Encourage! Encourage! Encourage!

Everyone needs encouragement from time to time, no exceptions. Students who struggle with dyslexia, or any other learning challenge, need a lot more encouragement than a child without a learning challenge. Why is this? I see two main reasons: 1) they have to work much harder than other students to produce/create/accomplish results which often don’t fully reflect their real abilities, and 2) they are often acutely aware, from a young age, that they are falling behind their friends and wonder why they are so stupid (a word commonly used by dyslexics to describe themselves).

One of the most common things said to a child with dyslexia is to just “try harder”. They are labelled as lazy or not meeting potential since they are clearly intelligent, but their results don’t measure up to expectations. For the dyslexic child who is working incredibly hard to accomplish any results, this is a crushing blow. If they hear it often enough, they will just stop trying altogether. Why bother? People already think you are lazy when you are working really hard, so why bother trying at all?

Telling a child who is already working as hard as they can to “try harder” is not encouragement, it is devastating.

Everyone thinks a little differently, but people with dyslexia have fundamental differences in how they process information. It is really helpful for students to know this about themselves. Their brain functions differently than someone without dyslexia. It isn’t good or bad, just different. When they’re having a tough mental day (at our house we call them Dyslexia Days), acknowledge that, remind them to cut themselves a little slack and do what works best for that day. Best on one day might be reading a paragraph, a page, or even just a sentence. Another day it could be reading a whole chapter.

Best will always be different from one day to the next. Help them learn how to work with those changes, and celebrate the effort they make as much, or even more than the results they produce.

Focus on the student’s strengths. I guarantee that they have some. They might be good in math, hands-on skills, sports, arts, discussions, innovative ideas, collaborative work, social skills, etc. Remind them that not everything is difficult for them. It is easy to overlook or devalue those strengths because they come easily. Encourage them to take pride in their strengths, and appreciate them.

The processing differences that make reading and some other skills difficult are the same differences that give them strengths and skills in other areas. Strengths and challenges are two sides of the same dyslexia coin.

Learning to work consistently every day, and learning to respect how their brain will function differently from one day to the next, helps students to accept themselves. Acceptance is the first step on their way to embracing their differences, and then being able to advocate for themselves. But before they can do any of this, they need you to encourage and support them to keep trying, and do their best, whatever that looks like on any particular day.

They need you to remember, and to remind them, that they have strengths and abilities that come easily to them. And they need to you believe in them and believe that they can and will overcome their reading challenges with practice, perseverance, and persistence.

For more posts in this series:

• Now What?
• Educate Yourself
• Take the Pressure Off
• Reading: A World of Adventure
• Goals: Essential Roadmap
• Get the Right Kind of Support
• Persevere: Good Days and Bad
• Nothing is Permanent Except Change
• Encourage! Encourage! Encourage!

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