How I Explain Dyslexia to a Child
I’ve often been asked by concerned parents how to approach telling their child that he/she is dyslexic and how to help their child understand themselves better as a dyslexic person.
Of course, this is something I have given much thought to ever since I realized our daughter was dyslexic and, as an educator, when supporting parents with dyslexic children.
I share these thoughts both as a parent, who explained to our daughter that she is dyslexic, and as an educator.
First, prepare yourself.
There’s an important step to take before you sit with your child. Sit by yourself and “fill” yourself up with positive thoughts about how your child is intelligent, caring, artistic, curious, thoughtful, athletic, loving, and courageous. Share these thoughts with their other parent, with their grandparents and let them add to the list of the strong characteristics of your child.
It’s important for you to be “full” of their strengths before you begin talking to them about their learning difference. They need to feel that you are relaxed and at ease with their learning difference and are ready to do whatever is needed to support their success. They do not need to feel your worry, they have enough of their own.
Then, set a time to visit with them when you will have plenty of time to share and to ask and answer questions. Set up a relaxing atmosphere using something like the following scenario:
Let’s make some hot chocolate, sit down together and enjoy it with your delicious chocolate chip cookies.
Silly as it sounds, we’ve loved snuggling up together to read to you ever since you were born.
I remember how when you were little, you would listen intently to all the stories we read. Your eyes pored over every detail of each illustration. You loved to talk about the pictures, you learned words so quickly understanding everything we read. You were, and are, amazing—you still never miss a detail.
You began picking up crayons, markers and paint brushes before you were one year old. You watched in amazement as the movements of your tiny, pudgy hands pushed the pencil and brush tips to paper creating fascinating swirling, curving, straight, wiggly colorful lines. We lovingly gazed at our budding little artist.
Even before you were two, we began moving our finger along left to right on the printed page pausing at times to point out names of characters and exciting words—POP!, Oopsie Daisy!, Woof! Woof!, Aaaachooo!
We began playing with alphabet cards with you when you were young, and as you grew, we enjoyed playing alphabet games with new alphabet toys. At times, we gently guided your painting and drawing to begin forming letter strokes and shapes.
When you started preschool at three, your teachers joined in the delight of teaching you. We cherished your love of books—how you loved being read to, how you loved scrutinizing the illustrations, how you loved telling us every little detail about each and every book, how you memorized oodles of books!
Your preschool teachers and we began noticing that learning letter names, sounds and shapes did not come as easy to you as your learning did in your other talents.
Your struggles continued throughout Kindergarten and primary school even though you always put extraordinary amounts of effort into learning with your everlasting, beautiful optimism.
We frequently conferenced with your teachers sharing our concern that learning language skills was apparently so difficult for you. Your teachers told us how thoughtful and respectful you were to them, what a wonderful, loving friend you were to everyone, how diligently you did your schoolwork with a positive attitude, how bright and intelligent you were. They reassured us that you would catch on to reading, spelling and writing, and when you did you would catch up quickly.
We listened to them and believed them, because what they said to us is what they truly believed.
However, as time went by, you began to notice that your peers were reading, spelling and writing quickly with seemingly little effort. You began to question and doubt yourself. Why were you better at some things and not as good at other things? Were you really as smart as everyone kept saying you were? Was there something wrong with you? Was your brain “broken”?
When you shared those feelings with us, we knew we had to do more. Waiting for you to “catch on” was never going to work. We wanted answers too. We asked your teachers and the school psychologist to do more assessments.
We have to tell you; this is such a relief! We now have the answer to your struggles. You have dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a phonologic weakness which impairs one’s phonological processing abilities. It is challenging for you to be aware of the sound structure of words, such as rhyme and syllables. It is challenging for you to process the tiniest particle of language making up words. Those tiniest particles are called phonemes. You learn spoken language and written language in a different way, not that you can’t, just that you do learn language in a different way than most people.
It’s not uncommon for people to have learning differences and there are many kinds of learning differences. Your difference, dyslexia, is very common, as about one in every five people have dyslexia. That means that in your classroom of 25, probably 5 kids are also dyslexic, which means you have 5 friends who are also finding reading, spelling and writing mildly to profoundly difficult.
Here’s a wonderful truth—things have changed since we were little. Teachers and parents are understanding more and more about how to teach a dyslexic person. A dyslexic person learns differently and thus needs to be taught differently.
Now that all of us know you are dyslexic, we will try to answer your questions and help you find answers to your questions if we don’t know the answers. Your teachers will be better able to help you at school and we’ll be better able to help you at home. We are also going to get you a tutor that’s specially trained to teach people with dyslexia for at least 2 hours a week. (Silent Elephant “e” tutors are excellent!)
We’re all in this together! You’re not alone! We’re on the right track now. We’re going to relax and give each other the “gift of time” to learn more about dyslexia and to learn the best ways we can help you learn.
So, dear one, give yourself the “gift of time” to learn anything you want to learn, be anything you want to be. Believe in yourself—taking care to always remember how intelligent you are, know how proud of you we are and know we love you so much! (See Will I Always Be Dyslexic? Yes! And Many Famous People Are)
Now we have a path to your reading, writing and spelling success. You will soon begin to feel your natural confident self returning and again realize just how smart and talented you are.
We’re in this together! We love you!
Sitting like this with your young one in your deep appreciation and love of them will help them relax into understanding themselves as a person who learns differently. They will know that you “have their back” completely as they begin to understand themselves with their learning difference. This will make their path of learning so much easier.
If you are questioning whether someone in your life is dyslexic and you’re not sure what to do, feel free to contact us.