Perseverance is Key

By Jennifer Tarkington

My daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade. Both  pre-k and kindergarten had proven a struggle, but by first grade it became apparent that letters and sounds were simply not sticking. Our local public school system was ill equipped to handle her needs. In fact, their IEP and accommodations came only after I presented them with an expensive, private evaluation by a neuropsychiatrist.

As a parent, a dyslexia diagnosis is difficult. The financial worry of private tutoring, therapy costs, and the desire to provide for all of your child’s educational needs is daunting. Added to that is the constant worry of their self esteem—will their teachers understand their needs? Will their peers make fun of their challenges?

 Our job as their parent is to advocate for our children and their needs. But our job is also, perhaps more importantly, to equip them to advocate for themselves. God didn’t make a mistake when he created my Hannah with dyslexia, and he did not make a mistake with your child either. I had to rewire my thought process. I didn’t need to “fix” my daughter, but I did need to help her navigate the educational world which is not built for a dyslexic brain.

My daughter has spent years in weekly Orton Gilligham based private tutoring. The process has been slow and painful (many times), but we are starting to see its progress. She is slowly but surely gaining confidence with her reading and writing.

This year, my daughter is in seventh grade and she is just now beginning to work somewhat independently in her seventh grade tutorial classes. Audiobooks and speech to text writing have helped her tremendously. I was very hesitant to use assistive technology feeling almost like that was somehow “cheating.” But you would never tell someone who has difficulty walking that using a cane is cheating, and thus I started to embrace the idea of assistive technology. After all, the goal is for her to obtain the information, whether that be reading her science textbook through her eyes or through her ears.

Unfortunately for us parents, there is no magic bullet for dyslexia (or none that I have found anyways.) And in our fast paced, everything should have been done yesterday kind of mentality, this may actually be the hardest pill to swallow.  In my five years homeschooling my dyslexic daughter, I have found that success comes primarily, and often solely, from repetition and repetition and repetition……and patience and perseverance are the only keys.