The Dyslexia Educational Network (DEN) is the world's first broadcasting company for dyslexia. DEN broadcasts worldwide at DyslexiaEd.com. Founder Robert Langston has dyslexia, is a parent of a dyslexic child and has authored of two books about his experiences with dyslexia in school and life.
How does it affect you today? I mean, how does your disability work for you today and does it work in public, in life and all that kind of stuff? Well I can tell you I still have it obviously. I still… I read on a fifth grade level today. I don’t know my multiplication tables. I’m on a kindergarten level for memory with names. I don’t know my ending sounds or my beginning sounds in words. And I got a… I’m on a kindergarten level on numbering and sequencing. So how does that affect me in life everyday? Right. The story I’d like to share with this one – I call it ‘A dyslexic walks into a doctor’s office.’ Have you heard this one? Yeah, no it’s my story… so I walk to a doctor’s office right. And I went into my doctor’s office and I’m thinking, okay I’ve been out of town… I’ve actually been in California and I’ve been out there for three days and then I was… had a five hour flight back, five hour flight there, three time zone difference, you know. What all that equates to for me is a need for caffeine, right. The problem is at my age the need for caffeine can also translate into a urinary tract infection. You know a UTI, right. So I get home from this world wind tour I was doing and I’m having a problem. I’m ‘okay I got to go to the doctor, right.’ So I go to the doctor. I walk in there and I’m fine, right. I’ve been to this doctor a hundred times, no big deal. I walk in there. And a new lady’s at the reception desk and I said you know ‘I’m Rob Langston, I need to, you know, make an appointment and get in here and see y’all one day.’ And she goes ‘okay well we’re under new management and here’s some forms you need to fill out.’ I take the forms and guess what? I got a problem. You know I’m not expecting this, right. So I’m looking at the form and I’m thinking what am I going to do. And you know it’s simple questions, you know: what’ the problem…. I can’t spell urinary tract or infection. I can’t spell either one of those, right. So I’m like ‘oh my gosh, what am I going to do?’ You know, where were you born. And I was born in Birmingham, Alabama but I can’t spell Birmingham. Right. And so I’m trying to spell that and then it says are you allergic to anything. Well I’m allergic to omnicef – I think what it’s called – but how do you spell omnicef, right. You know, are you taking anything. Well I take rini-do-ding-ding, you know, for my acid reflux, you know. I don’t know what the name or how to spell that either. You know I’m literally writing all this down just as I can try to spell it, you know, off the top of my head, right. And I’m writing all these things down and I get to like the last question and again, if it had been a computer it would have been yellow, right, staring me in the face. I get to the last… and this is the ironic part, right… get to the last question and it says, occupation. And I put author. And I’m thinking, what are they going to think, you know, when they see this?! This guy’s an author and he’s got everything on this page misspelled, there’s not…. and sure enough I hand it in and I tell them, you know I’m dyslexic; can I apologize? Is there anything on there you have questions… you can ask me and I can tell you orally what it is, right. And then I receive services and I went away fine. And I’m thinking you know normally too, I can call my wife and say I need help with some spellings of stuff too, you know. Or I need to know this or that but in the doctor’s office, a big sign – no cell phones, right. So now I’m losing one of my assistant technologies, right. I need that cell phone to make this work for me. So I get it now… so the other end of this story is again, a dyslexic walks into a doctor’s office, right. Except for this time it’s for my kids, right. I have two children – six and ten. And I got to pick up their prescription, right. So I go in there to pick up their prescription and I walk up to the counter – what’ the first thing they ask you for when you’re going to fill a prescription? Child’s birth date… I don’t store anything. It’s not in there. They’re my children, I love them, but I can’t recall their birth dates automatically. So what am I doing now? I’m standing there, you know. Right there at the counter with the lady looking at me like ‘what’s your child’s birth date?, you know. And I’m going through it in my head and I’m actually talk it out loud, ‘okay my – this is for my son – alright my daughter was born in 2002 and my son, he’s two years older than her… so 2003, 2004…. Yeah, it’s 2004 and it’s um… it’s St. Patrick’s day… it’s St. Patrick’s day, what is St. Patrick’s day? And the lady said ‘March.’ March, yeah March, okay! So we got March and we got 2000… and um, you know, what day is St. Patrick’s day on? Is it the 15th, something like that? Oh no 17th. Oh the 17th, right. And so I’m going through all this in my head and everything and then she pulls it up on the computer and goes ‘oh here it is, March 17th 2004.’ Or 2005, that’s what it was… 2005. Got the wrong year, you know. This lady’s looking at me like ‘do you even know your children,’ you know. But it’s dyslexia, you know, and it’s there. And I have my technology today and I can pull it out, I can hit my notes, I can open it up and there’s my kids’ birth dates, you know. And I can review that before I go in to get their subscriptions… prescriptions now, you know. What was the total cost to me at that moment? My momma’s tefloned my self esteem, right. So well a little bit of embarrassment there, but not that big a deal. What is the true cost of that moment? I still got doctor services when I needed them. My children still love me no matter whether I can recall their birth dates on cue or not. In the big picture of that moment, the cost is very little. The cost is very little. We don’t need to put the emphasis on it that we do. We put too much emphasis on it and we make it too hard. We make it too hard. We have to protect their self esteem. We have to give them their learning styles. We have to test them and teach them the way that they learn. If you do that you will turn out life long learners – kids that can move mountains. And we need that today more than ever. I’m telling you we can’t afford to lose one dyslexic – one of these children – because they’re going to have the impact on our lives. And the last thing I’d like to do today to open the conference actually comes from my mom and myself, because as a parent in here or as a teacher in here – if you’re a teacher in here I’d like to tell you my mom had told me when you leave a conference Rob that’s full of a room of teachers, what I want you to do is thank them for me. I want you to thank them for me because if it wasn’t for the partnerships and teachers that cared, we would have lost you and that is too big of a loss for me and as it turns out for our society today, what would have happened. So I want you to thank them for me. And the next thing is as a parent or as a teacher I know you don’t get to hear this. So I’m going to close today with a thank you from me, the L-D child. I’m not a teacher; I’m not a professor; I’m not even in the education system although I visit it almost every day. What I am is an L-D child that people like you, here doing this, when it’s life or death, making a difference for children like me, that changes the world. And I’d like to close today by saying ‘thank you’ from me and my mom. Thanks for having me today.