The WHY behind Dyslexia Now What

👋 Hi! I'm Lisa, a caregiver who wants to support caregivers.

Let me begin this post with an introduction. My name is Lisa Taylor. I’m married with two children and a super cute dog. Growing up, I was a reader. I gobbled up classic novels like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Not surprisingly, I earned a BA in English. I live in Massachusetts in an area referred to as the “South Shore.” Professionally, I’m a copywriter. Companies hire me to write their communications pieces and I truly enjoy it. Grateful to say that.

Today, I wanted to share why I’m writing this (and no one hired me to do it.)

When my son was — finally — formally diagnosed in second grade, I knew nothing about dyslexia.

Needless to say, my learning curve was steep. And my personal journey? Long. Really long. With a pandemic thrown in for good measure. I’m not writing here to rehash specifics about my child’s story. Rather, I wanted to call out a clear problem and, in parallel, work to address it: caregivers are not okay.

In fact, scientists have started studying the well-being of caregivers. Conclusion: not okay.

I mean, there are countless of us out there, cobbling together personal understanding and tangible support for our children as best as we can. However, the results often look a little something like the creature from Mary Shelley’s novel. Together in a way but not quite right. Not like they should or could be.

Image by Etienne Marais from Pixabay

Yes, scientifically-proven literacy supports exist. Yes, laws exist. The catch: we caregivers must advocate like Hell, alone and unseen for the educational support our children have a fundamental and legal right to. By the way, caregivers must learn and navigate complex clinical, educational, and legal info or risk major process snafus along the way. Um, great? Well, the odds of success are not.

There is no GoFundMe for dyslexia. Yet, the actual costs of not taking on a caregiver advocate role are immeasurable:

• An inability to read is traumatic

• Students are bullied, teased, and would rather be sent to the Principal than read aloud

• The school dropout rate is at least twice the national average 

• High rates of addiction, self-harm, and 3x higher risk of attempting suicide 

• High prevalence in prison populations 

• Higher unemployment and lower lifetime earnings

Yet, here we are in 2023 in the midst of a national literacy crisis. Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong and The Right to Read film are two amazing sources illuminating how we got there — as well as the opportunity.

And that’s what I want to focus on — the O P P O R T U N I T Y. My Substack as well as dyslexianowwhat.com is intended to provide resources and perspective that promote positive process momentum.

Our educational systems are slowly creeping toward a tipping point of change, but there is a long way to go. In the meantime, the caregiver role and your child’s needs are NOT disappearing anytime soon. So as you Franken-assemble as best you can, I invite you to turn your (understandable) “okay, now what?!” feelings into actions.

I encourage you to spread the word about resources that have helped me.

I want to tell you about things like neuroplasticity. It’s super interesting. (That’s a later post.)

I hope to rally caregivers to KEEP AT IT. REPEAT: KEEP. AT. IT.

Finally, I want to correct my earlier sentence: I was an eye-reader growing up. Ear-reading is reading too. Audiobooks rock.