There's nothing wrong with dyslexic people, they just need help to navigate a world wired for language processors rather than visual thinkers, says retired psychologist Laughton King. He says parents and teachers need to focus on helping dyslexic kids rather than sabotaging their learning.

Expecting a dyslexic child to thrive in a neurotypical education system is like filling a diesel engine with petrol, a retired psychologist says.

Laughton King is on a personal crusade to help parents and teachers to understand children with learning difficulties.

King, author of new book Inside the Dyslexic Mind, has spent his 70-plus years navigating education and a professional career as a dyslexic person. He has first-hand experience of the struggles, frustrations, misconceptions and psychological fallout from having a learning difficulty.

He tells Kathryn Ryan that there is "huge confusion" about dyslexia. The word itself is taken from Latin and means 'difficulty with language'. While that's an accurate enough description, our understanding of what it means is way off, he says.

"Dyslexia is a not reading difficulty. It looks like it, but it's not. It's not a writing difficulty (it does look like it, but it's not). It's not a learning difficulty.

"What it is, is a teaching difficulty, because the person who is dyslexic has absolutely, totally an utterly normal brain."

King says there is nothing wrong with a dyslexic brain, it's just slightly different.

"You could liken it to the difference between petrol and diesel. The car looks the same, it runs, it's got a motor, but what you put in the tank is slightly different."

Our reading and writing system was invented about 4000 years ago by the Phoenicians, who understood that about 85 percent of the population were right-handed. This is why, King says, that letters, words and sentences go from left to right.

"When it comes to reading and writing, the poor little dyslexic kid is like a diesel engine somebody's filling full of petrol. We are trying to get this kid to work in a manner that is not natural, and he's having to effectively work backwards.

"Backwards through writing each word, backwards through writing each sentence, backwards through reading each word and each sentence. Do we wonder that these kids get tired start yawning as soon as they see print? I still have that same physical reaction. I yawn as soon as I see something to read."

While neurotypical people process language as their thinking tool, a dyslexic person does most of their thinking in a pictorial form…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details