Am I Dyslexic?
How did my parents come to understand that I have issues? Who did we approach?
To introduce myself I was a student at Diksa and now I’ve been volunteering there for the past 3 years. The purpose of putting up this piece of writing is so, other parents and individuals, interested in understanding learning disabilities would be able to get a perspective on what it means to deal with a learning disability and why often it shouldn’t be a loosely used term.
To get to know that you child has a learning difficulty is heartbreaking every parent would want to talk about about areas that their children is excelling at, especially school. To admit that your child has difficulty is hard nevertheless. My issues were always present right from a very young age. Reading was something I absolutely hated. Growing up reading and writing became a drill at home. Being the older or two meant that I had no role model. I was on my own to figure it out. My mother was unaware of the issues that I had. Though she just thought that I was slow. But till 5th grade somehow this drill my mom and I had for academics worked. I was sort of excelling at school, but that also meant I had to spend twice the amount of time than an average individual. But to me studying was always a grueling process. I absolutely abhorred it. I had strict timings for play and study. So often times I would be cooped up in my room studying, sometimes all day even, during tests, while my friends were out on the streets playing.
As I moved into higher grades, coping with the workload became quite difficult. The expectations were higher and quite honestly I had no place in the fast paced academic scenario. As I progressed through 6th grade my marks started to decline drastically and my parents started receiving complaints from school on how I can do better if only I worked harder. But in reality I was working hard. I was spending more time than the rest of my classmates yet my performance said so otherwise. My parents were quite helpless at that point desperately looking for help. So my mom started looking for doctors and so came one appointment after another- neurologist, psychiatrist and clinical psychologist one referring to the next. Some speculated that it could be imbalances in serotonin levels however it was not a definite answer. The visits continued till we met occupational therapist Mrs Nirmala who then referred us to Diksa.