Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey (Part 3)

Making the diagnosis of Dyslexia a gift

Part 3

Read Part 2 of Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey

In third grade, my son, who was in a public magnet school, had to do standardized testing. When the results came in, no one was able to look away any longer. There was a problem, a big problem. I remember thinking as I sat there looking at his scores in a meeting with five school staff members that I had been called into, how could we all have let this get so far, basically undiscussed. I was complicit along with all his teachers who loved those eyes and that well too much to imagine anything but happiness being poured in. At some point, early on, I remember thinking that all those teachers had let him down over the years because they should have forced me to face this. Now, however, I am thankful to all those teachers who loved him that much because he was lucky to go through all those early school days, feeling loved and smart and appreciated and seen, not as the child who couldn’t read and was falling short of expectations. Retrospectively, that was the bigger gift. I was at home working with him constantly. His tutor was working with him constantly after school but at school, he was shielded from teacher disappointment, disapproval, frustration, pity, labeling.

There was only one time that I remember disagreeing with a teacher. In kindergarten, it occurred to me at park talk one day that while some of the other children’s mothers had been called and told that their child was being recommended for gifted, I had not. Looking back, my marching in and demanding that my child be recommended for testing, seems audacious given the lonely star on his chart. Mother bears are audacious. At the meeting, I sat across from them and listened, “He is no doubt very smart but we are not recommending him for gifted because we think it would be too stressful for him, given his reading. We do not want to see him stressed.” Although this care for my son had been shielding me and him from facing some hard realities and had been welcomed, all of a sudden it was not and something in me reared up. I said “I know what you are saying. There is a big problem but I want him tested. These are two separate issues and I won’t let him not have the gifted program, if he qualifies, because of his reading. His reading is a skill issue not a cognitive issue.” I’m not sure if they acquiesced because I threw the word ‘cognitive’ at them or because they loved my son and like me, only wanted happiness for him (and a mad mother may not be happy) or because they thought that the testing would prove them right. I’m not sure but he had an IQ test done the next week and was placed in gifted. That was the only time in those early years that I willingly acknowledged there was a big problem to teachers but only to separate that problem from where there was not a problem.

Looking back, those early years must have been so hard for him, wondering why he could not read when everyone else around him could, wondering why there was something wrong with him, but he never came to me and asked. I imagine he saw my struggle with his reading and wanted to go gently, placidly, not making things harder for me and suspected I was not ready for the question. In the third grade, when they called me in with the results of the testing, something in me knew, “Ok, Laura, it’s time for the label. You have to give these people an answer,” and as I sat there and realized how much he had to have been wondering each day as he struggled where his peers did not, I realized he needed it too. I think I had waited all those years because I needed it not to be a label when I finally offered it to him but an answer, when I finally gave it to him and to everyone else, but maybe, partly, I was waiting for me to be ready. I needed it to be an answer I could give him and not a label I would do to him. Somehow, I had been waiting for the diagnosis to mutate from a label to an answer. I hadn’t ceased from the moment I had known there was a reading problem to work on it daily with him. I had been tireless but had always refused to give it a name. Now, I was ready, alchemy. Finally, ‘dyslexia’ had become an answer I could give him; one I could give the world, one that I had made peace with after wrestling with for so long. I felt he was ready to hear ‘dyslexia’ as an answer, not a label. Over the years, my mind always knew the time would come that I could no longer withhold the label but I had been working to shape it into a gift I could give him. I was still scared of its power but I was determined to hand him its power. I think I had also been waiting for him too. For him to get stronger, to get clearer, more self-assured, so that it could not overpower him either.

I sat him down one day and told him “Baby, you know how you struggle with reading. Well, there’s a name for that struggle. It’s dyslexia. It happens because all our brains are wired differently so we all do things differently. I’m sure you have noticed that every kid in your class can do some things more easily than they can do other things. Well, your thing that you can do less easily than other things you can do, is reading. It will always take more work and effort for you to read than other people but it also means that there is a whole lot of other things that will come much easier for you than others. You will see the bigger picture more easily. You will have ideas that might not occur to most people. You know, how you have always drawn these magical pictures where you draw whole scenes, like you see everything from a zoomed out perspective? That amazing thing is linked to your reading, to how your brain works. There are lots of other people whose brains have been wired in a way, similar to yours: Einstein, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Walt Disney. There’s good evidence that George Washington had dyslexia too. Like everything, baby, it is a double-edged sword, one you will always wield, both sides of that sword. I want you to know that I will tell you anything I have learned about dyslexia and I hope you will always tell me everything you know about dyslexia and ask me anything I can help you learn about dyslexia. Do you have any questions right now?” Those beautiful eyes just looked at me and he said “No. Not right now.” Then I pulled out a bunch of articles I had printed out about all the people with dyslexia I had mentioned and asked “Can we read some of these together and he turned those eyes to me and said, “Yes” and we sat there and read together, taking turns, until he fell asleep.

Read the whole essay Here We Are: The Dyslexia Journey

Read a poem I wrote about a mother's journey and dyslexia, here.