“Once You’re at School, It’s
War”
The story of
one mom, three dyslexic
boys, and a precocious reader
By Shannon Rossi
1980’s
Setting: an elementary school library, Indiana
I am that tiny
girl on the big blue rug entranced by the librarian in the corduroy
jumper. At home, I practice on my
sister. I hold a book in the fork of my
hand and make the book jacket crackle with each slow flip of the page. I break to inhale that musty smell of paper
and ink. Yes. Throughout elementary
school, I read as if my life depends on it.
In a way, it does. I identify
with characters like Meg in A Wrinkle in
Time and the green gabled Anne Shirley.
These awkward girls grow confident and independent by the end of the
books, and I count on that happening to me.
1990’s
Setting: the university followed by the real world
That’s me in
the READ BANNED BOOKS t-shirt walking into the education building. I decide that all I really want to do is
share books with children. I learn that
the single best predictor of a child’s success as a reader is the number of
books in the home. In graduate school, I
focus on the use of bibliotherapy. I
begin my career fully equipped to meet the needs of every child with my stack
of good books. I teach first and second
graders. We read and write with complete
abandon except for Brandon, a curiously creative delegator of literacy tasks. I marry my high school sweetheart who does
not like to read. We have our first
baby, Sam. I leave the classroom but
continue to tutor Brandon and to lead a children’s book club. I read aloud to baby Sam from this great new
book called Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone. Parents of my
students quip, “Is he reading yet?” I smugly
note the number of books in our home.
2000-2011
Setting: Georgia, Kentucky, and Ohio
My husband
is promoted often because of his global thinking and problem solving
skills. We move a lot. He works long hours. He reads the first 100 pages of Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris.
I panic
often because Sam’s development seems to lag behind other toddlers despite the
brightly colored magnetic letters splayed across my refrigerator and the crate
of books next to his car seat. Sam can’t
decide if he is left or right handed. He
stutters, can’t cut on lines, or make recognizable marks on paper. I grow paranoid that my friends are
supplementing with some innovative early learning technique. Their children bloom so readily. And yet. . . Sam listens to ANY book with
rapt attention. We read inappropriately
advanced chapter books right along with the picture books on our porch
swing. He is unbelievably verbal. I begin a collection of his wit and poetry
and decide to home school him until his literacy skills kick in. Meanwhile, Brandon enrolls in a private
school for children with dyslexia. My
husband rereads the first 100 pages of Theodore
Rex. We are blessed with Leo, baby
number two.
Sam enters
public school for first grade. He comes
home and says, “The bus is like a horse going to the battlefield. Once you’re at school, it’s war. Your pencil is your machine gun.” Leo hits preschool, or preschool hits
Leo. He is identified for speech
services and can’t rhyme or recognize letters or numbers. He is an artist of highest degree. He is happy and creative. He has a quick wit and can build Lego kits
independently. In his preschool language
assessment, the teacher asks him to identify a number. He says, “Ten.” She says, “No.” He says, “Of course, it isn’t!” with a sly
grin. I feel guilty that so much of my
time goes to supporting Sam. I wonder if
my free-spirited, second born son is just messing with me when I quiz him about
letters and numbers. Maybe, I think, Leo
is only behind because I haven’t worked with him enough. We do flashcards until he says, “Tears are in
mine eyes.” My husband and I work with
Sam at least two hours every night to keep up with his schoolwork. My husband rereads the first 100 pages of Theodore Rex.
We invest
$3,000 and every Saturday morning in vision therapy to help Sam. We request that the school test him. I suspect dyslexia as I reflect on
Brandon. The school can only “red flag.”
They put up the flag, but our investment
capital is depleted. So are we. A formal, expensive identification will have
to wait.
We have baby
number three. Annabelle is thrown to the
wolves in fairy tale fashion as we continue to pull our boys through
school. She takes books to bed from the
earliest age. She reads signs and fills
pages with letters and then stories. She
begins to read in preschool without ever having been taught. She reads aloud to her big brother, Leo, at
night. My husband rereads the first 100
pages of Theodore Rex and is now an
expert on Roosevelt’s early years.
Sam
continues to make good grades with INTENSE homework support. He cries.
I cry. He rages. I rage.
He is anxious and hates school. I
am anxious and hate school every bit as much as I had previously loved it. I read aloud the textbooks and make up
pictures and stories to go with every single spelling word. Math is a disaster. We cram for every assessment. Sam continues to love stories, and he learns
to read.
Leo,
however, hates books. He cannot read and
scores in the bottom percentiles on standardized assessments. The teachers are not worried. He’s a boy.
It’s developmental. His grades
are good. Leo grows sullen and angry at
home. He cries at bedtime and before
school. Like Sam, he makes comments
about being dumb. I am utterly at a
loss. How on earth can I have two children
with different disabilities? How can my
boys seems so bright and struggle so much?
We continue
to maintain impossibly high standards for our boys. My husband says they have to learn
strategies. They have to work harder
than the others like he has to do. My
husband is successful even if he does work around the clock, we reason. He is just a high stress personality, we
reason. His high blood pressure is
genetic, we reason. Our nights are a
blur of drilling and remediating. We
limit extracurricular activities. We go
to the church of public school every Sunday morning. I’m increasingly bitter. My husband does not reread Theodore Rex. There just isn’t time.
2012
Setting: that place where all things converge
That’s
it. The wall. We simply can’t do this anymore. I am told that it will not be easy to help
Leo within the public school system. I
keep running records and anecdotal records of his literacy behaviors but find
no help. I spend a summer researching
online and calling various dead end leads.
A diagnostician recommends Overcoming
Dyslexia by Sally Shawitz. I buy the
book that afternoon. I weep as I
read. I find not only Leo but also
Sam. And yes, you guessed it, my global
thinking, rereading, high stress husband recognizes himself. Although there is no doubt in our minds, we
decide to invest the thousands to formally identify the boys so that the school
will recognize what we’ve known and compensated for year after year.
Sure
enough. The assessments prove that the
boys are every bit as intelligent and every bit as dyslexic as we
suspected. The tone in our home
changes. We worry less and laugh
more. We ear read as a family with books
on CD or read by Annabelle. We invest in
Christmas Kindles and become immersion readers.
We brainstorm family entrepreneurial opportunities and dyslexic-friendly
career paths. We fight through the IEP
process for Leo and try to do the same for Sam.
I write a
letter to Brandon’s mother expressing my deep regret that I did not know more
about how to help Brandon in his first years of school. She writes back that Brandon is struggling
with college. She worries about his
future. I worry right along with her.
2014
Setting: the here and now
I am
currently home schooling Leo in language arts using an Orton-Gillingham based
program, my stack of good books, and open-ended creative activities. I try to balance remediation and enrichment
to best suit the mind of my smart, creative son. Because of Sam’s hard work and support, his
grades are strong. Because his grades
are strong, the school won’t recognize the dyslexia. He is learning advocacy skills as he
approaches individual teachers each year to meet his needs. We are still working to prove that dyslexia
affects him. My husband is learning to work
smarter instead of harder. His wish list
includes the audio version of Theodore
Rex. I tutor and research and annoy others with my constant facts and
quotations.
That little
girl on the big blue rug is finally growing into her life’s work. My passion for reading is finally useful
(irony noted). I am driven to understand
the minds of my boys. This discovery
took 13 years or the entire childhood of my first-born son. I’m nowhere near the end of this book, and I
fight on, Narnia style.
