If you have difficulty with reading and spelling, lots of things in life can seem like a struggle. Remember, though, that reading is just one part of learning. While it is true that you can use reading to access lots of other kinds of knowledge, you can also use other kinds of knowledge to access reading!

The label “dyslexia” tells you what you’re not good at. It doesn’t say anything about what you are good at. Many people with dyslexia are gifted artists, innovative scientists or talented performers.

Take a moment to inventory your strengths. There are a few ways to do this. First, think about the activities you enjoy the most, in or out of school. Consider what you can do that seems natural to you but others are impressed with. What is the thing that, if it needs to be done at your house or in your class, everyone turns to you? It might be anything, from packing a suitcase to cooking dinner to repairing the lawn mower to trapping a mouse.

Once you’ve figured out these things, think about what they have in common. What type of thinking do they all use? What sort of talent do they need? Are you well coordinated? A good musician? Intuitive about mechanical things? Great at locating and organizing things in space? Good at picturing things in your head?

Now we can turn back to reading, that thing that you’re probably not good at. Think about ways you can use your strengths to support your reading. For example, if you are a good artist, stop at the end of each paragraph or page of reading and draw a picture. If you’re a musician, sing it to yourself in a song. If building things is your passion, you might have small blocks (either real ones or ones you draw) with key facts from your reading labeled on them, building from the most general facts at the bottom of your building to the details (or the climax of the story) at the top.

No one thing works for everyone. The best thing for you to do is the thing that works for you, and it may take some trial and error to figure out what that is.

Have you ever found reading unusually easy? Have you ever said, “That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be?” Think back to that time. What was different?

It might have been the topic you were reading about. It might have been where you were or what was going on around you. Maybe there was only a sentence or a paragraph on each page. Maybe the page or the print was a particular color. Maybe you happened to use a ruler to keep your place, or maybe you used a highlighter.

If you know what made things easier that time, great – now you can use it on other things you read. However, if you can’t remember a time that reading was easier, or you don’t know why, you may need to try a variety of things until you find one that works.

Most people use reading all the time. There’s probably a certain amount of reading that you can’t avoid. But just because most people are reading doesn’t mean you always have to.

In particular, you can access most popular books – both fiction and non-fiction – in audio format. These are available from places like the iTunes store and audible.com. Someone reading you a book let’s you enjoy the same bestsellers in a way that works for you.

You can take notes in audio, too. Invest in a small digital recorder or even a pen that has one built in. There are also devices that let you scan a line of text with a pen and will read it back to you.

New software is coming out every day to help kids with learning disabilities. There are a couple of types in particular that you might find really helpful. The first is a program called CoWriter. This works with your word processor. As you type, it learns what words you are using a lot and starts to predict what word you need next. Each time you start a new word, it pops up suggestions of the word you might want, and you can click the one you need if it’s there. This is great if spelling is a chore for you.

The next type of software you might look into is text to speech software. Kurzweil is one popular example. This software can read text to you, which is great if reading is a tough area. You can get whole books through these programs. Even the Kindle now has text to speech functions on many books. And don’t forget the low-tech version – books on tape.

Finally, you might find voice recognition software helpful for writing. The technology is getting better every day, so it’s worth a try. The one thing to be careful about is that we often speak differently than we write, so while a program that writes what we say is very useful, you still need to go back and edit your work before you turn it in!