Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey (Part 2)

Reading with my child: Battling expectations and fears

Part 2

Read Part 1 of Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey

The teachers loved him. My son is the kind of child whose kindness and tenderness shines out of him. He trusts you without you having to earn it. The moment his eyes land on yours, you are better person for the contract they offer. Most adults can feel the gentleness pouring out of those bright eyes. He is not loud, look-at-me, in your face good. His goodness comes from a well deep inside that trusts you to protect that source and not let anything touch it. He trusts that you will protect that source that washes over you. He brings out people’s gentleness and kindness in an effort to answer his trust.

He somehow got through kindergarten unscathed by the problem of reading; in spite of his inability to memorize the weekly list of words. I remember walking into his kindergarten class and each child’s name was hung up with stars next to their name. Each star represented a ten-word list that the child had memorized and read to the teacher. There were children who had hundreds of colorful, gleaming stars next to their names. There were children who had made more modest progress, only having 27 stars, one for each school week, the minimum expected for each child. There for everyone to see was Ryu’s poster with his name and one lone silver star sitting next to it. Yet, each day his teacher would bring him out to the car, holding his hand, laughing with him, tuck him into the car, telling me what a wonderful child he was. On some weeks, she would remind me to let her know when he was ready to test on the next list and each week, I would tell her that as soon as he was ready and could read them to me, I would let her know. Then, she would tell me what a kind and beautiful soul he was, routinely simultaneously handing me an award for kindness, honest, integrity, responsibility etc. and I would drive away, letting out my breath that she hadn’t told me “We need to talk. There’s a big problem here.”

My son (and I) went through kindergarten like that, working on reading together, a private war, we would fight together and not mention to anyone; then first grade, and then second grade. Each teacher fell madly in love with him. Occasionally, they would comment to me that he didn’t seem to be progressing in reading while simultaneously telling me how smart he is, as if to assure me. My son is very smart. Anything they spoke about in class, anything he heard the teacher say, he could recall. Our battle with all its angry hours, sad hours, hopeful hours, frustrated hours, crestfallen hours, raged on, on the couch in our office at home. Books for teaching children to read poured out of every cabinet in the office. He and I just kept working which would end in me watching him sleep when his brain could no longer respond my demands.

At first, when he would sleep, I would feel angry that he would fall asleep while we were working. “Don’t go to sleep. We are doing something. You have to stay awake. You never fall asleep playing. It’s disrespectful to me.” I said those awful things to him, driven by all my desperate fears. I made it about me, issued commands his brain could not let him follow, interpreted his actions as disobedience, tried to shame him into not sleeping, things that today I can’t believe I uttered. I was so fearful; he won’t learn to read, he’ll fail in school, every opportunity he will ever want will be denied him, his peers’ accomplishments will grow and he will be left behind, he will be told he isn’t smart enough, he isn’t good enough, what kind of life awaits him.

During our reading sessions, he would try so hard to keep his eyes open. I would watch his eyelids fall and his desperate attempts to open them again, my fears and anger would rise. Then, as he pushed his eyelids up again and those beautiful eyes filled with desperation as he willed them to stay open would look at me again, all my fears for his future would be pushed into the corner by my love for the child in front of me, in this moment, and I would wrap him in my arms and hold him as he slept. He would wake, usually about a half hour later, and look at me expectantly, ready to start again.

In second grade, I decided to get him a reading tutor because I realized that me working on his reading with him was interfering with me being as good a mother as I wanted to be for him. I felt that all those times when I felt so angry, because I could no longer handle my feelings of frustration and fear as we went over the same word again and again, when he couldn’t read ‘the’ even though he had just read it the sentence before, were gnawing at us. I worried that it could destroy us if I was not careful and still worse might threaten all that was good and trusting in him. I never stopped working with him but I felt less alone once he had a tutor. There was someone else working with him; it wasn’t all on me.

I still refused, however, to get him diagnosed. I did not want to label him. Although, as a child psychologist, it was my job to label kids, I did not see any benefit of putting a name to his struggle. My deepest and most irrational fear was that with a label his future would be sealed. Yes, in my clinical practice, I had lectured people about this all the time but, but being in the middle of your emotions is far different than being on the sidelines. I feared that with a label he would be all wrapped up with a bow and I would have just allowed him to be condemned by a system that would no longer see him. I could see the benefit of labeling other kids but hypocritically, I could not see the benefit of labeling my child.

In third grade, my son, who was in a public magnet school, had to do standardized testing.

Read Part 3 of Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey