When he was 14 months old, he spoke in complete sentences. At 18 months, he knew all of his colors. We read book after book to him every night. He loved learning everything we had to teach and he was a veritable sponge. When he came of age to enter preschool, we knew a whole new world would open up for him, but it did not. My son, brilliant and highly verbal with cognitive abilities well beyond his years could not figure out the sound a “b” made and a consonant combination like “br” was more difficult than rocket science would have been for a four year old.
His kindergarten teacher, when questioned about his “issues” wrote it off. “He’s the smartest child I’ve ever taught,” was her response and then she added, as a joke, “And remember, Einstein couldn’t tie his shoes.” “He can’t tie his shoes, either,” I answered flatly.
The Realization
In second grade the diagnosis came in. He had the verbal skills of a child with 14 years of education. His reading skills were in the pre-kindergarten range. He had been to 2 years of pre-kindergarten and three years of school and had developed no reading skills. His dyslexia was what the diagnostician referred to, offhandedly, as profound. His coding ability was that of someone with mild mental retardation and he had no aural ability, even though his IQ tested in the exceptional range. “He is extremely smart, in the 99.2 percentile, but he may never read above the 6th grade level,” she predicted.
Special Education in the school system stepped in and worked with him 30 minutes a day 3 times a week, even during the summer. There was some success, but very little. During a summer session with a special education teacher, there was a glimmer of hope. She said, “I don’t know how he will do this, but he will figure out how to read his own way. We read a passage and I told him to skip the words he could not sort through. He read, ’The weather was (skip). The clouds were dark.’ He went back to the skipped word and said, ’That must be inclement.’ I really believe that over time his mind will sort through this and work it all out for him.”
Beating Dyslexia
His fifth grade teacher brought my son and me in for a conference during the first week of school. She set out a mandate. He had to read 30 minutes every night and I would have to attest to it with my signature. The one caveat was that I could not, in any way, help him. If he came to a word he didn’t know, he had to work through it himself in whatever way he chose.
That first month, he read a 40-page 3rd grade level novel. It took him all of the 30 days, more specifically 15 hours. The next month, it got a little better and after a year he was reading almost up to grade level. His sixth grade teacher, understanding the success, set out the same mandate. By the end of sixth grade, he was reading at a late ninth grade level.
Dyslexics Can and Do Succeed
If you want to understand why this worked, read The Amazing Dyslexic Brain, but let me assure you, it worked. He found his way with his own brilliant mind. He took every advanced placement course that his high school had to offer including AP English III and IV. He got a perfect score on the state mandated writing assessment in the eleventh grade. His high school rank of 11 in a class of 420 is a testament to the fact that dyslexia is a challenge, not an excuse.
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