Confused of Derbyshire

Big is struggling with distinguishing between b & d, c & g. Can’t see why, but she is.

So this morning we made these pictures.


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Comments

16 responses to “Confused of Derbyshire”

  1. Fran STILL gets mixed up with d and b.

  2. I really don’t get it. How can you not know which is which?

  3. Because, Tim, you may be dyslexic, dyspraxic or have some other learning disorder that prevents you from understanding letters (and numbers). Or purely because (as an expert told me) the neural pathways may not be fully formed yet between the eyes and the brain. All children develop their neural pathways at different times, appropriate for them.
    Small persons sight problems related to her dyspraxia prevented her from reading words with 1/2/3/4 letters in them; plus she had no lower horizon sight-wise, which meant she couldn’t read any letters with decenders eg j p q g y.
    It will click with Big when she is ready 🙂

  4. Umm, all of mine have had this problem. It is something to do with (as Claire said) the neural pathways. Children’s brains function equally in the left/right hemisphere’s. So at this delicious phase of the brain not being ‘organised’, ‘d’ and ‘b’ are reflections of each other. So I guess on retrieval/assimilation of information, it can go in/come out any way. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘p’ joins the camp :-).
    Apparently we use about 10% of the brain’s capacity, just think what would happen if we could harness it’s potential 🙂

  5. My brother (and incidentally my niece) had cross-lateralism, which I beleive has in the interim been lumped in as a form of dyslexia. Conversely, I cannot remember learning to read, according to my father I just did.
    So, yes Claire, I know that all you say is true, but I am afraid I still don’t get it. It was the same with glasses, I could never understand why people wanted to wear them – you can’t imagine how much it ****es me off that I now have to wear reading glasses. 🙂

  6. Well Tim I have been wearing glasses since I was 10years old and it p***es me off that last year my optometrist referred to me as middle aged, suggesting that I would be needing to wear varifocals before long! Middle aged when I am not yet 40!!!!!!! harumph

  7. caroline avatar
    caroline

    the b/d p/q problem is VERY common. I always add a ‘flick’ at the bottom of my q’s to help, but often textbooks don’t (especially American block-print ones). Also perhaps if you encourage Big to add on the joining in & out tails (flicks) she will be less confused. It certainly helped my boys sort them out. ‘b’ joins in from the top whereas ‘d’ joins from the bottom/middle. I found once my boys started joining letters the muddle seemed to iron itself out 🙂

  8. Middle aged at 40? Hmm. Funny how some people only apply these categories to other people, isn’t it.
    Mind you, I can still remember when I thought 25 was middle aged. 🙂

  9. I’m with you, Tim, can’t ever remember not just knowing which was which, but Anna still gets d and b muddled. Abbie still writes 2 the wrong way round (although I’m tempted to put that down to left handedness).

  10. is it reading the d/b or writing ?
    my boy who is much older ,and has two ‘d’s in his name!!
    I let him sound out the word wrongly and he instantly slaps his forehead and then makes the correct sound!!

  11. Both. Although reading is more of an issue in that she wants to learn to read.

  12. The correct sound in that circumstance presumably being “Buh!” or, “Boh!” 🙂

  13. Thinking about how hard it is to understand why its hard, does it help to think of letters as fairly complex patterns (to a mind still puzzling out how to do such things) and imagine me showing you two complex geometric patterns and aksing you to reliably decipher which is which each time when you don’t neccessarily have the other to compare?

  14. Um, no.

  15. For some people the obscure patterns (letters) and sounds, names, and meanings just click at an early age.
    For many other people it takes a little longer.
    And for some others it may take years of gruelling hard work, and they can never do it automatically.
    seeing as dyslexia is ‘word blindness’, maybe you’ve got ‘dyslexia blindess’ 😉

    Katya
    41
    wearer distance & reading glases
    muddler of ‘m’s and ‘b’s

  16. I am sure you are right. I have no (conscious) experience of not being able to read and it is very hard for me to imagine what it is like.

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