Why I’m Thankful for My Kids’ Dyslexia

by Marianne | Nov 14, 2024 | Encouragement | 0 comments

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I’ve been thinking about things I’m thankful for and realized that I am indeed thankful for my kids’ dyslexia. Despite the hardships early on in our family’s dyslexia journey, there have been a lot of valuable lessons learned. What once seemed like a curse on my family has turned out to be the opposite. All of my adult kids with dyslexia are finding success in the world despite their early learning struggles.

Listen to this podcast episode here or read the transcript below.

Transcript

Today I’m going to be talking about why, after parenting and homeschooling all these dyslexic kids for over 30 years now that I am actually thankful for my kids dyslexia.

Now, I do want to be clear. I’m not thankful for the times when my kids were hurting and upset. There were definitely years early on where we really struggled to understand dyslexia, and I didn’t know how to help my kids learn. But in going through all of that we learned a lot, and I am thankful for those lessons that we learned. And that’s what I’m going to be sharing with you today.

How on earth can I be thankful for my kids’ learning struggles?

So, depending on where you are on your dyslexia journey, you might be thinking that I’m a little crazy to be thankful for my kids dyslexia.

Now, if you don’t know my story. About 26 years ago my oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia. He was about 7 at the time, and one by one, 7 of my 8 kids were also diagnosed with dyslexia.

Now here’s where the twist comes. As someone who is a traditional learner, I never struggled with reading and I loved to read. In fact, I have way too many books on my bookshelves all around my house to this day.

Discovering that my kids had dyslexia wasn’t easy. Not only did I not know anything about dyslexia, I had no idea that there were intelligent people who struggled to learn. Growing up, my family was deeply ingrained in institutional education.

That’s how we defined intelligence; being good at school.

My grandmother, who was born in 1906, had a master’s degree in a time when women didn’t often even have degrees. And so to say that education, and especially higher education, was important to my family, is kind of an understatement. So when my kids, who for all intents and purposes appeared to be very bright, struggled to learn the very basics of reading. I was pretty much in a full blown panic for a while.

Remember, now, back in the nineties when I first began homeschooling, there really wasn’t the information that we have available to us today. In fact, there was very little in the way of advocacy for people who were smart but learned differently.

Our early days of unrealized expectations

My early days of homeschooling were pretty hard. My expectations were that my kids would learn like I did. I loved school. I now know that there are people who do love school and do well in school, but not all people do.

I could see that my kids were smart, even really smart, but teaching them to read was making us crazy. They would learn the lesson one day and forget everything by the next day. The curriculum I bought required them to read and write, but they couldn’t do that.

I was upset, feeling like a failure. They were upset, knowing I was upset.

But gradually over time, I learned how to modify curriculum to best meet their needs and use accommodations, things like reading the lessons to them or finding options for curriculum that included audio or video recordings. Maybe instead of writing answers to comprehension questions, we discussed them or found assistive technology to help them speak their answers into documents.

And so I’ve come to understand now that I am the kind of learner who does well in traditional school setting, and there are many people who do, but there are also many that don’t. And my kids were some of these people who are what I call smart, but learn differently, and if you learn differently, then it stands to reason that you need to be taught differently.

Despite the hardships of teaching kids with dyslexia, there are things to be thankful for too.

So why am I thankful that my kids have dyslexia?

Well, I’m thankful because it forced me to question everything I had learned and believed about education, essentially forcing me to give my kids a completely unique and individualized education.

I could see that my kids were smart. I could see they had unique gifts and talents.

I was super uncomfortable trying to continue pounding these little square pegs into the round holes of traditional education and the timelines of learning. You know that they should be reading by 6 and writing by 10, etc.

What is really important in education?

So with this belief in my kids’ intelligence as my premise, I began to redefine what was really important in education.

It is okay to teach kids at their level, even if that means teaching them 1st grade level reading when they’re 10 years old.

All of my kids can read now, some learned at 9 years old, others were in their teens. And this goes for high school. Also, we can continue to give our kids a unique and individualized education all through high school.

Giving kids this individualized type of education (essentially what you’re doing is tutoring them) is really an incredible education.

This kind of education fosters relationships by parents and kids working together so closely.

It also encourages critical thinking. So instead of kids scrambling to keep up and figure out where in the passage the answer was, and how to write it down, and how to spell words, and how to hold their pencil and things like tha, students have the freedom to think more deeply, ask questions, and truly understand.

It even provides the opportunity for kids to dive deeper into subjects of particular interest. What I have found with my own kids is that this kind of education allowed them to feel smart and successful, having a growth mindset, so to speak. This is the idea that they can learn anything that they desire to learn about with the appropriate assistance. Right? With the use of accommodations and modifications.

I also learned how important it is to make a lot of time for kids to pursue their interests. Pursuing interest builds confidence, it fosters creativity, and it builds a foundation for a lifetime of learning unlike any textbook can teach.

I also learned that kids don’t need to jump through the hoops of a traditional education to be successful. Our homeschool years looked very different than a traditional school, but my adult kids are all smart and successful. They were able to build their skills, their confidence, and find the support they needed to find their unique paths as adults.

So if my kids hadn’t been diagnosed with dyslexia, if I hadn’t been homeschooling them, if I hadn’t seen firsthand how hard they were really trying, and how smart they were, and yet how much they struggled,

I never would have known that traditional education is not the only path to success.

Had my kids been traditional learners, I probably would have kept with the sets of traditional textbooks and workbooks, and been satisfied with that.

Instead, my kids were given a rich and varied education, full of travel, mentorships, and interest-fueled learning.

And lastly, I’m thankful for my kids dyslexia, because now I can share my journey with other parents who aren’t so far along on their own dyslexia journeys.

I can assure you that even though your kids learning and education may not look anything like you expected it to, they will find success.

Researchers asked successful dyslexics what one thing had the biggest impact on their success, and the most common answer was that there was one person who believed in them, whether it was a caring teacher or a parent or other family member that saw their value and went to bat for them, advocating for them until they could advocate for themselves. And that is you.

And, by the way, I am also thankful for you guys being here. 😍