Friday Q&A on Dyslexia with Jamie Wace

0:00Georgia Tennant: Hi, this is Monica Reinagle of Nutrition Diva. Today's show is sponsored by Nature Raised Farms. Grocery shopping can be a little overwhelming, especially if you're reading labels. And in my opinion, chicken shouldn't be complicated, which is why I appreciate Nature Raised Farms. It's chicken that's just chicken, and their lightly breaded chicken nuggets are free from gluten, dairy, and soy. Look for Nature Raised Farms on your next grocery trip and feel more confident about your choices. Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here and with it, the hot and sticky weather.

0:36Georgia Tennant: A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you. Hello and welcome to Made by Mamas, the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman. And I'm Georgia Dayton. And this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits.

1:17Georgia Tennant: With five kids between G and I, we have seen a lot. We really have. Each week, we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way. In short, we're the parenting podcast for you. Before we get started, hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands. And they're on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it really helps if you leave a rating and a review. You can also find us on Instagram. We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it? Hello and welcome to Friday's episode of the podcast.

1:49Georgia Tennant: It's just me today. Zoe is very busy hosting Breakfast Radio. But we are going to be chatting about something that we've actually never discussed on the podcast before, which is pretty crazy. We are going to be talking about all things dyslexia. And I am joined by CEO of Talamo, Jamie Wace. So welcome, Jamie. How are you? I'm very good. Thank you for having me on. Good. Now, I've briefly just mentioned what we're going to be chatting about today, dyslexia. But do you want to just give us a little bit of background on you and also why you started Talamo? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so I think that the genesis of Talamo starts with the experience that I had at school.

2:30I was bottom set for everything, really, really struggled. And then I got a diagnosis of dyslexia and whether it's a retrospective emotion or not, and it had something to do with other things like choosing my subjects. But really, the diagnosis was a catalyst for my academic outcomes completely transforming. So I went from being bottom of the class to top of the class. and I think I just sort of had that thought nestled in my head that hey a diagnosis of dyslexia really helped me um and then sort of went through went through my life um and worked in the technology space um but always had this kind of thought in the back of my head that yeah this diagnosis thing is kind of interesting um but then started reading more about dyslexia and saw that 80 percent of dyslexic school children are not diagnosed by the time they leave school and then also as in least got a 16 yes so well so you're basically most most kids are not diagnosed if they have dyslexia so 80 are not diagnosed um and then you look into the reason for that and it's because a diagnosis is extremely expensive and so the sort of the main point then became okay how can i take what i've learned in the technology space and apply it to dyslexia and try and create an automated test that reduces the price significantly um and therefore makes it more accessible.

3:45And so the mission at Talamo is to democratise access for the identification and support of dyslexia for now. But then what it's going to be, and I'm sure we'll get into this, is that it's going to be democratising access for all kinds of different special educational needs conditions as well. So yeah, that's a bit of a whistle-stop tour.

4:05Georgia Tennant: And when were you diagnosed? I was diagnosed at the age of 15. Which was really helpful to you? really helpful yeah exactly and to be honest it's much more helpful the earlier you're diagnosed as well so if you're diagnosed at the age of seven you have sort of it's disproportionately helpful because you can put interventions in place at an early age amazing I mean I've got loads of questions but we have had um questions from the followers so maybe what we'll do is we'll we'll tackle those first and then if anything comes up in between then we'll you know discuss that because I mean I think it's weird because I think dyslexia was discussed a lot when I was at school and now I just don't hear about it I've got two children at primary school and I don't hear any parents any just just any communication about it um which is quite weird because we hear a lot about ADHD we hear a lot about autism but I don't hear so much about dyslexia anymore yeah it's funny it seems that sort of dyslexia has fallen off a little bit in favor of like kind of autism and adhd and i think it's having a bit of a resurgence because jamie oliver had this big documentary about it and i think that that but i think i agree with you that it up until that point it wasn't kind of getting maybe some of the airtime as you were getting with some of the other conditions um but i think one of the interesting things is that because dyslexia is a lot of it is focused around literacy and spelling and kind of phonics and phonological processing and things like that a lot of this stuff can respond to intervention so if you do spot it earlier you can make sort of fundamental changes where I mean not to kind of get too political about it but like it's not you can't really do the same thing for autism and ADHD but I also think that the kind of the way things are moving is that it's not just going to be about dyslexia or ADHD or autism it will be about somebody's individual cognitive profile I think that's what we're trying to do more of as a company is sort of evolve past just the label of dyslexia and more about okay what are the fundamental cognitive strengths and challenges that this child has and then put support in place to help them but also help them sort of realize it themselves because ultimately it sounds a bit like a hallmark card but like the more you know about yourself the better decisions that you're going to make and that's going to produce better outcomes yeah and also i guess just not feel bad yeah because that's the thing sometimes if you understand why you do something or why your brain doesn't behave in a certain way you give yourself like that allowance and you're like okay and you know i understand this now i can see what i can do about it 100 because it's really especially as a child like it's extremely hard to separate like what is like it's it's extremely personal and i think like one example from my own life is that i've got my working memory sucks and uh working memory is like a big part of like many different types of neurodivergence and basically it's like the ram on your computer um like it's it's basically like if you're getting too many inputs of information at once you can basically just sort of like not absorb anything and you kind of just go a bit it's like too much stuff is coming in and then it just goes okay now nothing's happened nothing's come in and i think for me i used to take that extremely personally and it basically used to be like okay i'm not getting this therefore i'm stupid and then even just being like okay that's a working memory difficulty and i was like okay cool I've got a working memory difficulty I'm taking it much less personally and therefore I'm not just like okay I'm stupid then guess I'll just go and do nothing and I'll have this sort of paralysis instead it's like okay practically well maybe I should take better notes or maybe I should use a transcription tool or maybe I should chunk up information in a different way yeah that's really really interesting so I'm gonna start off with the listeners questions someone here has put early signs to watch out for early signs to watch out for yeah it's a good question I think um so dyslexia is not not just about reading and spelling which a lot of people yeah I thought it was yeah yeah and that's perfectly perfectly normal and also it is kind of about that but it's about more things as well um so things to to spot especially if your child is young is are they really struggling with phonics um so like are they struggling to uh sort of understand the basic building blocks of language and reading while their peers are accelerating.

8:20And I think in particular, if your child sounds very intelligent, but they can't get that down on paper, I think that's a real telltale sign. If they feel very charismatic and then it comes to reading and spelling, but also handwriting, you see it's very messy, that could be a telltale sign. so those I think would say the sort of are more like traditional indicators but also working memory is also a big one as well like if they feel if they seem like they're getting extremely tired by the end of the day if you see in their school reports that teachers have said it doesn't seem like they're able to focus on on lots of things at once and I think it's because basically their brain is just working overtime and it just means that they're extremely fatigued by the end of the day and I would say the last thing as well so if it if they're kind of getting if they eventually are getting things but it's just taking them a while to do it so it's about that reading and spelling component it's about that working memory component but also the processing speed uh piece

9:21Georgia Tennant: as well okay so lots to look out well I think just to sort of just I think very specifically like if ultimately if you're if your child is really poor handwriting I think that's one one sign and I think if they're falling behind in reading and spelling that's another sign and if they're really tired at the end of school that's probably another sign just to sort of make it yeah no that's yeah yeah no that's that's really good um how old before you diagnose and things to look out for is it the same for girls and boys so there's a few bits there so how old like what's the youngest you can diagnose someone so we like to say seven um I think it's you will be able to spot signs before then and so I think for the sort of eagle-eyed and trained teacher like it's it's still worth like having a look to see before but I think for us to be reliable and to know that you're kind of getting a yeah it's it's accurate we would say seven but yeah there might be signs before that I think especially in the year one phonics test I think there'll be some signs that begin to emerge then but yeah seven for for a formal assessment um sorry what was the second part of the question and is it the same for girls and boys see that's a great that's a great question at the moment the diagnostic criteria is the same for girls and boys um but it's definitely something that uh I'd love to do more research on because now we know that ADHD looks different for girls and boys and autism as well um it must look different for girls and boys but at the moment we just don't have the research to to say how it looks different yeah because I mean like my son for instance has terrible handwriting absolutely awful but he excels in everything yeah like all you know all subjects he's like really really high but the teacher said to me going into the last couple of years at senior primary school they judge on handwriting and now he will literally fall behind so it's like is it a boy thing bad handwriting or i mean i think i mean that's a very interesting point i think like it's sort of to make a kind of uh to sort of have a hypothesis rather than like being based on like a study that's been done yeah i would have thought just based on my own experience that like girls tend to have better organization skills and handwriting than boys and so I would say that when you're judging uh some some handwriting because one of the tests of a select series like um looking at the difference between someone writing something um really quickly and then writing something slowly and it's like if if there's a big change between when they have to write it quickly that's like a sort of a bit of a telltale sign but for girls it might be my hunch is that that would really be different for girls because they be like really trying hard to make sure it's all like done very nicely um so it could just be a boy thing but i would also say that dyslexia is not necessarily i mean it's not related to intelligence um so you can be extremely high performing uh and dyslexic as well and so just because um a child or your son might be performing well at school it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not dyslexia and in a way he might just be really good at coping with it and it's like if you pinpointed it it might just be that his he's still got room to go even further up but it's like if you if for instance if you're really high performing dyslexic it might be that you're still acing all your all your classes but you could ace them even more if you knew if you knew that you had it yeah it's really interesting isn't it um I think I might be dyslexic as an adult is it worth getting an assessment?

12:52I would say yes because I think ultimately I mean I think for me at school one of the big reasons why people or parents want to get an assessment is to get access to various support measures like it might be extra time in exams it might be sort of assistive technology it might be having the teachers help but and I think that's great like I would never say that that's not a good thing to have but for me it's not the main thing and it's it's it's almost that's a secondary to the main point which is your sort of it sounds like a complicated word but your your metacognitive awareness and that basically means like understanding what your cognitive your cognitive strengths are and your cognitive weaknesses are that is really like the the main thing because if you understand that you're going to make better decisions about your life and I don't think that that it becomes any less important when you become an adult and actually as an adult you're making way more decisions about your life than you would be if you were or a child as well and so I think um it's really important so I definitely would recommend getting a getting an assessment um I just one example um I think that dyslexia or like kind of undiagnosed dyslexia can oftentimes um sort of make people make worse decisions I've got an example for this um there was a a girl who um I used to mentor who was um who was just coming out of university and she was really keen on getting um a job at a like a place with a very big sort of brand name and reputation um but she basically was only what she wanted to just like the main kind of success metric she had was like the company like she wanted to work at a good company but because if she was quite junior the only roles they had available were like very admin heavy roles um and so she was applying to these roles and doing internships and then it was going really badly because she was very dyslexic and had poor organizational skills which is like a pretty normal thing to have you're dyslexic I've caught them myself um and but she had like exceptional interpersonal skills like she was really vivacious like really charming and charismatic person and like would obviously do very well in lots of other things um and actually the decision that she needed to make was okay I'm gonna let I'm gonna aim less high with the sort of reputation of the company and actually just go into a role that fits me much better and I just I wonder how many people are in this same spot and they've sort of been using the wrong metric or they've been sort of getting they've been thinking that it's not dyslexia or it's not another type of neurodiversity and they've been getting themselves in it they've basically not been playing to their strengths at all and they might also have a bit of a chip in their shoulder as well so I'm going to prove it I'm going to prove that I can do this and I saw this podcast the other day I think it it's like the Microsoft CTO or something and it's like you said that um people should spend far more time um focusing on the things that they're good at and becoming great at them than focusing on the things that they're not good at and becoming okay at them yeah you're going to get such a much more disproportionate return by kind of focusing on that aspect of it yeah it's like that thing isn't

16:00Georgia Tennant: it you see the meme going around and it's like um if your you know kid is failing at maths but amazing at tennis hire a tennis coach yeah like not you don't get the math tutoring you just push them into not push them but you know like encourage them into what they're good at yeah and maybe you could use some tennis examples when they're practicing their maths as well yeah yeah yeah exactly we'll be right back after this short break

16:28Georgia Tennant: hello i'm monica reinagle host of the nutrition diva podcast Summer is here and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where Liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

17:03Georgia Tennant: Hi, this is Monica Reinagle of Nutrition Diva. Today's show is sponsored by Nature Raised Farms. Grocery shopping can be a little overwhelming, especially if you're reading labels. And in my opinion, chicken shouldn't be complicated, which is why I appreciate Nature Raised Farms. It's chicken that's just chicken. And their lightly breaded chicken nuggets are free from gluten, dairy, and soy. Look for Nature Raised Farms on your next grocery trip and feel more confident about your choices.

17:57with a tap all on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today.

18:07Georgia Tennant: Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? My daughter is going into year four. She's been diagnosed with dyslexia, but we haven't told her. What is the best way to explain to my daughter she has dyslexia? that's a really interesting uh what i definitely i definitely would say to to tell her but i would also say i think what what i would recommend would be to explain specifically what like her dyslexia looks like because it looks different for everybody and so if it's that she's got a slower processing speed uh and maybe a working memory challenge and reading and things like that i would also try and find out like what the strengths are as well and pitch it like just more of a kind of dispassionate look at a profile so it might be I don't obviously know that the detail of the profile but it might be that um she has good visual skills or good interpersonal skills or or there might be just be lots of other strengths that come with it too and I'd focus less on the dyslexia as a label itself and focus more about kind of the profile and what that means and also it means that it's not going to be viewed as a negative and this is something that oh okay I've got this bad thing that nobody else has therefore I'm I'm less than or something and it affects their self-esteem it's more and to be honest you could lead with the strengths you could say or you could all sort of mix them in together yeah you're really good at your visual ability is really good it's like it's much better than what your classmates would have and this means this this this and this and then you could say but your working memory is not quite so good um then this means this this and this and so it's sort of couched together I think one it can kind of go a couple of different ways like I don't think that dyslexia should be used as a a crutch or an excuse um it's really important i think to make that distinction um that it should never be viewed as a way of not being able to to do something um it should just be a way a viewpoint to say okay i still want to do this thing but it might be a different way yeah um and things like that um yeah so i would just say to kind of just looking at the sort of underlying because in in the formal diagnostic report there'll be some extra information and I think I'd just couch it to what that means and if it means having another conversation with the assessor to explain a little bit because I know some of these reports are quite filled with jargon yeah it might be worth just doing that as well are there strengths that people who have dyslexia usually you know like have are they like I mean in my mind like people who are dyslexic usually are really creative or is that true or is that just like a myth i mean it's a really interesting point because again it's like there hasn't actually been enough research into this space um but it's like one of these things that like an like um an absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence an evidence of absence yeah so i personally believe that there is a lot of this stuff like if i look to all of the dyslexic people i know i would say that's normally some kind of sort of vibe that I'm picking up and I think lateral thinking skills is one interpersonal skills is another visual skills is another um I think in particular the like the sort of lateral thinking like um you can see uh some like a sort of a situation in one place and then you can see another situation but you can borrow lots of lots of sort of the ideas of this other place and fit it and retrofit it like that or kind of really good problem solving abilities and things like that um so I personally think there absolutely is and I think that there just should be more research into it yeah definitely because I think as well like it would be good if you were told you know like you have dyslexia these are the sort of like roles or jobs that you know are really good for those particular skills that you mentioned because I think sometimes like you say if you read like all the information and a report it can be hard to be like okay cool right so these are my strengths but what the hell does that mean like what are you supposed to do at the end yeah what am I supposed to do with it yeah yeah exactly yeah I definitely think so like I think the trouble is is that because the the criteria is quite broad like it is possible to have like people to have different strengths and so I would say that kind of moving towards this idea that like you just get a really good understanding of what those individual strengths are um even though knowing that like for dyslexia it's probably going to be there's only going to be a certain number of things also you have to be scoring better at some things compared to other things otherwise it's not dyslexia like if you if you scored low across the board that wouldn't be dyslexia that would just be a low like a low sort of a high level of need that just wouldn't that would be something else so you have to see some strengths in some areas and some weaknesses in other areas in order to get to dyslexia okay so then it's almost like yeah like an uneven yeah it's like a spike it's like a spiky profile yes you need to see the spikes so and that means like if it's if there if it was all low there wouldn't be any spikes right okay yeah because then you'd just be like exactly exactly in proportionate or whatever yeah yeah um this is interesting can dyslexia be misdiagnosed as an eyesight problem i have heard this um that i mean i think i think it's possible I think um it it would be it would be hard for it to for you to go through like a whole um assessment and it just I think a good assessor hopefully should be able to pick that pick that up um but I do think that kids can like maybe the sort of precursor to like getting a formal assessment a teacher might think that it's a like it might be that they can't read the board properly and that might just it might just be an explainer for like another reason why a um a student is falling behind even though when you speak to them they seem like perfectly like kind of adept to understanding the information um but as part of an assessment like some of the first questions they ask is like uh when's your most recent eye test or like have you seen a yeah a behavioral optometrist or whatever it is yeah um so yeah it's definitely something that i think you're supposed to weed out to begin with and then um if it's not the case then you sort of move down the the dyslexia assessment okay what what is the the process for a diagnosis so look what would an assessor do i know you're talking about the more automated system but what's like the traditional how did like what how does that play out yeah so i mean at the moment i'm slightly biased because like we obviously create yeah of course yeah but but yeah the way that it works is basically um an assessor you'll there'll be there'll be an assessor who gets like some kind of um inbound request um for an assessment um they will then book in an appointment there'll be like a three-hour assessment um and they'll go through like visual ability verbal ability working memory processing speed reading spelling all of these different types of tests um and the assessor will then go in the background after the assessment and they will look at the different scores and they'll be spotting they'll be looking to see um like a difference in some of these scores and then they'll be trying then they'll be saying okay is there enough of a difference to to warrant a diagnosis of dyslexia and then they'll also be looking at some of the background information as well like um has this child had to have reading intervention in the past like what's their what's their handwriting like do they have dyslexia in the family because it's it's pretty hereditary um and then at the end of that they'll make a they'll make an assessment on whether or not it's dyslexia but from our perspective we do all of that but it's just built into a system instead um so we'll we'll get a lot of the qualitative information to be understand about family history and things like that and then we'll do an assessment that takes 45 minutes but we're also pretty happy with the accuracy as well but obviously it's far cheaper than going through what is the price difference just so if you were going to go for a private dyslexia assessment and then like the automated one that you offer?

25:59I mean, it depends on where you are in the country, but I'm assuming like a lot of your followers and listeners are London-based or Southeast-based.

26:06Georgia Tennant: Yeah, I mean, it is UK-wide, but even if you just sort of give a rough, like say London and then... Well, in London, you could be paying 800, 1 ,000 pounds for an assessment. Wow. Other parts of the country, four, five, 600 pounds. Yeah. And for us, from a parent's perspective, you can buy a test for 50 pounds. Right, that's amazing. so so it's but at the same time i think it's worth pointing out that like it isn't considered a formal assessment uh but at the same time um we work with lots of schools like we're in we're currently just in just under 400 schools and schools do take this the results seriously and actually there's the same legal protection there's the same legal kind of level for both and so um if you're looking to get a quick answer and if you're looking to get kind of action taken as a result um because a lot of the time you have an extremely long wait list and i mean everybody is struggling at the moment like it's uh it's it's it's tough out there for parents and um yeah it's it's if you if you're sort of faced with the fact that you have to pay 800 pounds or be considered like a bad parent or not get your child the the support that they need um i would say that it's a good sort of it's a good thing to consider and also at the end of it you might you might take our test and you see that it comes up with a with a like we we high likelihood of dyslexia it might be that you actually want to go at that point and say I'm going to go I'm going to go through the full process just to just to make doubly sure um but I think the world that we're operating in is that even if you didn't have that you would still have some results that you could really rely on and you like if you don't have 800 pounds to spend which I don't think many parents these days have got just 800 pounds lying around yeah um so that's really the kind of area that we're operating in we would never say that don't go and get a formal assessment but we just know the reality is like it's it's it's something that yeah a lot of people might not have the money for yeah and also to start like you say like if the earlier the better so you could start putting in those practices to support even if you haven't got the formal assessment like yourself and yeah and again like seeing the strengths because that for me like you know if I was going to do that for one of my children I'd be just really interested to see like the strengths to show them um but yeah yeah strengths I think strengths are I think the most important thing and I I do because I think one of the sort of challenges that we have is that we're obviously focused on um trying to spot for dyslexia and we we do a range of tests to try and look at that um and we are trying to spot like kind of poke and prod in areas that people are going to find difficult um we do test for strengths too but But I think that we want to get closer into providing like a really robust view of strengths.

28:46Because also there's certain things that are never going to come out of a test that you just know, you know that you're you know that about your child. Like they love football or they love birds.

28:54Georgia Tennant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even if it's not necessarily just related to strength, it's also based on interest. Like if they're really interested in something, it's like, OK, great. That's like provided us a really useful thing to sort of hitch on to. and then we can because they like the best sort of what you're supposed to do is if you're having intervention is to match up a weakness to a strength so if you've if you've got really good visual ability and you've got a poor working memory then maybe your note-taking style should be more visual because you're going to remember it more and it's just it's an example of that and it's and if if you're sort of um if somebody is is really struggling to read um and they hate it and like they just have a real kind of like immediate reaction that they just really just don't want to read something then I mean the obvious thing is like first of all find a book that's like they call it like high interest low level book so it's still made for the maturity level of the child yeah but it's so it's not like they're reading something that's meant for eight-year-olds if they're 13 yeah um but also it might be that you choose a subject that they're really interested in anyway and so you sort of just like flip it a little bit to be like okay hey, we're doing something you traditionally don't like, but we're doing it in a way that you will like.

30:04So it's all of those types of things. So I completely agree. Strengths are the main foundation. It's also going to mean that if you can pitch something where it's just as much about strengths as it is about weaknesses, they're not just going to like absorb that and say, okay, well, I'm worse than all my mates.

30:19Georgia Tennant: Yeah, and I'm always going to struggle. Yeah, exactly. Because it's just not the case. We'll be right back after this short break.

30:29Georgia Tennant: Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden, or maybe on the golf course, can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

31:04Georgia Tennant: Hi, this is Monica Reinagle of Nutrition Diva. Today's show is sponsored by Nature Raised Farms. Grocery shopping can be a little overwhelming, especially if you're reading labels. And in my opinion, chicken shouldn't be complicated. Which is why I appreciate Nature Raised Farms' It's Chicken That's Just Chicken, and their lightly breaded chicken nuggets are free from gluten, dairy, and soy. Look for Nature Raised Farms on your next grocery trip and feel more confident about your choices. Thumbtack presents Uncertainty Strikes. I was surrounded. The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

31:46Georgia Tennant: There were too many choices. What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use? What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire a top-rated pro that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today.

32:09Georgia Tennant: Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? Someone here has put any advice for an 11-year-old dyslexic, my niece, who is about to start secondary school? I think the difference between, from my experience, I mean, I've been into lots of schools, obviously not a teacher myself, but the difference between primary and secondary school is very big in terms of the, generally, in terms of the amount of support that's available. I mean, I think generally speaking, primary schools have access, a lot of access to assistive technology. The class sizes are smaller. There's more of a personal relationship with each student and and the parents and then a lot of the time when you go into secondary school every the scale just goes up and and I think it becomes more about crowd control as or than it does about and that's not that's not to say anything negative about teachers I think it's just the reality of the situation and so I think that the year seven age um is a real kind of area where um you might accidentally just like kind of fall through yeah and and you don't get the kind of the notice of the the teachers and things like that so I would say first thing to do would be to get a personal relationship with the school SENCO I think that that's just try and book a meeting with them if you can and understand a bit about what they provide because if you have a relationship with them you're going to be when something's not going well they're also just going to be aware in general and so I would say that that's a good sort of first port of call and I think in general as well having a good relationship with the teachers but the main thing is that you want to have the joined up provision between um the school and the parent like the school's normally got some pretty good ideas and they're ultimately just trying to fight the battle of having so many kids they have to look at so it's perfectly normal that um a few kids are going to slip through the cracks um just because there's so much like there's there's only so much you can focus on and so i think as a parent in order to advocate for your child you're just trying to like understand who the main points of contact are and reinforce the stuff that they're learning um at home at school at home as well are there any like tools so you know like for instance if you're not great at note-taking like I mean dictaphone sounds old school but you know like are there any like tools apps anything like that that really help so the thing what I find super interesting is that like there are so many tools that we use as adults in like the work work environment that are so useful that they never seem to get shared down in school or at least it kind of like they just get a little crumb of what they should be getting i think for that what i love are transcription tools like i use them all the time like i'm probably i'm sure you see like when you're on a call or something or a google meet or a zoo yeah yeah you can get notes people's note takers join and things like that um so i'm massively passionate about that and i think that what i tend to do is because again my working memory sucks i'll listen to a call if i'm just going on a walk around the park just so it kind of really seeps in um they've got this amazing tool called google lm where you can put a whole kind of class worth of notes into this um into this platform and it will make a podcast like with two kind of fake ais just having a conversation and i think that that is just an amazing thing and i i do think it's just something that parents don't need you don't even need permission for the school to do that you can take a picture of their notes and you can just put it into google lm um if you put a link in the show note or something to to say what it is because it's really worth having a go with and then they could just go on a walk and take the headphones in yeah listen and you can what you can actually do is you can interrupt the hosts and you can ask a question and then you can sort of you can sort of join you can join the podcast so i think for me like the transcription tool so you actually have like the stuff that's been discussed and you can sort of you have the text as well as reading like if you're that's really useful but also google google lm so so you could take a like a microphone like on your phone or whatever depends i guess on schools and what they allow and all that kind of stuff to record a lesson and then upload it into this google lm yeah and to be honest that's the problem like it's having being able to record things and having a device in school so that's sort of more of a school issue that like if they allow you to do even if they ask for the notes after yeah exactly that's right so the transcription thing if you can great if not maybe maybe schools don't allow it that's that's a kind of another conversation but yeah I completely agree you don't need to have the transcription to put it into this you could just have you could just have the worksheet that they've got in the textbook and you could just put it in and then it will come back it's it's a real it's really it's a real hack that one that's really exciting as well like it's really exciting because I think we talk about AI you know everyone's scared of AI and all of this kind of stuff but the fact is everybody's going to like where everyone probably is using it now anyway and for things like this is unbelievable because typically a child who you know might have failed history because they just couldn't take in the information but actually really is interested in it could go home and learn in a different way 100 i actually think that ai is it's obviously a problem because you it means that it's going to be harder to assess especially like in a written form what somebody's done but i think that a quick easy way that you can already start using it is the the audio stuff yeah um like listening back and re-engaging I think that's really good um because then you're just like you're sort of you could even just I mean google notebook lm is one but also you could even say into chat to pc like if you go on the voice mode just be like you are a teacher and you are teaching them about this and you put in a load of their notes and then just say um have a conversation and tell this person about this I don't want you to break character or whatever it is yeah and I think it just would be another way of getting that information in um i mean because it is we've all used chat gpt we know how good it is it's not it's so much better to try and use that and to our advantage exactly exactly yeah totally um someone here has put not a question but just a huge thank you my eldest is dyslexic and it's been a steep learning curve for us all because i think we're obviously talking about all of you know how you know getting a diagnosis and all the positives but actually i I guess the reality for a lot of people is it's a long road and it's not always going to be an easy one.

38:27Yeah I mean I think that there's this sort of new narrative that dyslexia is this sort of superpower but I would sort of slightly push back on that because I think for most people who have it it's not especially at school maybe when you're an adult and you've sort of learned to like understand more about yourself and things like that but I think for most kids at school it's yeah it's a struggle like you're you're not you're learning in an education system that's not necessarily set up for you um so I think in a way like it's it's worth just acknowledging that like it is tough out there um so no I appreciate that I think thank you for the support we're all

39:00Georgia Tennant: part of the same the same community yeah that is interesting as well how you just mentioned that it's not easy for everyone because I think that's what the narrative is with you know ADHD ADHD and autism all of these things oh it's a superpower it's it's this it's amazing and actually for people who are at home struggling to find their strength or for their kids it that is not always going to be it and it it's going to take some time I guess yeah and it might be a superpower for you in which case like great like I think for me personally I've managed to work out my strengths I still don't consider it a superpower because there's still things I struggle with on a daily basis but if you what sort of things are they well I think I mean one is just this it's the working memory thing doesn't go away like it's like if I'm putting my stuff at a locker in the gym I'm just like oh god what is the what is that like we I was just went to the the bathroom before this um and was trying to remember like where we were going like when I was coming going back to like there's just so many little things like this and um I have so many meetings in a day and it's just really hard to keep on top of all of that stuff so I think working memory and organizational skills um thank god for like grammarly because my even though my spelling sucks like nobody knows because I just get to use spellcheck all the time.

40:15But yeah, I think on a daily basis, the organisational skills, kind of time blindness and working memory. But I personally feel like I get it paid back in other areas. Like I get paid back in lateral thinking skills and interpersonal skills. But I think that that's going to be, you are really exposed for your weaknesses at school. Because when you're a grown-up, you just don't really have to do much of the stuff. Yeah, and you don't have to do things

40:41Georgia Tennant: that you're not good at. you don't want to exactly exactly and when you're doing your a-levels like you've already picked like you might still have to write stuff but you pick the stuff that you actually like so it's going to get easier but before that like especially if you're eight nine like year eight year nine um I think that those are the ages where dyslexic kids really struggle yeah you just mentioned time blindness yeah what what does that mean for you well yeah I mean it just it means that I'm like i'm like a rigid calendar keeper now just because i know that it's something that i like i um i i've i've no i've i sort of i know that about myself but for recently we've been doing a lot more work in person and then it's sort of just like a meeting will just get completely missed because because it's just gone and i i do think it's sort of it's not like i do think the weaknesses and the and the strengths are part of the same sort of like it's the same kind of um it's the same person like it's not like I don't think you can have one without the other I think it's because when I'm thinking like when I'm sort of present I'm thinking really deeply about the situation and really really focusing on it and it means that and that's great because it means that whatever I'm focusing on that gets a lot of attention and brain power but I think what it also means is that I become extremely single-minded and not very good at multitasking so other things just go out the window um I think if you spoke to my partner she'd be like yeah I agree oh gosh I mean I think that is most of the questions and topics that um that have been covered but just as a takeaway for anyone listening what would be your sort of main message to anyone who maybe suspects that their child has dyslexia yeah I think generally speaking it would be that like this is not a negative it's not a positive it's just more information um and so I definitely wouldn't shy away from it I definitely would try and find as much information as possible um and so I think the first thing is just like don't worry like it's fine like it there's if you if you look at uh people who have dyslexia like there's loads of entrepreneurs and successful people who've got it and so there's nothing to worry about um and so I think I try and freeload is if you have a if you have any anxiety just like try and find out as quickly as possible because the earlier you can find out the the sooner you can make a difference and the younger you are the bigger the difference you can make um so I say that yeah don't don't worry and don't wait to take action basically um yeah I think that's probably my main main two takeaways brilliant it's but you know it's been so interesting and I think there's been so many things that you've mentioned there that I wouldn't have put with dyslexia like I think I just generally thought it was about like spelling and you know like organization of words but it's so like so much more yeah yeah no it definitely is it definitely is it's such it's such a sort of spectrum of different things well thank you and where can people find you uh you can find us at talamo.co.uk thanks so much or follow us on talamo on instagram as well great thank you thank you so much thanks

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