Dyslexia is a learning disorder affecting written language. It varies in form and is lifelong, with no cure, like the other DYS disorders. However, certain methods can help relieve symptoms, or even help develop new skills to progress in these areas of learning. One such approach is the Davis Method, created by an engineer and sculptor who was himself severely dyslexic.
Ron Davis’s theory
As a child, Ron Davis gradually drifted away from school. Mocked by his classmates, he was diagnosed as “mentally retarded”. From then on, he accepted the idea that he would never be able to read or write because of a problem with his brain, even though he had an IQ of 160 (gifted).
As an adult, Ron Davis noticed that the extent of his difficulties varied depending on the situation. For example, they became more pronounced when he was sculpting. He then decided to run experiments on himself to gain control over his dyslexia. By sharing his findings with his artist friends, he was surprised to discover that many of them were also dyslexic.
Davis’s theory rests on recognising the dyslexic person’s disorientation, in order to stop suffering from it and finally control it.
Working on how dyslexic people think
When a dyslexic person looks at a letter, they see it from about a dozen different angles, turning it into a 3D object. In a school system built on verbal language, words and sounds, this quickly creates learning difficulties and triggers disorientation.
As a picture thinker, they experience a sentence like a film, changing the words that describe something real, but not knowing how to interpret words whose meaning evokes no image. So in the sentence “Corinne has a dog at her house,” they can easily picture Corinne and the dog, but don’t know what to do with “has,” “a,” “at,” “her.” In building their mental film, they don’t know what to do with Corinne and Dog. They become confused, disoriented. In French, there are nearly 200 words that carry no meaning for a dyslexic person. Disoriented, the dyslexic person sees words backwards, broken apart, reassembled differently, which prevents them from finding the correct spelling.
Being essentially subliminal, this way of thinking happens too quickly for dyslexic people to be aware of it. As a result, they don’t realise this is how they think.
The Davis Method for dyslexic people
For Ron Davis, the key is to interrupt the disorientation when it occurs, and to identify and master the object that triggered it. Much like a child holding their breath underwater, it’s simply a matter of learning to consciously control something that happens naturally in our minds. To achieve this, many professionals use modelling clay to create the letters of the alphabet (in cursive and print), which often trigger disorientation in dyslexic people (letters that look alike or sound alike…). This three-dimensional material engages the child’s creativity, and the letters become objects they can make their own. It is also used for small everyday words that cause confusion (“the”, “of”…), through the Davis Symbol Mastery technique.
Don’t hesitate to discuss this approach with one of the speech therapists on the Ora Visio platform. While it doesn’t cure dyslexia, the Davis Method can help your child understand it better and manage it more easily day to day.
