When Learning to Read is Really Hard
Guest post by Gea Meijering, Read Your World Author Sponsor 2024
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses or let’s say things you are good at and things you are not so good at. How would you feel if reading was difficult for you? You can’t image? Join me in a little experiment and see for yourself.
Try to read the line in bold print using this key.
a=z b=y c=x d=w e=v f=u g=t h=s
i=r j=q k=p l=o m=n n=m o=l p=k
g=j r=i s=h t=g u=f v=e w=d x=c
y=b z=a
Gsv sziwvhg gsrmt uli nv vevi zmw zodzbh droo yv gl ivzw, dirgv zmw hkvoo.
Do you know what it says? Did you solve the puzzle? Tiring right? Frustrating maybe? Is it irritating? A whole new language for you? Imagine having to use this key for every single word, sentence, and paragraph you read every day. Everywhere. At school, at home, downtown. This is what it feels like for me to read and write. I am hacking code on a daily basis.
Excerpt of Hacking the Code; The Ziggety Zaggety Road of a D-Kid
It’s called dyslexia. From the old root Dys = difficulty and Lexis=words. October is Dyslexia Awareness Month promoting a more accessible and inclusive world for people with dyslexia and low literacy.
Dyslexia affects 20 percent of the population and represents 80–90 percent of all those with learning disabilities. Some of the brightest children struggle to read. While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often are very fast and creative thinkers.*
My own experience as the mother of a dyslexic child, seeing the struggles up close and personal made me want to do something. Too many kids in our school were struggling without even knowing why. Sadly not every teacher has sufficient knowledge about dyslexia or is not allowed to bring it up. That’s our own experience. And how are parents to know why their child struggles in school? To top it all off, a widely used reading program in the US is not effective. Listen to the podcast ‘Sold a Story: How teaching kids to read went so wrong’ to learn more about that.
Enough reasons for me to jump on the barricade. I wanted to tell the story of being dyslexic from a child’s point of view. In the hope that children will recognize themselves in the story, show how it feels to be dyslexic. To build empathy and give a different perspective, alleviate misconceptions and stereotypes to those that don’t read and write as easily as you might do. For parents, teachers and all adults too, that struggle to read or know someone that does.
This all resulted in Hacking the Code: The Ziggety Zaggety Road of a D-Kid. A middle grade chapter book with more than 80 illustrations by Mads Johan Øgaard, who is dyslexic himself. We’ve modeled the book to Diary of a Wimpy Kid which is the first book my dyslexic child really liked to read.
I call Hacking the Code a trojan horse, the outer layer is a fun story full of shenanigans, friendship and creativity hidden within all the little knots and bolts of being dyslexic.
We hope this way, spreading dyslexia awareness with a sprinkle of joy and special friendships will help us realize that we all are different and that makes the world a better place. -Gea Meijering
About the author:
Gea is a passionate creative and original ideas give her a jolt of energy.
A storyteller, marketeer, parent mentor and artist with a passion and a mission. As the mother of a dyslexic son, she researched dyslexia better than an FBI agent would, and witnessed the dyslexia struggle and gift it can be, upfront and personal. Gea volunteered as a parent mentor for the special education department of her local school district and is a dynamic dyslexia advocate. Over the years she saw many kids and their parents struggling to find out why school wasn’t going well. Reason to write a children’s book that offers kids and families the opportunity to identify with the different characters, make visible the learning struggles some students go through and bring dyslexia awareness to the community.
Gea grew up in the Netherlands, and is now living in SoCal.
- http://icarepress.com/
- https://www.facebook.com/hackingthecode/
- https://www.instagram.com/hacking.the.code/
- tiktok: Hacking the Code
- https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Code-Ziggety-Zaggety-Dyslexic/dp/1736626108/
*The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity
