Journey with dyslexia: A student’s perspective in her own words

Dyslexia is a hard condition to have, especially for kids who go to school. Have you ever wondered what in the world is dyslexia? 

Some people say it’s a curse or a disease or just a name. Some people just have no idea what it is – maybe never heard of it. Well, I’m about to tell you what it means. 

Dyslexia is a type of learning disability. It’s where letters or numbers go flying everywhere and the person has a hard time reading. I have dyslexia, so I’m going to share my experience and how I struggle with dyslexia.

One reason that dyslexia is hard is that you have a hard time reading and writing. For example, sometimes what a child is reading they see the letters flying everywhere like there was an explosion happening. 

Whenever a child starts writing and they hear a big word, they don’t know how to spell it. They try to spell it out but still get it wrong. Another example of this is sometimes when they called me up to read, I read slowly and couldn’t understand what I was reading, and sometimes I got embarrassed.

Another reason having dyslexia is hard is that the teachers didn’t help me a lot.  For example, the teachers that I had for kindergarten through second grade just left me there like a pile of nothing. As I say this, I’m realizing that some teachers don’t want to help the dyslexic students or just don’t know how to help them.

Although dyslexia is hard because of reading and writing and because some teachers don’t help the dyslexic students, one of the hardest things is that some parents think that their dyslexic child is lazy. They might think that their child doesn’t want to do anything. When I was in kindergarten, my parents sometimes got mad at me for not having good grades and for not doing my work because I didn’t understand it.

Having dyslexia is a hard condition because you don’t understand what you’re reading and writing.  Some teachers don’t know or just don’t want to help, and some people think you’re lazy or not working hard. It’s important to know about dyslexia, and the struggle that people with dyslexia go through, so that the people with dyslexia could get more help. I used to think that dyslexia was a horrible thing to have, but now I think that your brain learns in a different way.

The rest of the story

Jayleen started dyslexia therapy in third grade as an extremely quiet child.  Her mother knew that something was wrong.

Jayleen was obviously very bright. Why was she still barely able to read? After completing the two-to-three-year intensive therapy program, Jayleen was reading on grade level, but still struggling to get her thoughts down on paper, so she enrolled in Dyslexia Institute of Southern New Mexico’s creative writing program, taught by Anne Smith.  She wrote her essay on how dyslexia feels to a young child as part of Smith’s program.