Discovery with MONEY magazine

I became tired of all the frustration.  How many hours can you force a child to do something they hated?  Feeling both frustrated and helpless, I could not begin to imagine how Sierra felt. I prayed for an answer.   

I began researching her demeanor, moods, attitude and behavior on the Internet and borrowed several books from our local Dallas library, including the book Right Brained Child in a Left Brained World, by Jeffrey Freed.  Skimming the book, I mentally eliminated many of the behavior items listed in his book such as ADHD. I skipped alot of his content on Dyslexia because I had thought it was only mixing up letters like b and d.

 

I decided to try one of the tests from Jeffrey's book.  I held up a magazine and asked Sierra to look at the title on top.  This happened to be the MONEY magazine.  Next I told her to make a picture of this in her head.  I let her look for about 20 seconds, then put it down and asked her to spell the word in her “picture” BACKWARDS.

She did it! I was amazed and confused to say the least.  But so excited because finally we were getting somewhere. 

I asked her what it was that she saw in her picture.  She said “It’s easy, a hand holding a dollar bill”.  Glancing at the magazine again, below the heading of MONEY was a graphic of a hand holding a dollar bill.  She memorized the entire page and made it one big picture (including the word) and was able to tell me the letters YENOM in order.

Immediately I picked up the telephone and called the author, Jeffrey Freed in Colorado. I left a very long voice message on his phone. He graciously called me back and said, "I know what is happening with your daughter.  She has Dyslexia."  He could tell I was puzzled so he went on, "There is no doubt in my mind based on your description." He offered to come to Dallas to work with her.