The little boy sat on the last row in class. There was no point seating him upfront since he never participated in too many class discussions. The topic was Roman numerals and the teacher was dictating important information about symbols and values to the children. She moved from one complex definition to another. The little boy tried desperately to keep pace with the furious flow of words. He would reach halfway through a sentence before realising the teacher had already moved to the next piece of information.
Quickly, he would abandon his half-finished line and attempt to catch up with the other. His pencil hovered hesitantly over the page as his mind struggled to recall spellings. Another sentence abandoned. And again and again. Till all you could see on the white-lined page were wet smudges of grey, where his tears fell on the paper.
A few years back, battle-bruised from the world of newsroom politics and relentless TV pressure, I decided to take a break from journalism and follow my love for working with children. I went back to school in a way and completed my master’s in working with children with learning disabilities, or dyslexia.
Perhaps it was drawing on my own experience at school, where my struggle with math was more than a “mental block” or a matter of more practice. The irony of my career being one of a business journalist, analysing financial numbers and how excruciatingly difficult it was at the start, is not lost on me.
Dyslexia or learning disabilities as they are often referred to, are not just about jumbled-up spellings. Children with dyslexia struggle with skills we take for granted in our classrooms; listening and writing simultaneously, recalling large pieces of information readily, having the capacity to plan ahead and work in a systematic manner. It’s no wonder that classrooms are their own private hell.
All this comes layered with shame. And guilt. And confusion. About why you can’t get this the way the other kids in your class do. About why your handwriting may not be as neat, nor your ability to solve complex mathematical equations as swiftly as your classmates.
Once done with my academic pursuit, I chose to work in a school where I thought I could help kids with dyslexia read, write and plan better. I’m fairly confident the one learning the most in that room was me. Every day, the children and their bright minds would surprise me and fill my heart with joy.
The ability of a little girl to attack jigsaw puzzles and put them together in a jiffy, the graphic artist in another, the singer in a third... And stories, so many stories, about siblings and parents and sometimes sadder ones, about classmates who were often cruel in their words and gestures. More than anything else, I think it was a moment where they were just being themselves, guards down, pressure lowered.
In large swathes of our education system, the problem for children with dyslexia is often amplified by their economic condition. First-generation learners have no support for basic homework, so identifying and providing support for learning issues is a far cry. By Grade 1, the problem is small. By Grade 5, the child is buried under years of failure.
As a mother once confided,
“All they see is the 60% marks on his paper. No one sees how hard he has to work at everything, 5 times harder than anyone in his class.”
And when he’s branded with his grade, it chips away at his self-confidence, test by test.
Or another mother, whose eyes welled up with pride when she saw her daughter perform a little ballet piece on stage.
She may not be the most graceful dancer in the eyes of others but for her mother, at that moment, she’s a star (Children with dyslexia sometimes struggle with coordinated movements, where the left and the right side of the body don’t work in perfect alignment).
The Only Advice – Be Kind
My advice to many concerned and dejected parents would be, just treat school like bitter medicine that your child needs to swallow. Once they’re through, things will be much easier. They can choose a profession they love, they can find their own ways to get around the struggles they may face with reading or writing. But what protects them from the words? From the sly glances, or suppressed giggles when your note has the word ‘decide’ spelt in five different ways in the same piece, or when you’re addressing a team and halting as your mind searches for the word you wanted.
But if I were to indulge in name calling for people who mock children with dyslexia, or any disability for that matter, that would be doing a disservice to these amazing kids. They’re so much more than a mean-spirited joke.
So I’ll end my piece with a request. Be kind to children, teach your children and grandchildren to be kind to kids who look and sound different, kids who may not learn or behave the same as you, to kids who struggle to finish that half-written sentence. I don’t know a single child who doesn’t want to be at the number one rank. But I do know many who want to be loved and understood.
(Mitali Mukherjee has been a business journalist for the last 18 years. She is Consulting Editor, Business at Editorji. She has a Master’s in working with children with learning disabilities from SNDT University, Mumbai.)
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