KENMORE woman Christina Alexander believes there is no reason a child born with dyslexia cannot have a normal life at school.
Christina has spent years working with people of all ages teaching them to improve their reading and writing.
Some of her more unusual teaching methods involve having her dog in the room to calm children and take their minds off outside problems.
She said dyslexia usually affected "gifted" people.
"As a result these people keep away from words and go more into creative things," Christina said.
"But there should be no reason for this to be the case."
Christina said during her years as a high school teacher she saw students with horrendous spelling and writing who were brilliant at explaining things orally.
"Dyslexia has nothing to do with the intelligence of a person," she said.
"Dyslexia simply means the brain cells are arranged slightly differently."
Because of this normal teaching methods were not sufficient.
"A lot of the material available for teaching people with dyslexia is very simple," she said.
"If the person is bright they just get insulted by it."
Although Christina works with people of all ages, her latest project is aimed at prevention rather than intervention.
"If we can deal with children before they go to school they won't have a problem," she said.
This work has lead to the creation of what Christina calls a 'boodle of doodles'.
The boodle was designed for a brain damaged girl, with a mental age of four, whose parents were told she would never be able to read or write.
After working with Christina and the boodle the girl was able to read Year One level books.
The boodle has been designed for all four year olds, not just those diagnosed with dyslexia.
It contains a hoard of goodies which encourage exploration and is the result of five years development.
The kit starts off with easy exercises which involve matching pictographs and gradually works its way up to a simple book.
It was recently shown at the State Special Needs Conference.
The kit is being reproduced by Spectrum, which is a group of gifted teenagers, as a community project.