Growing up I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t reading or writing. I mean the type of reading where I consumed 250-page books in a matter of hours and picked up more. Maxing out the number of books I could take out of the library at one time was a real issue for me. And at the height of the NKOTB days, I’d been writing fan-fiction about them for months before it had a name!
It comes as no real surprise to me that dyslexia would be in my family. It’s ironic. I mean what other challenge would my son be “blessed” with than something I have no experience with, right? God really must be trying to challenge my mothering skills.
It’s been an amazing experience realizing just how little I know about language and how the brain works. I never would consider myself an expert in any way, but I’ve learned more about reading these last few years than I had the whole time I was in school and even when I had started my teaching credential.
The most confusing aspect of my son’s dyslexia is that it is so random. He can read a word like “language” but then not know the word “the”. How does that make sense? Smaller words always seemed to be easier for me to read so why isn’t it that way for him? It seemed to not make any sense as to how his dyslexia was causing him to struggle with reading.
I’m very sure that neuroscientists know way more about dyslexia than I do, but right now it seems like to live with dyslexia or someone who has it is to conclude that maybe you’ll never fully understand dyslexia. You can learn and deal with it, but fully understanding it may never happen. Something is comforting in the fact that most people don’t fully understand it. It makes me feel like I’m not alone.
#dyslexiaawarenessmonth
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