Sharing the Dyslexia Diagnosis With Your Child

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There are so many things to consider when you first learn your child has dyslexia. One of the many concerns that parents consistently look for support on is the question of whether or not they should tell their child about the diagnosis.

Many of the families I have worked with felt that sharing a dyslexia diagnosis with their children would harm them in some way. Their thought process was as follows: If I tell my child they have dyslexia, I’m going to hurt their self esteem or they are going to feel inferior to their peers. 

The truth is that for most children, learning they have dyslexia provides answers. In early elementary years, many students are unaware of the fact that they are falling behind. Their world exists within them- what is happening to them and how things affect them. 

As they get older, they start to become more self aware as their perspective grows. Around the ages of 7 and 8, children begin to realize that not all their peers are at the same learning level. They recognize when some students in their class understand a concept and when they themselves do not. With every unmastered concept, this spiral continues to grow and children have no idea why they are falling behind.

The Power of a Dyslexia Diagnosis

Imagine going through life and tripping every time you walk more than 10 steps. Everyone around you is walking unaffected and you can’t seem to get past the block. You try to understand what you are doing wrong but you can’t see what the problem is. Everyone seemingly has all the same equipment as you do, yet somehow you are still tripping. Because you can’t figure out what the problem is, you start to think that you are just clumsy and prefer not to walk at all to avoid the embarrassment of falling.

Then one day you learn that you have a bone that did not grow the way it should have and this is the reason you have been tripping. You are not clumsy or lazy, you just have a bone that did not grow the way it needed. More than just learning the “why” behind your tripping, you also learn there are ways to help you walk in the same capacity as everyone else meanwhile, helping your bone to realign itself correctly. Imagine how powerful learning this information would be for you. You just learned that your tripping has nothing to do with your lack of effort AND there are solutions available to help you walk without tripping. This is how powerful learning of a dyslexia diagnosis can be for your child.

Internalizing Negative Self Views

It is important to understand that many children lack the skills needed to communicate how their reading struggles are negatively impacting them and therefore are unable to work through it. Most children feel like they are the problem. They feel it’s their lack of intelligence or lack of motivation to read that is inhibiting them. As far as your struggling reader is concerned, everyone is getting the same input of reading instruction and most of their peers are understanding what is going on. Without seeing any obvious differences between them and their classmates, they begin to believe that they are just not smart enough to understand how to read. Consequently, this is when you will see children shut down during reading or writing activities. 

Telling your child they have dyslexia, coupled with the fact that there are solutions scientifically proven to help them can change their outlook on reading entirely. They may still struggle with reading due to their neural pathways taking inefficient routes but now they know that the “why” behind these struggles has nothing to do with their intelligence.

Be Intentional

The way in which your child receives their diagnosis is important. If the delivery is done in a way that is mournful and negative, your child will go into this journey echoing those sentiments. If you go into the conversation positive and solution oriented, so will your child. Be as intentional as possible with the words you choose.

First things first, get a conceptual understanding of what dyslexia is. You may not have hours in the day to read through all the recommended reading but this article will give you a good starting point.  Once you have a baseline understanding of what dyslexia is, you can confidently go into the conversation ready to summarize it in a way that your child will understand.

How To Tell Your Child

Just like the article above references, explain to your child that the brain of a person with dyslexia operates differently than that of a neurotypical child. When reading, the neural pathways that the brain of a dyslexic takes is comparable to driving a manual car and taking the longer route to the destination. Comparatively, the brain of a neurotypical child is using an automatic car and is taking the most efficient route. For a child with dyslexia, it is possible to get to the destination but it is going to take more effort from the driver and you are taking inefficient routes to get there.

Let them know that this inefficient route that their brain is taking affects so many different areas needed for reading. It can create difficulty recognizing speech sounds, learning which letters represent which sounds, remembering sounds in the right order, and their ability to quickly name letters, words and objects. It is helpful to give real life examples of when you have witnessed any of these difficulties manifest in your child so that they make the connection. 

Be sure to emphasize how helpful it is to actually have a diagnosis because it opens up a whole new world of solutions. You have new information now, the dyslexia diagnosis, that will allow you to tackle reading from a different lens. That new lens will include different interventions that are scientifically proven to help rewire the brain so that the more efficient pathways are taken for reading.

Dyslexia Superpowers

Children with dyslexia have a powerful profile of amazing strengths. Their dyslexia allows them the ability to see the world through a different lens. Make sure to highlight these characteristics, or superpowers, when you talk to them about what it means to have dyslexia. 

  • Impeccable thinking skills
  • Great comprehension and reasoning 
  • Incredibly creative
  • Think outside the box
  • Ability to see the bigger picture
  • Wonderful imagination
  • Learn through meaning rather than memorizing
  • Exceptionally empathic
  • Expansive vocabulary 

The Intervention Puzzle

When I talk about interventions with my students, I talk about them in terms of puzzles. As you work through reading interventions, you are going to figure out what works for your child and what does not. This is the puzzle that you all get to work on together. 

Before the dyslexia diagnosis, you may have been on your journey to solving the reading puzzle but maybe you were using the wrong puzzle pieces. Reading intervention for a child with dyslexia is quite scientific and must be explicit, direct, structured, sequential, and multisensory. If you were using reading interventions that were made for the greater population of neurotypical students, then you were using the wrong puzzle pieces.

Your child’s puzzle will look different from someone else’s puzzle and every piece you try might not work perfectly at that moment. You just need to make sure you are working with the correct puzzle pieces that are dyslexia specific interventions. If it is helping your child, make sure to put that puzzle piece in place. 

We provide dyslexia therapy through the Take Flight intervention. Please visit our services page if you would like information on adding Take Flight to your child’s puzzle.  

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5 Comments

  • Jeannie

    March 30, 2022 at 10:10 am

    very informative to help parents and kids deal with it. As an adult I feel like some how there are instances Im becoming dyslexic so this article is helpful for me too.

  • Meghan

    March 30, 2022 at 10:15 am

    This was such a great read and extremely informative! I especially love your point about being intentional with the delivery of the diagnosis. Thank you for sharing!

  • Vi-Zanne

    March 30, 2022 at 4:42 pm

    Thanks for sharing this. As a mom of 2 daughters, I find this really helpful, especially the part on how to tell your kids about the diagnosis. I find that delivering difficult news is tough with young kids because they don’t often understand. In this case, I totally agree that the delivery tone is so important because they often look to us for first reactions. If we are positive about it, they will probably adopt the same mentality too!