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Tag: learning disabilities

  • I Kept My Childhood Shame A Secret For Years. Now It’s Time To Be Honest About Who I Really Am.

    I Kept My Childhood Shame A Secret For Years. Now It’s Time To Be Honest About Who I Really Am.

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    Scrolling through Instagram recently, I stopped on a post. It was meant to be a joke — a word intentionally spelled the wrong way and its meaning misinterpreted because the person posting it supposedly had dyslexia. In the comments, someone said, “As a teacher, I find this exceedingly humorous!!!”

    I didn’t find it funny at all.

    You probably wouldn’t either if you had spent most of your life trying to prove a stereotype wrong and still found yourself unexpectedly becoming the butt of jokes. It doesn’t take much to discover what the average view of dyslexia is — a quick Google search for “memes about dyslexia” will provide various examples.

    And it isn’t just online. Over the years, I’ve been in more rooms than I can count where some unknowing person made an offhand comment about being dyslexic. They used it as a way to describe themselves or someone else when they made a mistake, fumbled through something or had an off day, with remarks like “They’re having a dyslexic moment” or “I can’t read today, I must be dyslexic.”

    I was diagnosed with dyslexia in the third grade. As a child in the 1980s, I was labeled “stupid” and “slow.” I was told that my diagnosis wasn’t real and that I just wasn’t trying as hard as the other kids. I remember the shame of being pulled out of “regular” classes to go to the resource room (where it was known “the dumb kids” were sent).

    I spent years in school fighting to get into classes I believed I deserved to attend despite my learning disability. I wasn’t encouraged to do so by teachers or administrators. Having children with learning disabilities in classrooms often means more work for the teachers as well. It’s easier to push those kids through school by keeping them in the lowest-level classes and shuffling them off to a resource room. Once I got myself into higher-level classes, I often had to work harder than the other students just to stay there.

    Although it’s been decades since my days in school and the cultural perception may be that we have come a long way, I’m not so sure how much things have really changed. Seeing posts like the one on Instagram, met with comment after comment of laughing emoji, makes me believe we still have a lot of work to do on how we view people with learning differences.

    Children with learning disabilities often feel like their brains don’t work “correctly,” believing that there is something about them that needs to be “fixed” and they need to learn the “right” way to do things. Often, the first thing a child feels after they are diagnosed is shame.

    That spurs a need to conceal the disability, which is often carried into adulthood. As a result, once a person learns the accommodations they need to navigate the world undetected, they may rarely talk about their learning differences again.

    For years I knew there was a lot of misunderstanding about dyslexia, but I stayed quiet because I feared my work would be judged differently if I told the truth. I’ve come to see that by doing this, I was part of the problem — because if people like me don’t speak up, the perception will never really change. I now feel a responsibility to be honest about who I am (and who I was back in school). Children should know that they aren’t defined by their learning differences and, in the long run, there may be positives they don’t even know about yet.

    There is no cure for dyslexia, but it has nothing to do with a person’s intelligence or desire to learn. It is a neurodivergent condition in which the brain works in a different way than the majority of other brains. “Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words,” writes the Mayo Clinic, noting that it’s “a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language.” This leads to trouble learning new words and issues with forming words correctly.

    You may wonder what people with dyslexia see when they read. Are all the words backward? The answer is no. People with dyslexia do not have a vision issue; they see words the same way that everyone else does. The difference is how they process and decode those words. And although dyslexia is not a condition that people outgrow, as we age we gain more skills to compensate for the differences.

    As an adult, the author has a career as a writer and editor.

    Photo Courtesy Of Darcey Gohring

    How might this play out in real life? In a recent meeting, I was reading aloud from a sheet of paper. I got through the first few sentences without a hitch but suddenly came to a word my brain knew but my mouth simply couldn’t pronounce. The word was “spirituality,” which I have said innumerable times without thought. And yet there I was staring down at it, and as hard as I tried, it just wouldn’t come out. I stammered and then did what I always do when this happens — I made a little joke to divert everyone’s attention. (I’m good at that.)

    Even though this doesn’t happen as frequently as it did when I was younger, it was not a stand-alone incident. In fact, I’d say it happens once or twice a month, usually on days when I haven’t gotten enough sleep or am particularly stressed. Sometimes I can’t think of a word. Sometimes pronouncing new names and remembering how to say them is challenging. Sometimes I say a similar but incorrect word in place of another. Recent examples of that are “grazing” instead of “gazing,” and “antidote” instead of “anecdote.”

    Do I know what the words mean? Yes. Could we have the same conversation tomorrow and I’d pronounce them correctly? Most likely. Do I wish I could say your name on the first try? Of course. I can also almost guarantee that if I were writing these words, I would select the correct version. How do I know this? Because despite my dyslexia, I have been a professional writer and editor for 25 years, so I’ve had a lot of practice.

    I chose this career because I love reading and writing, but I’ve always felt like I had to prove I could do the job just as well as someone without dyslexia, even if no one around me knew I was dyslexic. The reality is, the real world doesn’t have accommodations or modifications. You do need to learn strategies to help you navigate the same landscape as everyone else. As a 50-year-old woman who has worked successfully in what may be considered an unlikely career for someone with dyslexia, I think I’ve proved myself to be just as capable as many people with “typical” brains, if not more so.

    These days, I am happy to talk about the challenges but I also make it a point to focus on the things about dyslexia that make me better at my job. People with dyslexia excel in narrative thinking. They have strong long-term memory, particularly when it comes to experiences and visual information. They are creative and often have strong interpersonal skills and empathy. As a writer and writing instructor who specializes in memoir and personal essay, these traits make me the perfect fit for my job.

    Even though my learning difference initially posed challenges for me, I would never change my dyslexic brain. Shedding light on this aspect of myself allowed me to see that there was never anything wrong with this part of my makeup, but there was something wrong with the way I perceived it. Instead of trying to erase this part of myself, now I choose to embrace it.

    Darcey Gohring is a full-time freelance writer and editor based just outside New York City. As a writing instructor, she specializes in personal narrative and memoir. Her essays have appeared in dozens of publications. She was a contributing author for the anthology, Corona City: Voices From an Epicenter. Darcey has served as a keynote speaker for writing events all over the United States. To learn more, visit darceygohring.com.

    Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

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  • Rob McElhenney Reveals Diagnosis Of Learning Disabilities, Neurodevelopmental Disorders

    Rob McElhenney Reveals Diagnosis Of Learning Disabilities, Neurodevelopmental Disorders

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    Rob McElhenney, star of the 2005 hit show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” revealed that he has been diagnosed with “a host of neurodevelopmental disorders and learning disabilities.”

    The actor, 46, shared news of the diagnosis Tuesday on Twitter but did not disclose the specifics. McElhenney acknowledged in his tweet that he typically wouldn’t share such information publicly but decided to do so to help others in similar situations.

    Examples of neurodevelopmental disabilities can include attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, learning disabilities, visual and hearing disabilities, and cerebral palsy.

    According to a study conducted from 2009 to 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 6 children ages 6 to 17 had a developmental disability. The American Psychiatric Association found that 2.5% of adults in the U.S. have ADHD. But some research shows that many adults with ADHD remain undiagnosed.

    “It’s not something I would normally talk about publicly but I figured there are others who struggle with similar things and I wanted to remind you that you’re not alone. You’re not stupid. You’re not “bad”. It might feel that way sometimes. But it’s not true :)” he tweeted.

    Fans responded to his tweet with an outpouring of support and gratitude for his openness, with several sharing their experiences with disability diagnoses as well.

    McElhenney will be sharing the full diagnosis and prognosis in an episode of “The Always Sunny Podcast,” a production that McElhenney and his former co-stars Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day began hosting together in 2021.

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  • 8 Things Parents Of Kids With Learning Disabilities Need To Understand

    8 Things Parents Of Kids With Learning Disabilities Need To Understand

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    We want to believe that grades are simply a product of motivation and effort ― that if a child truly wants to do well in school and works hard enough, they can make those As appear.

    But what if a child is truly trying as hard as they can and still can’t keep up? Learning disabilities and related conditions that affect academic performance are common: One in every five children is diagnosed with a learning disability or ADHD. Yet many of these kids aren’t identified and given the support they need. Only 1 in 16 public school students has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for a learning disability or “other health impairment” (as ADHD is frequently categorized).

    For kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia, which affects reading abilities, and dyscalculia, which impacts the ability to do math, school can become a site of frustration and shame.

    Research shows that learning disabilities, also called learning disorders, are neurological differences. Kids’ brains are “wired” differently, and their struggles in school aren’t a result of a lack of effort or emotional issues. They can’t just “try harder” or “get over it” — they need skilled special educators to teach them how to work with (and sometimes around) their disabilities to grasp the material being taught.

    There are a lot of neural processes involved in learning any new skill — a difference in any one of them can alter the way a child learns.

    “There is significant evidence that the learning difficulties experienced by individuals with learning disabilities are the result of impairments in specific cognitive abilities such as working memory, phonological processing, processing speed and other cognitive processes involved in learning,” Monica McHale-Small, director of education for the Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA), told HuffPost.

    Andrew Kahn, associate director of behavior change and expertise at Understood.org, added that these cognitive differences impact learning by affecting “the person’s ability to take in new information and then organize, remember, and execute tasks with that data.”

    When a child has a learning disability, regular classroom instructional techniques likely won’t be enough for them to keep up. Teachers will need to understand their disability to find ways to be successful at school, and you will need to become your child’s advocate.

    HuffPost spoke with a couple of experts about other things that parents of kids with learning disabilities need to know:

    Having a learning disability doesn’t mean a child isn’t smart.

    Learning disabilities are separate from intellectual disabilities. To qualify for a diagnosis of a learning disability, a child needs to show average (or above average) intelligence. While a child with an intellectual disability will usually have delays in milestones such as walking and talking, a child with a learning disability likely won’t show any signs before they begin to struggle with reading or math in the early elementary grades.

    “While learning disabilities may be mild or more severe, they don’t globally impact a person’s ability to develop skills for daily living and independence,” Kahn said.

    “The most common initial sign of a learning disability is when a child struggles with learning in a way that seems inconsistent with their intellect,” he continued. “Parents may initially feel that their child isn’t trying hard enough or is being avoidant due to limited interest.”

    However, children are usually well aware of areas where they don’t measure up. “When working with parents and teachers, I often remind them that
    children judge their own intelligence and worth by comparing their academic skills to those of their peers,” McHale-Small said.

    These feelings can develop into a more serious issue. “Children with learning disabilities who don’t have enough support are more likely to develop mental health concerns like anxiety and depression,” Kahn explained.

    Because there can be so much focus on what they’re not able to do, or at least to do easily, it’s important to highlight kids’ strengths and to teach them that everyone has their own unique mix of things that come naturally to them and things that are more challenging.

    Parents should also understand that a child can be academically gifted and have learning disabilities at the same time. These children are sometimes referred to as “twice exceptional,” and while in some areas they require extra support, they need to be challenged in others.

    MoMo Productions via Getty Images

    Parents may need to advocate for the needs of a child with a learning disability.

    There are different types of learning disabilities.

    “Dyslexia is probably the most well-known learning disability, and there is some data that it may be the most common,” said McHale-Small, who noted that this could also be because “dyslexia has received more attention from researchers and educators.”

    Dyslexia impacts a child’s ability to read and spell. Other learning disabilities include dyscalculia, which makes math-related tasks difficult, and dysgraphia, which impairs a child’s ability to form letters and write.

    Some providers also use the term “nonverbal learning disabilities … to describe individuals who struggle with visual-spatial and motor skills who often have struggles with interpreting social cues,” McHale-Small said.

    It is not unusual for a child to have more than one type of learning disability.

    Regarding what your child feels, “Having a learning disability can be a frustrating and confusing experience for children, particularly when they’re accustomed to feeling capable in other areas of their life,” Kahn said.

    To learn more about what it feels like for your child to move through their school day with a learning disability, parents can check out these videos from Understood.org and the Nonverbal Learning Disability Project.

    Learning disabilities can be hereditary.

    If you or your spouse have ever been diagnosed with a learning disability, your child may be, too. Make sure you mention this family history to providers such as doctors and psychologists.

    Other conditions can cause similar issues, so it’s important to rule those out.

    There are many reasons for a child to struggle in school, including hearing problems, vision problems, emotional issues such as anxiety and other neurological issues like ADHD. In some cases, the cause is just poor classroom instruction, and support given to teachers can help address the problem.

    “Diagnosis with a learning disability requires that these other conditions be ruled out as the primary cause of the learning difficulties the child is experiencing,” McHale-Small said.

    “Having a learning disability can be a frustrating and confusing experience for children, particularly when they’re accustomed to feeling capable in other areas of their life.”

    – Andrew Kahn, psychologist, Understood.org

    It’s common to have learning disabilities and ADHD.

    While it’s important for the professional evaluating your child to rule out other conditions that could be causing their struggle, note that many children with ADHD also have learning disabilities.

    “Researchers estimate that anywhere from 20 to 60% of individuals with ADHD also have a learning disability,” McHale-Small said.

    A skilled evaluator will be able “to determine if a student’s challenges are the result of ADHD, a learning disability or ADHD plus a learning disability,” Kahn noted.

    You have the right to request an evaluation for your child if you suspect a learning disability.

    If you suspect that your child has a learning disability, you have the right to request a professional evaluation from your child’s school.

    “A parent may request an evaluation for learning challenges at any time. Once approved, the evaluation will be provided at no cost and must be completed
    within a time frame determined by law,” Kahn said.

    If you disagree with the conclusions of this evaluation, you can request an independent educational evaluation (completed by someone outside the school district.) You can also pay a private provider to evaluate your child. While the school district must consider a private evaluation, they are not required to implement its recommendations, and practices between school districts vary.

    Your child has the right to a free, appropriate public education.

    Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), children with disabilities — including learning disabilities — have the right to a free, appropriate public education.

    “The ultimate goal of the law is to help children with disabilities access the required curriculum, with instruction that accommodates their unique learning needs,” Kahn said.

    Depending on your child’s diagnosis, they will have an IEP or a 504 plan. Both types of plans describe what the school will do to help the child learn. There are stricter requirements for what an IEP must include, whereas the rules are looser for a 504. The main difference between the two types of plans is the type of conditions they cover. Learning disabilities are usually covered by an IEP, and ADHD with a 504. In some cases, a student’s diagnosis may make them eligible for a 504 but not an IEP.

    In either case, the plan, created with input from you, your child’s teacher and other professionals, will spell out the services and accommodations that your child is entitled to, which may include specially designed instruction, small group instruction, extended time on tests, preferential seating, movement breaks, use of assistive technology (such as a calculator or computer), individual or group counseling and speech, physical or occupational therapy.

    An IEP will also describe their current performance (such as their reading level), strengths, weaknesses and goals. You have the right to be present at annual IEP meetings, which allow you to advocate for your child.

    “While these meetings can be intimidating and overwhelming for parents, it is important that they participate,” McHale-Small said. She recommended bringing a support person with you to take notes and address your concerns.

    If your child has a 504 plan, the school is not required to invite you to the annual meeting, but most schools will be happy to have you attend. Ask early in the year to be invited so you don’t miss it.

    With the right support, learning disabilities won’t limit kids’ options.

    “An important thing for parents to always remember is that children with learning disabilities are very capable, and with the right supports, they can achieve educational and life success,” said McHale-Small, who identifies as the parent of two successful adults with learning disabilities and ADHD.

    Kahn recommended that at the end of each school year, you ask your child’s teacher “to share what strategies they found most helpful for their child — and what they wish they’d known ahead of time.” It can be helpful to have this information to share at IEP or 504 meetings and with future teachers.

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  • How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities

    How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities

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    User-friendly artificial-intelligence tools like ChatGPT are new enough that professors aren’t yet sure how they will shape teaching and learning. That uncertainty holds doubly true for how the technology could affect students with disabilities.

    On the one hand, these tools can function like personal assistants: Ask ChatGPT to create a study schedule, simplify a complex idea, or suggest topics for a research paper, and it can do that. That could be a boon for students who have trouble managing their time, processing information, or ordering their thoughts.

    On the other hand, fears about cheating could lead professors to make changes in testing and assessment that could hurt students unable to do well on, say, an oral exam or in-class test. And instead of using it as a simple study aid, students who lack confidence in their ability to learn might allow the products of these AI tools to replace their own voices or ideas.

    Such scenarios can, of course, apply to a wide range of students. You don’t need to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to struggle with ordered thinking. Nor are students with severe anxiety the only ones to stress out over an oral exam. But teaching experts worry that in the rush to figure out, or rein in, these tools, instructors may neglect to consider the ways in which they affect students with disabilities in particular.

    “People are really focused, for good reasons, on academic integrity and academic honesty, and trying to redefine what that means with these new tools,” says Casey Boyle, director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, who chairs a working group on digital-content accessibility. But people are just now starting to talk about the opportunities and challenges around AI and disability.

    Students with disabilities or students who require accommodations are already working uphill. When we overreact, what we’re doing is increasing the slope of those hills.

    Students with disabilities have long faced challenges in the classroom, starting with the difficulty of securing accommodations that can help them learn better, such as receiving note-taking assistance or extra time to take tests, or being allowed to type instead of writing by hand. Boyle says he has heard of instructors moving from take-home writing assignments to timed writing exercises in class to keep students from using ChatGPT. Students who struggle with cognitive loads, or dyslexia, or are unable to focus are not going to perform well under those conditions.

    “Students with disabilities or students who require accommodations are already working uphill,” Boyle says. “When we overreact, what we’re doing is increasing the slope of those hills.”

    Welcome Assistance

    While professors are understandably concerned that students may use AI tools inappropriately, some teaching experts caution against banning their use entirely because there are ways in which AI tools could assist students with disabilities.

    • Students with mobility challenges may find it easier to use generative AI tools — such as ChatGPT or Elicit — to help them conduct research if that means they can avoid a trip to the library.
    • Students who have trouble navigating conversations — such as those along the autism spectrum — could use these tools for “social scripting.” In that scenario, they might ask ChatGPT to give them three ways to start a conversation with classmates about a group project.
    • Students who have trouble organizing their thoughts might benefit from asking a generative AI tool to suggest an opening paragraph for an essay they’re working on — not to plagiarize, but to help them get over “the terror of the blank page,” says Karen Costa, a faculty-development facilitator who, among other things, focuses on teaching, learning, and living with ADHD. “AI can help build momentum.”
    • ChatGPT is good at productive repetition. That is a practice most teachers use anyway to reinforce learning. But AI can take that to the next level by allowing students who have trouble processing information to repeatedly generate examples, definitions, questions, and scenarios of concepts they are learning.

    “I really want you as a student to do that critical thinking and not give me content produced by an AI,” says Manjeet Rege, a professor and chair of the department of software engineering and data science at the University of St. Thomas. But because students may spend three hours in a lecture session, he says, “at the end of it, if you would like to take aspects of that, put it into a generative AI model and then look at analogies and help you understand that better, yes, absolutely, that is something that I encourage.”

    Teaching experts point out that instructors can use AI tools themselves to support students with disabilities. One way to do that might be to run your syllabus through ChatGPT to improve its accessibility, says Thomas Allen, an associate professor of computer science and data science at Centre College, in Kentucky.

    Allen, who has ADHD, is particularly aware of the ways that an overly complex syllabus can stymie students. A 20-page document, for example, with lots of graphics could trip up students with a range of disabilities, such as people with low vision or those who have dyslexia, autism, or ADHD. “That’s using AI to solve a problem that we created,” he says, “by not having an accessible classroom to start with.”

    Disability-rights advocates have long encouraged instructors to use an approach called universal design for learning, or UDL. In a nutshell, this method enables students to engage with material in many ways. A common example is putting captioning on videos. Another is to provide text explanations of graphics. These strategies can benefit all learners, advocates note, creating more-inclusive classrooms.

    “Professors who have designed their courses with UDL at the heart of their pedagogy are going to be better prepared and more adaptive, not only to AI but any other weird and challenging things,” says Costa.

    Teaching experts caution that these tools have to be used with care. In simplifying a syllabus, or lecture notes, ChatGPT could change the meaning of words or add things that were not said, Allen notes. And it will reflect biases in the human-generated ideas and language on which it was trained. “You can’t trust the output as it is,” says Allen.

    Risks and Challenges

    A more-subtle challenge, teaching experts say, is that because students with disabilities can lack confidence as learners, they may be more likely than others to replace their own words and ideas with AI output, rather than use it as an assistant.

    It’s not all on you to figure this out and have all the answers. Partner with your students and explore this together.

    Students have, for example, put first drafts of papers through ChatGPT to get feedback on the clarity of their language, the coherence of their arguments, and other measures of good writing. If the AI tools significantly change their words — and not necessarily in a way that an instructor would think is an improvement — a student who doesn’t have faith in their own work and sees the tool as an expert might defer to it. “The outputs I’ve been seeing are overly rational and overly linear and overly correct in a very unproductive way,” says Boyle.

    One way to mitigate that risk is to teach all students about the strengths and limitations of AI. That includes showing students how to write thoughtful and specific prompts to get the most useful feedback; discussing the ways that generative AI tools can produce confident-sounding, yet false or flat, writing; and reminding students that ChatGPT is a word predictor without actual intelligence, so it should not be treated as a replacement for a teacher, counselor, or tutor.

    “If you keep deferring to the technology, you won’t grow and develop because you’re leaning on this technology,” says S. Mason Garrison, an assistant professor of quantitative psychology at Wake Forest University. “This is a problem for anyone, but it could disproportionately impact folks who are genuinely worried their work isn’t good enough.”

    Disability-rights advocates point to two other challenges that could affect students with disabilities more than others.

    One is that if you use AI to help generate ideas or smooth out writing, your work may be more likely to get flagged by an AI detector. That’s a problem for a range of students, including those for whom English is not their first language. But a neurodivergent student might face particular issues in response, says Allen.

    “Sometimes we have difficulty looking people in the eye, and we fidget. It’s part of our social challenges,” he says. “If you get called in and some instructor or the dean says your writing has been flagged, tell me why you cheated. You’re fidgeting. You’re looking at your shoes. That may be interpreted as guilt. And maybe the student used it to take on the persona of a character and had a conversation but used that to inform their thinking. That’s a different use case from typing in the prompt, using what it spits out.”

    The other challenge is that many students don’t seek accommodations until they need them. And how many students have ever had to sit through an oral exam or write an essay by hand?

    “In all likelihood, the first time that happens to a student, they’re not going to be able to get the accommodation in time because they never thought they needed it,” says Garrison. “There’s probably going to be a lot of surprises like that. And for professors, it might not even occur to them that that’s something you put in your syllabus.”

    One central piece of advice teaching experts have is this: Include students, and particularly students with disabilities, when designing policies on AI use. It’s going to become more important as generative AI evolves and becomes embedded in other technologies.

    “It’s not all on you to figure this out and have all the answers,” says Costa. “Partner with your students and explore this together.”

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    Beth McMurtrie

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  • These Are Early Warning Signs That Your Child May Have Dyslexia

    These Are Early Warning Signs That Your Child May Have Dyslexia

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    No one wants to see their child struggle, but sometimes noticing that a child is struggling is the first step to getting them the help they need.

    Looking back, many parents of children with dyslexia — a language-based learning disability that makes reading difficult — can see that the signs were there years before a formal diagnosis was made. Some wish that pediatricians, teachers and other professionals had been upfront about potential issues from the beginning.

    Janelle Norton, a national training and legislation coordinator for the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education, told HuffPost that when she reflects back, she sees that her son Bryce was showing signs of a learning difference by the time he was in preschool.

    “He struggled to recall things that his older sisters did not struggle with, but I was told by pediatricians and educators that he would catch up, or ‘He is a boy’ or ‘He is the baby of three kids,’” Norton said.

    When Bryce was in preschool, Norton sought help for his delayed speech. Like many parents, she assumed that if his teachers saw signs of significant learning issues, they would let her know.

    Unfortunately, teachers, too, can be reluctant to call out a problem. They have a class full of learners with different needs among whom they have to divide their attention. In addition, teachers can feel pressured by administrators not to identify additional special needs in their classrooms because of the added funding it takes for support services. Parents are also not always receptive to news of a potential issue. A teacher’s concern might be construed as an accusation, prompting parents to jump to their child’s defense.

    In Norton’s case, the first person to name the problem was actually Bryce himself.

    “In second grade, Bryce came home and insisted he could not read,” Norton said. Her initial reaction was one of disbelief, and she said she told him, “I think your teachers would have told me if you could not read.”

    But as she began looking more closely at his schoolwork, Norton noticed “that he knew the alphabet but had no idea what the sounds of the letters combined meant. For example, I asked him to spell the Walmart sign, and he read W-A-L-M-A-R-T but said that it said ‘exit.’”

    Luckily, Norton’s family was able to pay for a private tutor, who used the Orton-Gillingham approach, a phonics-based system designed to help struggling readers. “Within one year he was reading at grade level,” Norton said.

    She fully recognizes their privilege in being able to pay for accelerated private help even though he was in a public school. “Not every family can do what we did. It comes down to money — how much can you spend to ensure your child can read, write and spell?”

    Micki Boas, a brand strategist and author of “One In Five: How We’re Fighting for Our Dyslexic Kids,” told HuffPost that she can now see signs of her son’s struggles all the way back to his infancy.

    “My son walked late, talked late, missed all of the key CDC milestones. But I wanted to just brush it under the rug because I didn’t want to put a label on it,” Boas, referring to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    As time went on, Boas began to see signs of the emotional toll that school was having on her child. Like many other children with learning differences, her son Matias refused to go to school. Boas eventually learned that his classmates had cruelly nicknamed him “The Statue of Liberty,” because he always had his hand raised to ask for the teacher’s help.

    Boas thought she was doing what she was supposed to in order to help her son learn to read. As advised, she dutifully read to him every night, as though he would figure out how to read “through osmosis,” she said.

    As with Bryce, after a little probing, Boas found that, although her son recognized letters and had memorized how to spell some words, “he couldn’t figure out the sounds behind the words.”

    It was Boas’ mother, a speech pathologist, who sensed that something wasn’t right, and she encouraged them to have Matias evaluated.

    Eventually, Matias was given an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), which included specialized reading instruction — but only for 30 minutes per week. Every child with a diagnosed disability is legally entitled to all the services necessary to provide them with a “free appropriate public education.”

    In Boas’ view, 30 minutes per week of reading instruction was nowhere near an appropriate amount.

    “Imagine if you couldn’t see, and they gave you glasses to read for 30 minutes a week,” Boas said.

    After a lengthy legal battle with the schools, which depleted their financial and emotional resources, Boas and her husband chose to send their son to a private school that specializes in language-based learning disabilities. While they did receive a small settlement from their lawsuit, it covered only a fraction of his tuition.

    What Is Dyslexia?

    “Dyslexia is an umbrella term for having difficulty with learning how to read,” Susie Rolander, a professor at the Bank Street School of Education, told HuffPost. It is relatively common, found in 20% of the population and accounting for 80% to 90% of all learning disabilities.

    Andrew Kahn, a psychologist who serves as the associate director of behavior change and expertise at Understood, told HuffPost that “dyslexia is a wiring difference in the brain that makes reading … more challenging than it should be.”

    “It affects things like reading, their pace of reading, spelling, writing and comprehension.” The degree of difficulty is a key part of the diagnosis, he explained. “It’s harder than it should be. Kids on the surface look like they should be able to do these things. There’s a disconnect for them, and that’s what people start to notice typically.”

    Bryce and Matias became aware that reading seemed much easier for the other kids in their classrooms.

    Some of the early signs of dyslexia are common to other conditions, and 30% of kids with dyslexia will also have another learning disability or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This makes it all the more important for kids to get thorough, professional evaluations. If a child also has ADHD and can’t focus, then specialized reading instruction alone won’t be effective.

    “Dyslexia looks like a lot of other things in the beginning, which is sort of what’s so confusing about it for so many people,” Kahn said. He added that it’s always easier to see the early signs in the rearview mirror, and parents shouldn’t be too hard on themselves for not realizing earlier that something was wrong.

    Parents also can’t assume that the presence of one sign signals an issue. For example, many children reverse their letters and numbers when they are learning to write.

    “In and of itself, the reversal of letters and numbers in writing does
    not indicate that a child has dyslexia,” Rolander said. “For most children, this usually subsides around the end of first grade or beginning of second grade. We have to look at the overall pattern of the child’s learning, not just the timeline.”

    Common Misconceptions About Dyslexia

    Some people assume, because of its effect on reading, that dyslexia impacts only a person’s written language. But it is a neurological difference in the brain that can affect their use and understanding of both written and spoken language.

    “Oftentimes children who have dyslexia also struggle with both expressive and receptive language, making everyday learning and connecting with peers more difficult,” Rolander said. Treatment, then, can bring additional benefits beyond improved reading fluency.

    Another common misconception is that dyslexia, or other learning disabilities, are intellectual disabilities — that kids with these conditions aren’t as intelligent or as capable as their peers. But kids with dyslexia are able to think just as well as other students. Just because they can’t decode a text doesn’t mean they can’t consider its content.

    For some kids, having the diagnosis and understanding that the way their brain is wired makes reading a challenge can free them from the fear that they aren’t as smart as the other kids. Understanding that their dyslexia is a learning difference that they share with many other people can be empowering for them.

    Possible Early Indicators Of Dyslexia

    Because of the stigma associated with the terms “learning disability” and “dyslexia,” parents (and teachers) have to strike a balance when it comes to concerns about a child’s reading. On the one hand, it isn’t necessarily cause for alarm if you notice one of these signs — many children without learning disabilities also exhibit these at some point. On the other hand, it’s useful to be aware of these signs so that you can get your child help sooner rather than later.

    Only a trained professional can make a diagnosis of dyslexia or another learning disability after a thorough evaluation, but the following signs are worth talking about with your child’s teacher and their pediatrician. Having as much information as possible will help them understand your child’s unique growth and development, including which supports they may need along the way.

    Some early signs that may indicate dyslexia:

    • A family history of dyslexia or other learning differences
    • Missing developmental milestones (crawling, first word, walking) in infancy and early childhood
    • Delayed speech

    • Mixing up words (“bustduster,” “beddy tear”)

    • Not being able to recall the name of the city or state they live in

    • Trouble remembering the order of the days of the week
    • Confusion with directional words (under, over)

    • Trouble learning to tie their shoes

    • Trouble rhyming

    • Trouble learning numbers or colors
    • Trouble remembering the words to songs

    • Trouble writing their own name

    Once literacy instruction has begun, you may start to see other signs:

    • Trouble sounding out new words
    • Poor phonemic awareness: not knowing the sounds letters make, such as realizing that “cat” becomes “bat” when you change the “c” to a “b.”
    • Reluctance to read out loud
    • Refusal to go to school

    You can also utilize early screeners available online to see if your child is showing signs of dyslexia. If you’re not sure whether you yourself may have dyslexia, there is also a parent screener available to predict a child’s risk. Some companies have begun to develop screeners to use with younger children who have not yet begun to learn to read.

    Talk with your child’s teacher or pediatrician about other screening tools that may be available in your area.

    Just because your child doesn’t meet the criteria for a dyslexia diagnosis doesn’t mean extra literacy support won’t help them. These services, such as extra instruction or tutoring, are sometimes called “Response to Intervention” (RTI), and you can get them before your child officially qualifies for special education services and gets an IEP or 504 plan (another legal document that outlines which accommodations a child is entitled to.) Talk to your child’s teacher about RTI services, even if you are also making a request for an evaluation.

    With the right setup, support for dyslexia and other learning challenges doesn’t have to feel stigmatizing. Accommodations such as extended time to complete tasks and allowing kids a choice in what content they study or how they express their understanding benefits all students. A classroom culture that embraces and accommodates students’ differences can help kids understand that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses instead of making struggling kids feel as if there is something wrong with them.

    “Those kids who have classrooms that accommodate them and are in classrooms with kids who are not disabled will have much more broad acceptance of what those differences mean when they live their daily lives,” Kahn said.

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