker, proofing every important email or document that he wrote in order to hide as much as possible Ofer's dyslexia in his workplace.
I have learned from Ofer that, since people with dyslexia need to overcome severe hurdles as youngsters in school, they are well adjusted to meet and manage difficulties and disappointments. This is not a bad characteristic to have in life.
Ofer and I eventually got married and have three wonderful children. My eldest daughter is now in kindergarten. The truth is that both Ofer and I wish that all of our three kids will not inherit their father's dyslexia. It is not that you can not have a happy life with dyslexia, but it will probably be a more difficult one, and why would you wish that for your kids. But looking on the bright side, living with and through Ofer's dyslexic condition has made us adopt as our family motto Charlie Brown's cartoon saying: "NEVER EVER EVER GIVE UP". And adopting such a motto can never ever be wrong...
Iris Chermesh
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