It is never too late
The following adult had received one year of Barton tutoring when she wrote this letter to Oprah (with the help of her tutor) to try to convince Oprah to do a show on dyslexia.
Dear Oprah:
I am 76 years old today.
I spent the first 75 years of my life wondering why I could not read or spell as well as other friends and family. I didn’t know why I had such a hard time finding the right word when I spoke, or why I couldn’t say the words correctly when I could retrieve them.
I didn’t know why I so often got lost in cities I had lived in for years, or why I still had to stop and think for a moment before I knew my right from my left. I didn’t know why I had such trouble memorizing things that seemed so easy for others.
Or why someone like me – someone who has started and run two businesses – could still not read well, or spell correctly enough to take a message and then be able to read it afterwards.
I didn’t know that I had severe-to-profound dyslexia.
For 75 years I prayed for God to help me. Last fall, I prayed again – that God would please, PLEASE, send me someone who could teach me how to spell.
The very next day, I ‘just so happened’ to sit next to a Dyslexia Specialist at a local event, and we ‘just so happened’ to strike up a conversation about what she does for a living. She ‘just so happened’ to tell me about the signs and symptoms of dyslexia, and I immediately recognized them in me.
Best of all, she ‘just so happened’ to tell me that there are solutions! That people who have struggled with dyslexia, for even 75 years, could still learn to read, write and spell! I made an appointment for her to test me. I cried when she told me that I had dyslexia. They were not tears of sadness, however. They were happy tears! Tears of joy! I finally had an answer!
I have been receiving the right kind of tutoring, twice a week, for a year.
I read the word authentic for the first time last month. I can now spell words that I could not even say before. I am 75 years old. Believe me – there is hope.
I have been thinking back on my 75 years. I thought of the very worst time in my life – the time when my daughter died.
Then I thought of the very best time in my life – it was the time I realized I could learn how to spell! When I finally, finally, realized what my life’s problem was. I am dyslexic.
Dyslexia still haunts me
When adults share the emotional pain caused by dyslexia, and how it continues to impact them even as adults, it will give you the anger and courage needed to fight hard for laws that require early screening and early intervention.
I’m 23 years old now, and I barely graduated from high school. My fiancee and I just watched your dyslexia video, and the story you told about your nephew Ben made me cry. It brought back many painful memories. I am like Ben, but unlike Ben, I never got the right help. I would like to tell you my story, and then I’d like to ask you a few questions.
In kindergarten, I had to walk home. It was only about three or four blocks, but I would often get lost. Also, I still remember getting criticized by my teachers, classmates, and even my own parents when I was falling behind in reciting my ABC’s, my 1-10’s, and even my phone number and address.
They almost retained me in Kindergarten, but my mother talked them out of it.
In first grade, I started to learn to read, but again, I was falling behind. All the way through school, I feared my turn to read in class. It’s funny how good memories are sometimes forgotten, but bad memories never go away. When I was trying to learn to read, I can still remember my father telling me that I was lazy, and I just wasn’t trying. I guess my tears and frustration weren’t enough proof for him to see how hard I really was trying.
When I finally got tested for dyslexia in 3rd grade, they put me into “Special Ed.” If you ask a child what Special Ed means, they will probably say “retarded.” That’s what my peers called me, and that’s what I thought I was.
My parents sent me to many programs, and spent a lot of money. Yet I’ve held a grudge against my parents for years; I felt they failed me and didn’t try hard enough to get the right type of help. That’s because after years of “help,” I was still the same.
I struggled all the way through high school and barely graduated. In my junior year, the state created a High School Graduation Exam. In order to graduate, you had to pass 3 tests: reading, writing, and math. You could take them 3 times, but if you don’t pass by the end of high school, you only got an “Attendance” certificate. The first time I took it, I somehow passed the reading test. But I failed math and writing.
To this day, I can’t do math. I still mess up on simple things such as adding and subtracting. I still don’t know my multiplication tables. I’ve tried to learn them for years, but I just can’t remember them. I’ll have all the fours mastered one night, but when I try them again the next day, I’ll only remember a few of them. By the following day, I won’t remember any of them.
So I switched to a vocational high school where you could take construction electricity to earn math credits. In that hands-on class, I was a super star.
But I still could not pass the math portion of the high school exit exam — or the writing part, which you had to do by hand and they graded it on spelling, punctuation, and neatness of handwriting.
Fortunately, many parents in the district (whose kids could not pass the test) fought the district and got them to withdraw the test. So I did graduate after all — with a D average.
After high school, I went from job to job, but I wasn’t happy. I needed a skill, so I turned to the military. I took the ASVAB for the Coast Guard, and once again, I almost failed it. But I scored just high enough to get into a mechanics position.
But Basic Training was a nightmare. I could not memorize and retain information, marching left versus right was almost impossible, and I still could not write down anything. In the end I had a mental breakdown, and got discharged.
That was two years ago, and since then, I’ve been going from one job I hated to the next.
But last January, my finance gave me an ultimatum. “Go back to school and try, or I’m going to leave you.”
So I’m back in school in the diesel mechanics program.
Although the Disabilities Office has provided some software, more time on tests, and a note taker for each of my classes, they are not teaching me how to overcome my dyslexia.
I still can’t spell, do multiplication (or most other math), memorize anything, tell my left from my right, or find my errors when I write. I even make mistakes when filling out a job application.
Yet there is so much I can do. Right now, I work as an assistant maintenance person at the fire department, and I’m good. Really good. I can fix just about anything.
Yet that’s not what this world wants.
I want help to overcome my dyslexia so badly. I will try anything. I just want to be like everyone around me.
If it’s too late for me, then I need to know what to do to help my children when I have them. I do not want them to feel like I do now.
Hopeless, helpless, and sad.
Warn the parents
If you combine the emails I get from teachers with those I get from parents, you can see why so many students with dyslexia drop out of high school.
A caring teacher asked:
I am a first-year 3rd grade teacher.
I have one student in my classroom who is very bright. She does extremely well in all of her subjects, except reading and spelling. Her spelling is atrocious, and so is her handwriting. When she writes the required sentences each week, her sentence structure and words are simplistic and not at all similar to how she speaks.
When reading aloud, she runs over punctuation marks, and she doesn’t even try to sound out unknown words. Even when I help her and eventually tell her the word, she will often not know that very same word when it appears again a page or two later.
Parent-teacher conferences are coming up, and I was wondering if I should warn her parents about the possibility of dyslexia.
Yes, if you suspect a child may have dyslexia PLEASE mention it to their parents. They know their child is struggling because they fight the nightly “homework wars.”
If dyslexia is not discovered and dealt with during those early grades, teachers in junior high often complain:
I cannot thank you enough for your wonderful presentation I attended about 2 weeks ago at my school. I was moved to tears and then later, I became quite angry!
I am a teacher at the school that hosted your presentation. I teach 7th grade English Language Arts, and I’ve been searching for an answer to this question for years by going to conferences, holding discussions with my colleagues, and asking administrators: “What do I do with the students who read at the 2nd grade level in 7th grade?”
I will never understand our approach to education. How can it be that effective reading systems exist, we do not employ them, and yet we are expected to raise their scores and close the gap? (And we call ourselves educators.)
How much longer are we going to allow this farce to continue?
But the real tragedy is what happens to these children in high school. Their parents send me heart-breaking emails, like the following:
My son has dyslexia, he’s 17, and I don’t know what to do.
He can barely read, he can’t spell, and his special education teacher isn’t helping. He’s slipping away, yet he really is a good kid.
He is giving up. He wants to drop out of high school.
Help. I’m desperate!
Or:
I am dyslexic, but I did not know it until my 6 year old son was diagnosed with it. I suspect 2 of my other children also have it, and ADD as well.
My oldest is 16, and he’s the one I am most concerned about.
The school has always labeled him a “problem kid.” Over the years, I tried everything the teachers suggested. But when their ideas did not work and I went back to them with my own suggestions, I became the enemy. Nothing I suggested was ever tried or accepted.
He is a junior in high school, but he only has the credits of a 9th grader — so he may not graduate. His teachers give up on him and just push him through. He has very low self-esteem, has been in a lot of trouble, and I just discovered he is starting to use drugs.
I feel like I have let him down. I worry that it is too late to help him. What can I do now?
Or:
My nephew, who is 20, has dyslexia but never knew it. School was so awful for him that he dropped out.
He tried to get his GED through a local college program, but it was way over his head. One of the teachers called him “stupid,” so now he will not go back. That is the last thing he needed — as he already had very poor self-esteem.
He has always wanted to be an engineer, but he says he is too stupid to be that — or anything else in life.
I want to help him. If I don’t, he may never be able to get a job, and he will live at home with his mom forever.
All of that pain is preventable if teachers would warn parents when a student shows many of the classic early warning signs of dyslexia, and if parents then got their child the right type of tutoring.
Much to be thankful for . . .
Letters like this make all of our hard work worthwhile.
Dear Susan,
Today as I sat at the table with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving, I realized how much things have changed over the last year.
Just a year ago, my daughter cried about school and hid in the chicken coop to try to avoid going. She often returned from school with blisters on her fingers (from gripping the pencil too hard due to her dysgraphia), and she was soooo frustrated by reading assignments and spelling tests.
Needless to say, it was a very hard time for our family.
Fast forward a year. We are now homeschooling using the Barton System, and she is happy.
She draws her chickens and writes poems about them. Her poems don’t always rhyme, but not all poems need to rhyme. 🙂
She feels successful in her reading assignments and in her ability to spell the words in the lessons. There are no more tears and no more blisters. She is happy and making progress!
I deeply appreciate the program you put together. To me, it is way more than a reading program, and I thank you for creating it.
Amazing what putting a name to a condition can do
People have told me over and over again that the day they discovered they had dyslexia was the best day in their life — as this woman shares:
Thank you for your on-line video. I watched it because I suspect my 5 year old has dyslexia. Now I’m convinced. But just as important, I found out that I have mild dyslexia.
I cried when I watched your video because you were talking about my life. I related with everything you said. I was actually a B high school student only because my A+ in Art brought up the rest of my grades.
I was on the 7 year plan in college and avoided classes that required written reports. I still can’t believe you knew that. I had to take an upper-level developmental biology class that had all essay exams. The professor would give me partial credit because he knew I could sit and talk about the material, but I could not seem to get it down in written words.
M mother still teases me that I was in my 20’s before I knew my left from right. I knew the days of the week, but struggled with the months.
I still remember her trying to teach me to spell, telling me to look it up in the dictionary, but me not having a clue as to the first, second, or third letter.
My writing was in run-on sentences (still is, sorry). I knew the teacher wanted periods, then a capital, so I would go back over my work and if a sentence looked too long, I would take out a word and put in a period.
Because of your video, when I make word substitutions when reading to my girls, I will no longer cringe when I realize my mistake.
My dirty little secret in life is, of course, that I can’t spell. My husband can’t either. We have worried about the day our kids will find out our “secret.” Well, it is not going to be a dirty little secret any more.
I am not embarrassed to send you this awfully written note. I am not going to rewrite it 3 times, then wait 24 hours, and read it again before I send it — as I usually do. I can stop beating myself up thinking I’m stupid. I’m just mildly dyslexic. Too bad I had to be 42 before I figured that out.
Even though you don’t know me, I am so relieved that there is someone in the world who understands me, and I don’t have to feel crazy or retarded because I can’t spell, write, or read out loud.
I have to look at my whole life differently now. I have lots of new questions, like: is dyslexia why, after 30 years of keyboard use, I still have to look at the keys?
Thank you for giving me the answer to my question of what’s wrong with me. My head’s a little higher today. I think you healed 40 years of emotional scars in the few minutes it took to describe an adult with mild dyslexia. Amazing what putting a name to a condition can do.
Emotional Disorder or Dyslexia?
Parents often don’t believe me when I tell them that most school psychologists have had no training in dyslexia. But I get emails like this every day:
From a school psychologist in New York:
I would LOVE to attend your Screening for Dyslexia conference.
Our number one question during RTI meetings is if there is a possibility a child might have dyslexia. This topic is vague to me even after years of reading and doing independent research.
Yet as the “expert” at these meetings, I struggle with remediation techniques that may work after I screen a student and determine deficits.
Or from this school psychologist in Colorado:
I am a school psychologist in Colorado. I agree to your notion that we have no specialty in diagnosing dyslexia, however the prevalence of parents’ requests seems to grow and grow. Unfortunately, when parents cannot afford outside assistance, we are the only ones that are left.
I have been to several workshops, symposiums, etc, yet do not feel completely educated on the subject. Do you recommend any books or specific journals on the topic? How about books that may target age groups lower than 8 years old in looking at dyslexia?
That lack of knowledge causes this:
My son just finished second grade and is dyslexic. I am sure of it. His father is dyslexic, and his father’s father is dyslexic. He has almost every single warning sign listed on your website and in many of the books that I have read.
Yet when he qualified for special education services in May, they classified him as having an “Emotional Disorder” — even though his reading scores were really, really low. The school considers “average” anything from the 16th percentile to the 85th percentile, and his reading score was exactly at the 16th percentile.
The school psychologist told me that my son’s anxiety and depression were “off the charts” and that he CAN read — but his anxiety gets in the way and he becomes “too stressed out” to read.
When I tried to explain that he was most likely anxious and depressed because he CANNOT read, the psychologist just flippantly said, “So it’s one of those which came first things — the chicken or the egg.”
They never looked at his spelling (which is horrible, with all of the classic dyslexic spelling mistakes) or asked him to write anything (he HATES to write, even a few sentences).
His IEP only lists services for emotional issues (meet with the counselor once a week). What do I do? Just let him flounder?
He won’t be able to read the board or any of the books used in third grade. Do I just let him founder with no accommodations? That seems so cruel.
He already hates himself for being “stupid and different” — his words, not mine.
Connect The Dots
Can you connect the dots . . . and see the cause and effect this has on our children?
First I received this email from a reading specialist:
In December I will graduate with a Masters of Education in Literacy and a reading specialist endorsement. Despite an otherwise excellent program, guess what I have not learned… how to teach students who struggle to learn to read.
But I have a dyslexic son, so I know the programs exist. Question is, will I be allowed to use them and actually help struggling students?
Then I received this email from a parent:
My son started struggling in reading in kindergarten. He worked with a Reading Specialist at school who used Reading Recovery with little or no lasting success.
He was promoted to first grade but was put in Tier 2 of RTI (Response to Intervention) at the beginning of first grade. We also hired a private tutor to work with him after school.
That is in addition to spending up to 3 hours a night on homework. He is the hardest working kid you will ever meet. He never gives up — despite only passing 2 spelling tests in his entire life.
He was diagnosed with dyslexia during the summer after first grade. I then did a foolish thing. I presented the results to the school and assumed they would take over from there and provide him with the right type of help.
But he is now in third grade, and despite having a 504 Plan in place, he is still reading at a first grade level (even after spending last summer going to a Sylvan center). Yet he is very bright. He gets an A in science and social studies because the tests are read to him.
My son is getting frustrated, and he is tired of reading the “babyish” books.
The teachers in our schools need to be educated on how to teach dyslexic children to read — and so do I.
Written Expression
Written expression is the hardest skill of all for people with dyslexia — as this engineer and inventor without a college degree remembers:
I am in one of those very old desks made out of metal with the wooden top and seat. It is hot. There is no AC in this small Central Texas school. The windows are open, but the chirping birds outside are interrupted by the chalk squeaks on the blackboard as the teacher spells out the writing assignment.
“One page before the bell.” I know the topic, but it doesn’t really matter. I know I won’t do well. My pencil has only been sharpened a couple of times, but the eraser is all but gone and the metal end has been squeezed together to force what little eraser that is left to bulge past the metal edge. I am concentrating hard — very hard. I start the first sentence but I know I can’t spell some of the words, even some simple ones. So I reword the sentence and try again several times, but I know some words are still wrong.
By now I have erased in some places to the point the paper is about to tear. I peel the metal edge back on my pencil with my teeth to expose more eraser. If I am careful, it may last through the class. I reword the sentence over and over in my mind. Somehow, I have to make this work. I bite the knuckle on my right hand hard because sometimes, the pain will make the confusion go away. The teeth marks will last for days. I concentrate even harder. As I do, I grip the pencil harder and harder till cramps fill my hand. Still I continue on…
The ringing bell does not bring the normal relief of the end of class. My hand is aching, yet I have less than half a page. I try to read it over quickly to look for mistakes. I know what I wanted to say, I know the subject probably better than the teacher, but I realize this paper makes no sense, not even to me. Head down, I turn in my paper, glancing up only to see the teacher frown in disgust at the look of the messy page. I want to scream and do, only it is a silent scream of anguish and despair…
Were it not for word processors with spell-checkers, I would never have been able to write the story above. Dyslexics — partly because of their intelligence — have found amazing ways of hiding their handicaps. You probably never guessed I was dyslexic. How could you, when I didn’t even know.
Even with these new technologies, stories like the one above that flash through my mind in a few seconds, can take hours to write. However, hours are so much better than never.
Bright Solutions for Dyslexia 