As many of you know, I am an avid reader and a writer at heart. I love literature. If I had a day with no responsibilities and absolute freedom, I would read.
Unfortunately, my oldest fell far from my tree. While he loves stories, he doesn’t like to read or write. He has struggled with both of these since he attended preschool and rhyming was the eighth wonder of his world. This despite the fact that I read to him for hours every single day of his wee childhood. This despite my deep, abiding respect for the written word.
So what happened to genetics? Why can’t he read as easily or as fluently as I can? Or his three younger siblings? Why does punctuation have no meaning to him, and why, oh why, does he break every spelling rule ever created and not notice that his version is unreadable?
Eldest is now in the 10th grade. Today we embark on our newest edition of his educational life. Today he is getting tested for Dyslexia. While I have felt for a long time that he has Dyslexia, schools do not test for it. When he attended a private tutoring center, they didn’t test for it either. In fact, very few facilities do despite the fact that Dyslexia is considered the number one cause for reading disabilities.
To me, it makes sense to identify the problem and treat it specifically, rather than treating all struggling and reluctant readers the same. Yet I appear to be a minority. Maybe because my son’s struggles hit so close to home. Nobody else seems interested in why the written language is elusive to him or why he can’t remember a string of directions or how to get home from the video store.
Instead, teachers seem intent on disciplining him for failing to complete an assignment, writing poorly or forgetting to show up for a band lesson. Rather than being rewarded for figuring out the math problem in his head, he is docked points for not showing his work. His brain does things a little differently than the rest of ours.
He is an anomaly. Intelligent, yet average. Attentive, yet forgetful. Articulate, yet functionally illiterate.
I hope these tests finally give us some answers. I would like to understand how his brain works, because it obviously does not work like mine. I would like him to feel, for the first time, as if he is amazing and that he can accomplish anything. A diagnosis would go a long way in explaining what happened to genetics and how they seemingly missed him.
I wonder if the Schwan’s man can read…
Just kidding, Eldest is the spittin’ image of my DH.
Who gave you your love for the written word? Do your parents read and write, or are you the apple that rolled down the hill and nestled into a storybook land of your own making?
Words from the Woods 