I am a dyslexic. This was not something I realized until after I was an adult. It is my understanding that it can be frustrating to be the parent of a dyslexic child, if you don’t know from personal experience why your obviously smart child continues to make the same mistakes over and over again. I might be able to clarify that for you, by sharing what it is like to be a dyslexic person in an non-dyslexic world.
Dyslexia is a learning disability. Some of the signs that a person may be dyslexic include frequent transposition of letters, (or numbers), inability to quickly and easily discern right from left, and a lack of spacial awareness. Having dyslexia can make it very difficult to learn to read, and some people with dyslexia will be unable to acquire this skill. It also makes basic math skills into something much more difficult to comprehend. Some dyslexics will pronounce words incorrectly, due to reading the word wrong, or due to thinking of a different word while actually saying the first word. We tend to think in pictures, and it is not always easy to translate that image back into words when we attempt to tell someone what we are trying to say.
None of my teachers “caught” my dyslexia when I was a child. In part, this was because many of the things that dyslexics do are normal for all children under age nine to do. Most kids grow out it as they age. Not me.
I remember wondering how the other kids in the class were able to instantly learn and consistently recognize a new word, while I was still struggling with it as if it were new, months later. I was frustrated when I would fail spelling tests, despite the fact that I studied the night before. This frustration was compounded when I looked at the graded test that was handed back to me and was unable to see the difference between how the words were supposed to be spelled, and the way I had transposed the letters in those same words. I failed math test after math test, and never quite managed to finish my math homework, because the numbers just would not stay in one place. These experiences caused me to believe that I was stupid.
I have had teachers yell at me, in front of the whole class, that I wasn’t trying hard enough. One told me that I shouldn’t be making the mistakes I was with math, because I had been labeled “gifted”. This was embarrassing, and shaming, and it made me stop asking for help from the teachers when I was struggling with schoolwork. My frustration with my difficulties made me act out in class. As a first grader, I would slam books on the floor, to make a noise and interrupt the lesson. I was always in trouble for talking to other students. By the time I was a high schooler, I was finding reasons why I was too sick to go to school, and was cutting classes. It was just too difficult to continue to sit in class, frustrated and confused, day after day after day.
Despite this, I succeeded. I graduated, and went on to earn a degree in teaching. What I wrote today is a little window into what it is like to be dyslexic, from the viewpoint of a person with dyslexia. My hope is to provide some insight for parents of dyslexic children about what their child is experiencing.
Image by twitchcraft on Flickr