Stars: ★★★★★ (Study This Book)

Premise

Dr. Shaywitz provides a detailed guide to what dyslexia is, what differentiations in brain anatomy lead to it, what the symptoms look like in both children and adults, the fundamentals of teaching people with dyslexia to read and necessary accommodations. The explanations throughout the book are not only detailed but also accessible. There are a few technical paragraphs, specifically about brain anatomy, that were harder to comprehend but worth working through slowly to learn how our brains translate letters on a page to comprehensible words in our mind.

Loved

1. Details the Strengths of People with Dyslexia
   The first few chapters walk through the strengths that many people with dyslexia demonstrate. Their creativity and ability to see the big picture are strengths that I can admire because they are often my weaknesses. Especially with reading, I get mired in the details and can miss the bigger picture. My analytical way of looking at the world and at problems can sometimes dim my ability to see it creatively. These are strengths that dyslexic people often use to mask their struggles with retrieving and forming words and sounds.
   
   I loved that these are the strengths that I can easily identify in the dyslexic people that I love. As I read through the book and told Afa what I was learning, we decided that it’s highly likely that he has dyslexia, which would explain why it is even more likely that our daughter has it because there is a genetic component to it. Both Afa and Ana Lia see the world very differently than I do. Our strengths complement one another. I love that the author spent several chapters walking through these strengths before ever addressing the challenges that come with them.
   
2. Different Stages of Learning to Read
   I almost skipped the chapters on brain anatomy, but I’m so glad that I didn’t. After a brief overview of the different sections of the brain, Dr. Shaywitz discusses the phases of learning to read and how these phases use different parts of the brain. There is a breakdown in the phases for people with dyslexia because the connections between those parts are wired differently than in a person without dyslexia. Instead of a direct highway from sounding out the word to permanent fluency, people with dyslexia have to take the backroads from one part of their brain to the next. This means that they can do it, but it will take longer and require a lot more context clues. This leads to the necessary accommodation of additional time, especially when doing homework or taking tests.
   
   It also means that people with dyslexia will almost always have a lower score on standardized tests than their actual ability. Because standardized tests often have stand alone words, there are no context clues that dyslexic people use to decode words so they will struggle more with these types of tests. This is an additional reason that it is a step forward for colleges to move toward optional test score reporting.
   
3. Practical Suggestions for Learning to Read
   The final section of the book focuses on teaching a person with dyslexia to read and the accommodations that person is likely to need when in a regular school environment, including college and graduate school. This was by far my favorite part of the book. It gave me specific guidance on how to teach my daughter to set her up for success in reading. These lessons were particularly important for me because it is so different from the way that I learn. It requires accessing the back roads instead of zooming down the highway. It requires getting comfortable with creating mnemonic devices and singing songs to help with more challenging concepts. It reminded me that I have to slow down. If it takes us five days to get through a lesson at 20 minutes a day, there is no rush. Slow consistency will be the most effective way to learn.
   
4. Applicable to Traditional School and Homeschool Families
   I often read books specific to homeschool families because those are relevant to us, but this book was written for families whose children are in school. In fact, the author recommends against a parent being the primary reading teacher. While I disagree with that premise, I love the way that she explains how parents are active participants and advocates for their children who are in school. She walks through the ways to work with teachers in order to have the most effective outcomes. She also offers the very practical advice that having a child repeat a year is not necessarily useful because if the child did not progress with standard instruction the first time, it does not make sense that simply repeating it would work. Often the more effective method is to allow the student to move to the next grade while providing direct reading intervention.
   
   This is one of the places that I believe homeschooling can be particularly helpful, even though the author seemed in general to be against homeschooling children with dyslexia. In a homeschooling environment, it is easy to remove the reading requirement from almost any subject. My daughter excels in every subject until she has to read the information. By reading to her, allowing her to listen to audiobooks, watch relevant videos, and work with her brothers through the challenging parts, she doesn’t have to feel behind because there is no one to be behind. We are all working together on each child’s individual learning path.

Didn’t Love

I did not love how long it took to get to the most applicable parts of the book. Throughout the book, the author stated “when we get to Chapter 19.” When we finally arrived at Chapter 19 that walked through how to teach a dyslexic child to read, it was packed with practical information that I have already implemented. I strongly prefer books that lay out the real life applications first and then walk through the theory afterwards because it becomes easier for me to understand the importance. At times I found myself distracted trying to get to Chapter 19 instead of focusing on the information in the present chapter.

Lessons Learned

• The practical implementation correspond well with both Charlotte Mason and the Braver Learner systems that work well for our family. It discusses the importance of keeping lessons short and consistent as well as reading books that fascinate children. It’s also important to “add the magic,” another way of saying keeping the lessons light and fun to make the learning aspects more effective. Writing is no longer a chore when my artist gets to choose her color of paper and pens. Reading is cozy when we get to build a fire before we get started. Lessons are enjoyable with candles and cookies. Making the magic the focus instead of the drudgery brings joy to the hard parts.
  
• Early intentional interventions can be highly effective. This is only my second year homeschooling, but I could tell that my daughter was struggling with reading. I did not expect my kids to learn anything at the same pace, but I could tell that we were not making any progress, even when she enjoyed the lessons. I was actually nervous to ask her educational specialist, who helps us through our homeschool charter school, about testing her. I felt inadequate and ignorant about the whole world of reading challenges. My mom was the one who encouraged to speak up about it. I loved that this book tells parents to advocate for their children early because that is when interventions are most effective.
  
• It reminded me to be patient with my husband. I attributed Afa’s reading and articulation challenges to the fact that he moved through multiple countries with multiple languages until he arrived in the United States around nine years old. He learned English relatively late and had every reason to struggle with retrieving the right vocabulary. As we learned more about dyslexia and the fact that time is the most important factor in success, I have started to simply wait. When we are having conversations and he cannot find the right word, I now understand the importance of waiting. When we need to prepare a lesson for church, I can ensure that he has plenty of time to work though it. In addition to the ways that it helped me with my daughter, I am so grateful in the ways that it helped me understand my husband.