Dyslexia and similar learning differences often show up in a child who appears bright, highly intelligent, and quite articulate for his age. Unexpectedly, this same child has difficulty reading, writing, and spelling at grade level.

Sadly, many of these children will go through life labelled as lazy, careless, dumb, displaying immature or inappropriate behavior, or “not living up to his or her potential.”

Why do they get these labels?

They usually score average or high on IQ tests and aren’t lagging behind their peers badly enough to qualify for specialized intervention. If you ask them questions about what they heard from you, they’ll, most likely, answer adequately, yet their written tests are atrocious.

Added to that, they often zone out, daydream, and lose track of time. It appears that they have difficulty sustaining attention to anything they’re not personally interested in.

There are also those children who are confused with right and left. Not just in terms of the direction, but also with their handedness. They may write with the right hand, but do other activities with the left. Some mispronounce words, by switching letters or transposing words, for example, saying “mower lawn” for “lawn mower.”

One sign of dyslexia that’s commonly overlooked is word-finding difficulties. This leads to trouble expressing oneself and can have a social impact on the dyslexic. They often suffer from low self-esteem, thinking that there’s something wrong with them, because they’re not like the “normal” children.

What happens to dyslexics?

As students, they are ridiculed by classmatea and teachers alike, causing them to be isolated and, by middle and high school, seek the company of peers engaged in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol.

Everyday experiences of failure, ridicule and not measuring up to expectations, sow seeds of shame, which grow in the minds, emotions, and souls of young children who are just beginning to discover their potential and form their identities.

Dr. Gershen Kaufman discovered in his study on shame culture that people who cannot read feel the same level of shame as people who have engaged in incest.

Where do these feelings lead?

Shame and rage seem to love to keep each other’s company. For the dyslexic, school becomes a place where there’s a struggle to survive instead of a place where joy is experienced in learning.

In Dr. Kaufman’s research, he found that:

• 35% of dyslexics drop out of high school.
• 50% of all adolescents involved in drugs and alcohol rehabilitation are dyslexic.
• 70% of juvenile delinquents are dyslexic.

Dean Bragonier, the founder of NoticeAbility – a nonprofit dedicated to changing the world for students with dyslexia – summarizes the statistics this way, “Some of the most creative and innovative minds are wasting away behind bars.”

It is obvious from these statistics that early identification of dyslexia is crucial. Not only is initial identification essential, timely remediation of learning disabilities associated with it is also necessary.

What is one way you can contribute to eradicating this dyslexia dilemma?