Picture: Natasha (my darling daughter) June 2006. Her eyes are grey. You may be thinking they are blue, but trust me. They really are grey.

I recently traveled back in time with an article titled Discovering Language Disorder in our daughter. It discuss the signs of a language based learning disorder. The author, Carolyn, mentions one of my favorite books; Overcoming Dyslexia.

I was very angry after reading it. It was written by Sally Shaywitz and was published in April 2003.


I have a very strong memory of buying this book. It was November 2004. Natasha was 7.5 years old. She had learned next to nothing (in terms of reading) in her first grade year or her kindergarten year.


She was repeating first grade again at a private school. I just had a "special" parent-teacher conference. The teacher was highly concerned that Natasha didn't know any of her letters. To be fair Natasha could recognize 6 letters of the alphabet.


The prior year's teacher had sold me on a myth. The myth goes.... some children just aren't ready to read until they are 8 years old. And at that magically age they would just start reading. This year's teacher knew that something was wrong.




So with tears in my voice I called and asked J for help. She administrated the special education testing for the local public school. I briefly explained Natasha's challenges and I used just the right phrases. J highly recommended that I read Overcoming Dyslexia and slipped me into her schedule as quickly as possible. Natasha was tested 8 days later.

I ran out and bought the book. Did you know that it was possible to diagnose Dyslexia when a child was 5? And it can be diagnosed fairly accurate?


I sure as heck didn't. I was so mad at myself for listening to Natasha's kindergarten and first grade teachers. I was told to give my daughter time. Time fixes all ills.


It was a total load of baloney.


To be continued on this page......