I Blamed Myself for My Dyslexia – What I Want Parents to Know
Last Tuesday, my son slammed his math worksheet onto the kitchen table. “I’m stupid,” he said, the words barely audible through his clenched jaw. That sentence almost knocked me over – because I used to say the exact same thing about myself, at the exact same age, for the exact same reason.
I didn’t learn I had dyslexia until I was 24. By then, I had already spent years convinced that I was lazy, careless, or just not as smart as the kids around me. When my son started struggling with reading in first grade, I saw my own history starting to repeat. And I caught myself doing the very thing I swore I’d never do: asking him why he wasn’t trying harder.
It happened quietly, in small moments. During homework, he’d read a sentence and stumble on the word “was” – he’d read it as “saw.” I’d say, “Try again, honey.” He’d try again and say “w-as.” I’d say, “No – look at it. W-A-S. Sound it out.” He’d stare at the word like it was written in a language he didn’t speak. And I’d feel my jaw tighten. Not because I was angry at him. Because I was angry at myself, for not knowing how to help him.
Eventually, after a tearful conference with his teacher, I brought him to a specialist. Three hours of testing later, the psychologist said two words: “phonological dyslexia.” My son didn’t understand what that meant. I did – because it was the same label I’d never received as a kid.
That diagnosis cracked something open in me. It dragged up a memory I’d been avoiding for years. I’m eight years old, sitting in Mrs. Horton’s classroom. We’re taking turns reading a story out loud. When it comes to me, I twist a word like “flight” until it becomes “fight.” Mrs. Horton says, “Sound it out, sweetie.” I sound it out. Nothing comes. A girl behind me giggles. Mrs. Horton moves on to the next child, and the wave of relief I feel is quickly replaced by a hot, shameful ache in my chest. I decide, right then, that I am the problem. Not the word, not the method, not dyslexia – which hadn’t even been mentioned. Me.
I carried that decision with me for years. It shaped how I studied, how I worked, how I talked to myself. When I’d lose my keys, confuse “then” and “than,” or reread a paragraph four times, I’d hear a little voice: “See? You’re just not good enough.” I didn’t blame dyslexia – I didn’t know it existed. I blamed myself.
Here’s what I know now: kids will blame themselves unless we give them another story to hold onto. And saying “It’s not your fault” isn’t enough. You have to say something more specific and more useful.
When my son came home after his diagnosis, he didn’t say anything. He just sat on the floor with his Tonka trucks, making them smash into each other. I sat down beside him and said, “You know what the doctor told us?” He shook his head. “Your brain reads differently than some other kids’. It’s not broken – it’s just wired a different way. That means we need to teach it some different tricks.” He looked at me. “But why can’t I just read like everyone else?” I didn’t have a perfect answer. I said, “Because you’re not everyone else. And the worst thing I ever did was believe I should be.”
That last part came from my own life, but he didn’t need to know that yet.
So we changed the way we did homework. We stopped in the middle of a reading worksheet when he got frustrated. His teacher gave him an accommodation – he could use a tablet with text-to-speech for reading assignments, which was a tiny change with a huge impact. At home, we stopped counting reading minutes toward any chart. Instead, I read a page, he read a page, and I taught him to skip words he didn’t know and come back to them. I stopped saying “Try again” and started saying “Let’s look at the first letter” or “Can you picture what the sentence is saying?”
None of this fixed everything. He still reads slower than his classmates. He still calls me “Mom, wait, not Mom – Dad” two or three times a week. But he has started checking in on himself. Yesterday, he looked up from a book, and said, “I’m not stupid. My brain just reads like a map sometimes.” That phrase – “reads like a map” – came from me. But the confidence to say it out loud came from him.
I’ve also had to forgive my own parents. They didn’t know. They didn’t have test results or specialists or the phrase “phonological dyslexia.” My dad read well, my mom read well, and they assumed I would too, if I just sat down and focused. That’s not an excuse for what I went through, but it is an explanation. I’ve learned two generations of my family thought smartness was the same as reading ability. That’s a hard belief to shake.
If you’re reading this because your child is struggling with words, please don’t wait as long as my parents did. Not because your child will be damaged by waiting – but because the longer a kid thinks it’s their fault, the harder it is to unthink that. Here are a few concrete things I wish someone had told me a year ago:
When your child says “I’m stupid,” don’t immediately comfort them with “No you’re not.” Instead, say “Tell me why you said that.” It gets the specific frustration out in the open. If a reading task causes tears, put it away. Really. Ten minutes of calm is worth more than forty minutes of crying. Return to it later or ask the teacher if it can wait. Get tested early if you see a pattern – not a bad day, but a pattern. Ask the school for a screening, or go privately if you can. The diagnosis doesn’t change the brain, but it changes what you do next. Use audiobooks for a while. Let your child listen to a chapter book in the car while you both color or draw. Comprehension and decoding use different parts of the brain; your child can build vocabulary and a love of story without wrestling every word on a page. And model a mistake out loud. When you mix up directions or forget a name in front of them, laugh and say, “My brain does that weird thing again.” It grants them permission to have their own brain glitches.
I still worry about my son. I still occasionally blame myself – on bad days, I wonder if something I did during pregnancy, or some missed milestone, contributed. My husband shrugs and says, “He’s got your eyes and your dyslexia. It’s just part of him.” And somehow that helps, just a little.
We are not at the end of this story. He still has hard afternoons, and I still have moments where my old internal voice pipes up. But last week, he finished an entire early reader chapter book – a short one, with large print. He flopped onto the couch, holding it like a trophy, and said “I did it. I actually read all of it.” I hugged him. Then he said, “Can we start the next one tomorrow?” And I felt my own silent, bitter I-should-have-tried-harder voice go quiet, at least for the rest of the evening.
I wish someone had told that eight-year-old girl at Mrs. Horton’s reading circle that she wasn’t broken. I can’t go back there. But I can make sure my son never has to visit that place alone.
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