I have been researching into Princess Diana in light of the fact that Prince Harry is now being open about being dyslexic.

Dyslexia is an inherited condition and it seems to me that he does not inherit his dyslexia from his father. About 80% of the thousands of kids I have assessed turn out to have at least one parent who is also dyslexic. Very frequently I end up assessing the parent who has brought the kid to me as also dyslexic.

Princess Diana was artistic, a very good public speaker, had excellent people skills, did not have good self esteem and was always interested in helping the under dog, the poor and the sick. These are all traits common to dyslexics. She also did not do well at school.

I have learnt that you only fully understand what it like to be an under dog by having been one. So many dyslexics spend a lot of time working with the underprivileged, recently Sir Jamie Oliver with his 5 Restaurants, Sir Richard Branson, setting up a committee for world peace and Mohamed Ali who worked for black Americans and risked going to prison as a pacifist.

Very few people know how to diagnose dyslexia, and in Australia I have diagnosed hundreds of kids that everyone else has overlooked and some that have been told they were absolutely not dyslexic.

Upon investigating her school life I find the following taken from her biographies, “Dianna Princess of Wales- a Biography” by Martin Gitlin.

• “she hated school”
• “she was in trouble a lot” at school.
• “a lack of confidence resulted from poor academic and early job performances”
• A teacher described Dianna as having a “defeatist attitude “ towards schoolwork.
• “she proved quite ordinary academically”
• “she continued to not match the success of her siblings in the schoolroom”
• “she perceived herself as unintelligent”
• “Diana recalls weeping in the company of her headmistress over her failures.”
• “her failure in two sets of exams forced her to leave school at 16.”
• “Diana’s lack of progress academically”
• “Diana’s poor lack of performance in school was merely a result of her laziness in that period of her life.” (How many times have I heard this said of a dyslexic?) And even though she apparently kept her bedroom and those of her friends spotless. And neat.
• She failed to learn French at her finishing school even though it was compulsory.

And does all this sound dreadfully familiar to any other dyslexics out there? Certainly these comments were all made of me while at school.

This is just a start and the result of half an hour or so reading by a dyslexic. But I would be interested in knowing just how many other dyslexics out there totally relate to all these comments.

Let me state again, dyslexics can learn to read and write, they can do schoolwork, they do now always read or write backwards, they are smart, caring and successful people and they slip through the net all the time and end up thinking they are dumb.

What do you think?

Dawn