Can Someone With Dyslexia Love to Read?
November 17, 2018
The short answer is, yes, it is possible. Both my daughters with dyslexia love to read, but it didn’t come quickly (think 6 – 8 years from starting to learn to read) and it looks different for both of them.
When we started homeschooling, I was very fortunate to meet another mom who put me on to a curriculum that was very heavy on books and me reading to them. I seriously doubt I would have read to them nearly as much if we weren’t using that curriculum. I was spending about 2 – 4 hours a day with them just reading out loud and looking at books with them. We covered everything! Science, history, geography, stories, social studies, math. You name it, we were reading about it with a range of picture books. At the time, I didn’t think they were really going to learn much and I was convinced that my middle daughter was completely ignoring me. My eldest always sat beside me and cuddled up enjoying the pictures, my middle daughter was often on the other side of the room playing or building something. She liked to cuddle as well, but just not for very long. It wasn’t until years later that I came to appreciate how much they loved that time together and how much they learned!
I came to understand that my eldest daughter had about a six week churn time to think about ideas before she was ready to talk about them, and my middle daughter thought deeply about everything but didn’t talk about it unless she had a specific reason to do so. In case you are wondering about my youngest, she just sponged everything up and happily tagged along with everything her sisters were doing. What all of this reading aloud did for them is develop a love of stories, ideas, and, information. As they got older and struggled with reading, I was still reading aloud to them for every subject except reading up to about grade 7. Their access to new ideas and information was never dependent on their ability to read. They often begged me to read one more chapter. As their reading progressed, I started to introduce the idea that once their reading was stronger, they wouldn’t have to wait for me to read to find out what happens next in the story, they could do that themselves. This worked particularly well for my eldest who loves stories and views most things in life through the lens of story, so it was a particularly good incentive for her to be able to continue the story by herself. Gradually they began to pick up the books themselves, read back over familiar favourites, and we discovered the wonderful world of audio books!
Finding reading material that appealed to them was critical to this whole process. For a dyslexic, the process of reading can be very tiring so if you are spending time working to read a book you don’t really enjoy, it doesn’t take long to not bother to read at all. The book has to draw the reader in, and that is different for each person. My eldest daughter now loves to read and enjoys everything from classics to modern literature, and she doesn’t hesitate to drop a book that isn’t worth the effort. My middle daughter still enjoys reading books, but finds it very tiring regardless of how interesting it might be. She now does the majority of her reading with audio books.
I struggled with this for a while . . . are audio books really “reading”. I have to thank Ben Foss’ book, The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan ** for changing my perspective on this. Foss points out that there are three types of reading; eye, finger, and ear. No one says that a person who reads Braille (finger reading) isn’t reading. They are still getting information from an author’s writing into their brain. Why is ear reading (audio books) any different? Some people have phenomenal auditory skills, and audio books allow them to leverage this strength. My daughter listens to books at double speed with no loss in comprehension. She speed reads with her ears. Last year she successfully (her test average over 80%) taught herself high school physics using a combination of listening to the text on CD while reading the text with her eyes.
Not everyone with dyslexia will love to read, but I encourage you to consider that just because someone has dyslexia it will be impossible for them to love reading. Help them learn that books are an endless source of ideas, find books that they want to read, help them to read when they get tired so they can still enjoy the inspiration of the book, and consider that eye reading isn’t the only option for loving to read.
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