Dyslexia

I come from a musical instrument playing family. My dad played the piano and was famously noted for playing two of Rachmaninoff’s etudes that some say qualified as the hardest piano music ever well, probably more than two, but two stand out to me as being among the most challenging. Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux are in two sets, op. 33 and 39. His op. 39 is overall more challenging, and more in the vein of his contemporaries such as Scriabin and Prokofiev.

My mother played the Lyre Harp. The lyre is a string instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later periods. The lyre is similar in appearance to a small harp but with distinct differences. In organology, lyre is defined as a "yoke lute", being a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound-table and consists of two arms and a cross-bar. In Ancient Greece, recitations of lyric poetry were accompanied by lyre playing. I can still recall today listening to her play, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow from that famous movie The Wizard of Oz to put us to sleep on occasions.

My middle brother in which we referred to him as Little Tito. He got that nick name from playing the guitar just like his idol Tito Jackson who is a member of that African American dysfunctional family The Jackson 5. Some say my brother even looked a lot like him when he wore that silly bowler black hat, also known as a billycock, bob hat, bombín or derby.

My other brother played the Contrabass Clarinet. He being the oldest of the four of us and me the youngest at the time 6 years old. That instrument looked as if it was 8 feet long with a curve duck looking neck and would take an elephant to blow it. In my little eyes it looked longer than an Alphorn (4 to12 feet). He couldn’t get into any bands because quite frankly no one knew what kind of instrument he was playing half of the time. Eventually he learned to play that monstrosity instrument solo and did quite well for himself and family.

My sister who is two years older than me. Plays the violin. When she was 11 years old she was excepted to enroll in “The Cleveland Institute of Music” an independent conservatory of music in Cleveland, OH. “CIM”. empowers the world’s most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential by offering extensive experiential opportunities to foster the practical skills necessary for a seamless transition into a professional career. She never finished because she got pregnant a second time during her senior year and had to drop out because her thug boyfriend liked going to prison for stealing expensive cars. She teaches violin lessons online today and charges a pretty penny I might add.

I play the wonderful Xylophone. A xylophone is an idiophone, a type of percussion instrument that produces sound by vibration of the entire body of the instrument. Triangles and cymbals are other examples of idiophones. My xylophone belongs to the subgroup of idiophones that are played with mallets. Also in my family are the vibraphone, the glockenspiel, the marimba, the chimes or tubular bells, antique cymbals or crotales, and steel drums. It may not be more exciting or glamorous as the instruments played by my family members, but growing up I got a lot of girls phone numbers once my musical talents kicked in because I could be in a band or orchestral ensembles, where I could be used both for solo work and for back up. I even met and fell madly in love with my first or was it second wife while playing with Earl Klugh.

You would think with all of that musical playing instrument talent in my family I would have extraordinarily little trouble teaching my two children how to play an instrument. At first I blamed it on their mother why they couldn’t play the Piano, Clarinet, Drums, Flute, Guitar, Harp, Saxophone, Ukulele, Trumpet, not even simple instruments such as a Tin Whistle or  Maraca or Stick Dulcimer or Triangles or Cymbals or Cow Bells or Tambourines or a Rainstick or Bongos? I even signed up for the two of them to take Harmonica and Kazoo lessons in which they both failed miserably in my musical instrument playing mind. Even my Uncle Buzzy who was deemed and idiot could at least play the Tuba.

I got so mentally messed up from the two of them inability to play any instruments that I had to seek psychological mental counseling. The first thing that Dr. Margret Kelemen Ph. D, asked me was how well did I know my children? I thought about it for a long minute and then replied as good as any dad who wants his beloved children to do better than himself. She quietly stated that in fact I don’t know my children at all. I was just about to walk out of that first session. When she stopped me in my tracks and asked have I ever had my children mentally checked. Developmental dyslexia is a reading disability that cannot be accounted for by visual or cognitive deficit nor by a lack of opportunity to learn. It affects an estimated 5% to17% of schoolchildren, depending on the cutoff reading score used to diagnose the disorder. It’s important to keep in mind Mr. Britt that dyslexia isn’t a specific condition that you either have or don’t have. Rather, reading skills are normally distributed across the educated population. Most people have average reading skills, some are above average and others are below. It’s this last group that gets the “dyslexia” label that I believe your two children have from what you’ve shared with me, even though the dividing line between “average” and “below” is arbitrary. Dyslexia is not, as commonly thought, a visual processing disorder. Unlike our dyslexic agnostic who spelled “god” as “dog,” mixing up the order of letters in words isn’t a typical symptom of dyslexia. Rather, children who will later get the “dyslexia” label have difficulty relating instrument playing sounds.

I sit back down with my two hands covering my exasperated face recalling how many times did their mother try and explain to me about the difficulty they were having in school. I only really cared about my music and them learning from me to play an instrument. I never once went to any PTA meetings or any of my children’s parent and teachers’ meetings.

The good Dr. Margaret when on to say that in the first years of life, children learn words holistically, that is, without any sense of their internal structure. If you ask a three year older which word is longer, bus or motorcycle, the answer is obvious. Of course, buses are longer than motorcycles. Since when were yellow buses not longer than a motorcycle spelled or not spelled. I rode one of those yellow buses to a special school for children with learning disabilities since the 4^th grade.

I was getting the picture quite clearly. When children still haven’t achieved phonological awareness, we deem them to have an auditory processing disorder. Sometimes intense training in the auditory discrimination of speech sounds can help children gain the phonological awareness they need to learn how to read. And this is where musical training comes in. She was talking my language now I thought. Both speech and music involve rapid manipulations of sound qualities like pitch, rhythm, and duration. Musically trained adults like yourself and family members have superior abilities in auditory perception compared to their non-musical peers. So, it’s long been conjectured that musical training may give children with dyslexia a boost in the auditory perception skills they need to learn how to read. Was she talking about my children or me?

I’m thinking to myself what good is learning how to read if my two children can’t play an instrument. I unwillingly thanked the quack doctor and left confused as ever. When I got back to my bachelor pad I called the mother of my two children. When I asked her why did you give my  kids Dyslexia she hung up.