Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty disorder in reading, writing, and spelling caused by disorders of brain neurodevelopment. Often dyslexic children are viewed as stupid because their academic abilities do not reflect their intellectual intelligence. Factors that cause dyslexia include genetic and environmental factors such as a severe head injury during a child’s growth period.
Currently, parents and educators still lack knowledge of dyslexia. In general, the treatment of dyslexia is only done by a pediatrician. In fact, in practice, parents and educators are the ones who deal directly with children most of the time. For this reason, an understanding of dyslexia in children is important to know in the early stage of diagnosis.
So far, there is little information about dyslexia, especially for educators and psychologists,” said Dr. Trubus Raharjo, a psychologist, practitioner, and UGM alumnus, at the Biweekly Colloquium Webinar organized by the Doctoral Program in UGM Faculty of Psychology, Friday (16/4).
According to Trubus, parents who have dyslexic children often say that their children have above-average painting skills at their age. This happens because dyslexic children tend to use the right brain for problem-solving, and in general they are imaginative and have good abstraction skills.
Dyslexia may also comorbid with other disorders such as hyperactive behavior, but it will continue to decrease as the characteristics of dyslexia appear. “This is important for psychologists to know, so they can be more careful in making a diagnosis,” he explained.
Trubus said dyslexia also requires a fairly long diagnosis. One of the requirements includes having studied for the previous six months and having persistent symptoms of the disorder. Dealing with dyslexia can be done with a comfortable learning process, remedial teaching, therapy, and the most important thing is to prevent the stigma among dyslexic children because they tend to be more sensitive to bullying.
“For dyslexic children, it is important to recognize their talents to increase confidence and motivation to keep learning to read and write. Dyslexic children are normal children and do not experience global developmental disorders,” he said.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/21018-informasi-disleksia-bagi-pendidik-dan-psikolog-masih-minim
