About Dysferent
A clearer, more human approach to learning
Dysferent is a growing space designed to support students, parents, teachers, and tutors in creating a clearer, more accessible, and more human learning experience.
We believe that every learner brings unique strengths, perspectives, and ways of understanding the world, and that education should welcome these differences with clarity and care.
For many children with specific learning differences, traditional teaching approaches do not always align with how they naturally learn.
The difficulty is not in their abilities, but in the way information is typically delivered at school.
Where research meets real experience
Scientific explanations can tell us what dyslexia or dyscalculia are.
But they cannot explain how it feels to be the child who tries, and tries again, while the class moves on.
They cannot show the moment where confusion begins, where confidence breaks, or how frustration slowly becomes silent.
Learning differences are not abstract definitions.
They are real, lived experiences: in classrooms, at homework tables, and in the everyday life of families, teachers, and tutors.
This is why Dysferent doesn’t come with ready-made answers.
Dysferent begins as a blank page, one that listens before it speaks.
A story that shaped Dysferent
Among the many students I met, there was a nine-year-old girl in one of my early support groups: let’s call her Mary. She had an exceptionally high IQ (136), and everyone around her reminded her of it every single day.
“You’re so smart. You’re just like Einstein.”
But in class, Mary lived a painful contradiction.
Simple additions or divisions took her far longer than her classmates.
She wrote, erased, rewrote, while the others finished effortlessly.
Her dyslexia touched almost every aspect of learning: reading, writing, organisation, copying from the board.
Every task required more effort, more time, more energy than it did for her peers.
This widening gap left her confused, frustrated, and increasingly unsure of her own abilities.
One afternoon she asked me:
“If I’m so intelligent… how come she can do it and I can’t?”
Her question revealed something essential: being bright doesn’t shield a child from feeling inadequate.
Reassurance alone doesn’t make difficulty disappear.
And intelligence means little if a child cannot access the tools to express it.
Mary didn’t need praise.
She needed a way to understand numbers (and learning) that made sense for her.
Working closely with her, and witnessing exactly where the difficulty began, eventually led me to create what would later become the COMtable.
Her story, like many others, reminded me of something fundamental:
– To truly help a child, we must observe the moment where the difficulty begins.
– Only then can we build strategies and tools that genuinely work for that child.
This reflection is at the heart of Dysferent.
Beginning by listening
Your experiences matter. They help us understand not only where a difficulty begins, but the moment when the right support can truly make a difference.
Where a child can rediscover clarity.
Where confidence can grow again.
Where learning becomes more accessible, lighter, and less overwhelming.
Listening is not passive.
The experiences shared with Dysferent are not stored as isolated stories.
Over time, they are gathered and read across recurring themes, such as learning at school, learning at home, and the emotional side of learning.
These shared patterns are explored and brought together in our Insights pages.
Each Insight begins with a lived experience (often drawn from my own work with children with learning differences) and grows by connecting individual stories, recurring challenges, and emerging strategies.
In this way, personal experiences become shared understanding.
Listening is the first step toward creating tools and strategies that truly fit the child sitting in front of us.
Tools that make learning lighter
Dysferent was created to bridge the gap between theory and everyday reality, with practical tools, visual strategies, and simple methods that help children understand and organise learning in ways that feel natural to them.
The aim is clarity.
– Reducing cognitive load.
– Offering structure where things feel confusing.
– Giving children a way to think, plan, and work without feeling overwhelmed.
When learning becomes lighter, confidence grows, and progress becomes possible again.
Help us understand the real challenges children face at school
Every day, children with learning differences meet practical obstacles: during lessons, in written work, in mental maths, in reading, in organisation, or simply in keeping pace with the class.
If you’d like, you can tell us what this looks like for your child:
– the tasks that regularly create difficulty,
– the moments where instructions feel unclear,
– the situations where learning becomes slow, tiring, or confusing.
These shared experiences help us focus on what truly needs support, and guide Dysferent toward creating tools that respond to real, everyday classroom needs.