6 Ways Dyslexia Affects Daily Life 

Dyslexia is most commonly known as a learning disability that makes it difficult for a person to learn to read. It’s often portrayed (at least, in movies) as a child who can’t decipher the words because he tends to flip the letters that look alike, or these letters are “dancing” all over the place. But not everyone knows that it can affect daily life in more ways than this.

In the past, dyslexia was viewed as something that needed to be “fixed.” Thankfully, with the increasing awareness of dyslexia being a form of neurodivergence, we’ve slowly but surely started to learn the uniqueness of this brain wiring. More and more studies have come up showing the gift that dyslexia can be. 

While difficulties learning academic tasks are indeed part of being dyslexic, do you know that dyslexia impacts daily life in so much more than just reading and writing? 

In our family, learning about how dyslexia affects everyday living was a crucial turning point for embracing our dyslexic son’s uniqueness. Without knowing that his brain wiring impacts more than just his education, we would’ve continued to be frustrated and annoyed at his “lapses.” It helped us parent this neurodivergent child in a way that could help him thrive.

How does dyslexia affect home life? 

Research shows that dyslexia also affects the following things: 

• Functional reading 
• Memory 
• Concentration and organization 
• Time-keeping
• Communication, 
• Tiredness, among other things 

6 Ways Dyslexia Impacts Everyday Life

Let’s take a closer look at how dyslexia affects daily life:

1. Functional reading can be difficult with dyslexia

Even when a dyslexic person has overcome the challenge of learning to read, daily functional reading can still be a cause of stress. This is especially true for adults who have to fill out or read text-heavy forms and documents. Some ways that dyslexic people have gotten around this is by opting for audio versions of required readings.

2. Dyslexia affects short-term memory  

Short-term memory can be a problem for dyslexics. 

When we didn’t know that our second son was dyslexic, we would ask him to go to the store to buy stuff the way we did with our (neurotypical) oldest son: ticking off three or four items, hand him the money, and send him off. He would come back and one or two of the items would either be missing or come in wrong quantities or types, and we would try again and again to get him to remember exactly what he needed to buy. 

It was only after we learned he was dyslexic that we understood that memorizing a list was so much more difficult for him. Since then, we’ve made accommodations by making sure he brings a written list when we ask him to buy things from the store. 

Following a list of directions can also be difficult for someone who is dyslexic, so it might help to break down a longer list into smaller, manageable chunks. When it comes to directions, a visual presentation such as a drawing of a map may be easier for dyslexics to remember compared to a page full of written text. 

3. Dylexia affects concentration and organization 

A person with dyslexia tends to have trouble concentrating and to be easily distracted. This is partly connected to their relatively weak short-term memory. 

Perhaps this is why people sometimes mistake dyslexia for other neurodivergent conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Of course, sometimes it may co-occur with these other conditions.

How does this look? For example, the dyslexic person may have trouble remembering where they put their stuff, and also have difficulty looking for them! A possible accommodation would be to have labels for where everything is. 

Another example is a student who gets easily distracted by classmates or siblings. In our case, our homeschooled dyslexic son tends to lose his place in his schoolwork when his younger brother is making noise around him, so we had to find ways to give him undistracted school time. 

4. Dyslexia Impacts Time-keeping 

A person with dyslexia often has difficulty estimating the movement of time, which affects the ability to know how long it would take to do a certain task. This may result in their overpromising and then not delivering, which causes frustration on other people. 

One possible way to help them cope with this is to give wiggle room for task deadlines. It may also help to break large tasks into smaller chunks, guided by a list, where they check things as they go along. 

5. Dyslexia Can Also Show Up in Oral Communication 

Dyslexic persons may have the tendency to mix up syllables and sounds, known as spoonerism after the famous Rev. Spooner (made famous by his habit of mixing up sounds in words!). This makes communication a bit of a challenge, and may affect the dyslexic person’s confidence in talking to other people. 

If you’re with a dyslexic loved one when he or she makes such a mistake, it may help to downplay it so that it doesn’t have such a debilitating effect. However, it also depends on the person, as others also enjoy making fun of themselves, and just to play on this “weakness” and milk it for all its worth! 

6. Tiredness is Common Among Dyslexics 

Because dyslexia poses a challenge for many of these tasks that feel like second nature to neurotypical people, they end up working harder than others. This results in their tendency to be more tired. Then, when they’re tired, their dyslexia “symptoms” might appear more pronounced, creating a vicious cycle! 

Being aware of the greater energy they have to spend may help us be more patient with them, and make sure we give them time to rest and be refreshed. 

Challenges of Living with Dyslexia 

Yes, there are clearly challenges to living with dyslexia. But the good thing is that now that we’re aware, we can make changes that can make things easier, or at least we can give more allowances. 

We hope that this post helps you come to terms with how dyslexia affects daily life, and learn to embrace the strengths alongside what appear to be weaknesses.