Issue 29: Re-imagining Dyslexia: Why We Made “The Dyslexic Advantage” Movie | Dr Brock Eide

I’ve been pretty busy since I last spoke with Dystinct Magazine, but the highlight has undoubtedly been a project that is very close to my heart and close to the heart of the message my wife Fernette and I have been sharing for decades. We made a movie!

It’s called The Dyslexic Advantage, and creating it has been a labor of love, a journey of discovery, and a reaffirmation of everything we believe about the incredible potential of the dyslexic mind.

Why a Movie? Why Now?

For over twenty years, Fernette and I have worked with thousands of dyslexic individuals. We wrote our book, The Dyslexic Advantage, because we kept seeing a disconnect. The traditional story of dyslexia was about problems, about what people couldn’t do. It was a story about children struggling to read, feeling broken, and trying desperately to catch up.

We saw that the challenges and the strengths weren’t random; they were two sides of the same coin.

But that wasn’t the whole story we were seeing when we worked with dyslexic people. In our clinic, we saw the struggles, yes. But we also saw amazing strengths. We saw 3D spatial brilliance in future surgeons, architects, and builders. We saw amazing abilities to think about connections and relationships in future mechanics, business people, and scientists. We saw incredible storytelling talents in writers, filmmakers, salespeople, and teachers. We saw the ability to spot connections and predict trends in entrepreneurs, investors, and farmers. We saw that the challenges and the strengths weren’t random; they were two sides of the same coin.

To truly change the conversation, to reach people in a way that goes straight to the heart, we needed to show, not just tell.

We wrote the book to share that new perspective. But we realized that to truly change the conversation, to reach people in a way that goes straight to the heart, we needed to show, not just tell. Especially for people who found that making it through a big book like ours was hard. We needed to let people see these strengths in action. We needed to let them hear the voices of successful dyslexics telling their own stories.

The Dyslexic Mind: Specialized, Not Broken

The core message of the film and of our work is simple but revolutionary: Dyslexic minds are not broken. They are specialized.

In the film, we explore the science behind this specialization. We look at how dyslexic brains are wired differently, favoring “big picture” processing over fine detail. This wiring makes things like rote memorization and rapid decoding difficult, but it creates powerful advantages in other areas. We call these the MIND strengths:

• M-Strength (Material Reasoning): The ability to reason about the physical world in 3D space.
• I-Strength (Interconnected Reasoning): The ability to see connections, relationships, and systems.
• N-Strength (Narrative Reasoning): The ability to think in stories, cases, and examples rather than using rules and formulas.
• D-Strength (Dynamic Reasoning): The ability to predict how processes will unfold over time.

These aren’t just academic concepts. In the movie, you meet the people who live them.