Many teenagers have asked; I feel stupid, I think I have dyslexia, I feel dumb when I can’t understand something, is this dyslexia? My parents think I am “stupid” and they are not afraid to tell me. Somehow they think by saying that you must be really dumb if you don’t know that; is somehow going to motivate me to try even harder. It is not working.
By telling a dyslexic they are stupid or dumb even when talking to a neighbor., “Yep my boy is not able to read yet and he is nine. I wonder if he should be in a special school.” This is embarrassing not motivating to anyone who hears these kinds of statements.
Many parents think their child is being lazy and use insults, punishments and bribery to get the children to just “do it”. This could be you if:
- Your parents grounded you to your room until you have finished writing your one page journal in first or second grade. After hours of tears and raised voices you finally finish the page. Your parents are thrilled and you celebrate with ice cream. You eat the ice cream and feel great they are proud of you but you feel exhausted from the mental effort required to write that one paper.
- Your parents have a stash of bribes to help you read or write a certain amount. Your parents just do not understand that rewards do not help. You just are not being taught the way you learn. It is like asking your parents who have never been in a pilots seat to sit behind a 747 turbo jet and having them just take it for a slow trip down the run way and back again. When they have successfully parked the airplane they can have free flights for a year for their entire family. But they have to do this in exactly one hour and the passengers could die if they do it wrong.
- They paid you a large amount of money to memorize your multiplication facts up to twelve or even to the tens. Other kids memorized their multiplication facts in second or third grade in what seemed like a weekend. I now know that anyone can memorize the facts to collect the $100.00 bill. However within a day they will have forgotten all the facts if they are a dyslexic. Most dyslexics will never memorize their multiplication facts, even as adults. It’s OK most adult dyslexics never need the skill of memorizing the multiplication tables. They can still do the math just not in their heads. They can use paper and pencil or a calculator. Many just trust what someone else tells them. The dyslexic will feel dumb inside but will try to hide that feeling from the rest of society.
- Being told that you will never make it in college because you can’t type, can’t take the harder English and math classes that are required to get you into college. By having a current evaluation from a Psycologist on file you can level the playing field. You can take the ACT or SAT with extra help, you can get into good colleges that are required by federal law to accommodate you and you can learn to type with the aid of the proper teaching method. Hey Mom and Dad, you need to learn Chinese from a Russian instructor and if you can’t do it then guess what; you must be really stupid. Don’t make a dyslexic learn the way you did because it is very difficult for them to do this.
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
A psychiatrist cannot provide the report required if you wish to apply for accommodations, because standardized testing is required and psychiatrists don’t do this. You need a psychologist. Nice site!