Dyslexia Awareness month

 

October is dyslexia awareness month and it is something that is important to me to discuss and share information about. As most of you know both the girls have been diagnosed with dyslexia and school has not come easy for either of them, or for me as their parent. It has been a non-stop struggle and fight to make sure they are receiving the appropriate accommodations and remediation. 

Learning what dyslexia is and how it affects a person is the first step to identifying if you or someone you love could potentially have it. Statistics show, 1 in 5 are said to have it, and most don't know or have received any type of help. It affects everyone differently so different accommodations and remediation are needed for each individual (hence, why an IEP is an important part of this process). 

I was told so many times not to worry and that they would catch up, they weren't that behind, and they aren't failing so why was I concerned? When you watch your child in 4th grade struggling to read a one sentence easy reader you know that isn't right or how it should be. Every time she would read a page she would read the same words differently and lack fluency. My heart ached for my sweet girl that hated to go to school and was always complaining she felt sick. She spent hours doing extra work, studying, tutoring, etc. with no improvement. Her writing was just as bad as her reading. Everything was always misspelled, lacking punctuation, and just not making sense. Finally in 4th grade she was diagnosed with dyslexia and with the help of both an amazing teacher and resource room teacher she began to flourish. 

Fast forward to now being in 7th grade she is almost reading at grade level and no longer hates school (well she still claims to but hasn't faked being sick in quite a while). She will read to me in the car and the kid who I couldn't bear to listen to even read me a one sentence on a page easy reader is fluently reading chapter books. I now have to ask her if she actually wrote something or she copied it from a board because even her writing is starting to show what she actually knows (still misspelled but everything else has improved). 

They say a lot of people with dyslexia excel at other things and are usually some sort of creative. They are out of the box thinkers as well as learners. My little dyslexic may "read at her own pace" (thank you Walmart for having the perfect shirt for all of our little dyslexic kiddos) but her brain definitely works differently and creates things I could only dream of making with such ease. She created this dress for a photo challenge in a few short hours. To her, books can be used for much more than just learning.