Hooked-on Phonics DIDN’T Work for me
Dyslexia For the Win! How my “disability” saved me from brainwashing and opened my mind to a different communication.
My mother’s side of the family is obsessed with getting lost in stories. Seriously, they got grounded for reading.
I love stories as well, but I when I was a child, I had a secret… I had no idea how to read the stories unless there were pictures. Intuitively I “read” books off their pictures (hints future Tarot reader) but the letters looked like hieroglyphics.
By the time I was seven I could no longer hide that I couldn’t read or sound out letters. My mother tried her best to teach me, but I just couldn’t piece together what she was telling me. Which she took as a personal attack on her.
To my mother, me being illiterate made her look like a bad mother. Desperate for a solution she bought every reading tool she could find. We were both hopeful that the answer to my reading would be Hooked-on Phonics. I remember spending hours staring at the board trying to make one word come out correctly.
After months of trying my mother cracked, she was done. Done teaching me and done watching all her time and money being wasted. She kicked the phonics board across the room. She told me that I could read but I was just trying to make her upset.
Confused, scared, and in tears my seven-year-old mind created a core belief, “I was a stupid terrible child that was just trying to hurt my mother.”
Finding the Answer
I was a smart kid. When other kids colored, I asked for math worksheets. In kindergarten. I had a huge vocabulary, I loved learning, and creating stories, but I could not read or write to save my life.
By the third grade, I was getting zeros on tests but had all the answers during the lessons so the school stepped in. ESL teachers started testing me. They’d take me out of the classroom, read the tests, and write my answers. I started getting 100% on every test.
They wanted to hold me back because I had a kindergarten level of reading and writing. Yet, they couldn’t because I was an advanced with a sixth-grade level of math and science. With no other options they allowed left me alone and didn’t provide any additional help.
During the fifth grade, my teacher had a rule that if a student misspelled words on papers those words become their spelling words. Which would have been a brilliant idea EXCPET that she refused to tell you what the right spelling was.
“Go look it up in the dictionary.” Which I could not. Believe me, I tried.
My mother studied the dictionary for FUN as a child. I thought if I could learn the dictionary, I’d be just as smart as my mother. It didn’t work.
No matter how much I explained my reading issues to my teacher, but she just told me to try harder.
No one could figure out how I could be so smart and be so dumb. They thought I was faking for attention. They labeled me a problem child.
Luckily, my friend Vanessa’s mom was a reading specialist teacher. She evaluated me over the summer before I entered sixth grade.
Finally, I had an answer... dyslexia.
The Damage was Done
“It isn’t your fault. Your brain just works differently.” Vanessa’s mom assured me.
Finally, I felt seen.
I wasn’t a troublemaker, (yet) I wasn’t too stubborn, and I wasn’t faking. There was a REAL reason the words were hieroglyphs. (and still are if the front is not a standard front)
In the 90s dyslexic wasn’t a recognized disability in Oregon, so even though I had an answer there was zero compassion from the adults/teachers around me. I just had to work harder. *Eyeroll
The truth is they really didn’t understand dyslexia in the 90s, even less before the 90s. There was almost no research on it. They labeled children with dyslexia as the R word and moved on. (as my father states it)
“I’m not convinced that I know how to read, I just memorized a lot of words.” – Nick Miller, New Girl
Thanks to my photographic or Eidetic (thanks Sheldon) memory I was able to teach myself tips and tricks that other people couldn’t. I’d memorize a lot of words, their lengths, and most of their letters to get by.
I taught myself to write out the definition of the word within the sentence instead of the word itself because I didn’t know how to spell it. Hence, why I write in long drawn-out paragraphs, instead of simplifying with words. *cringe (Thanks fifth-grade teacher.)
When AOL instant chat became popular, I was allowed to chat with friends as long as I wanted because my mother noticed that my writing was improving.
Finally, I was learning to manage my “disability” on my own, but the damage had been done. The mind f*ck was set in stone.
I wouldn’t go far in life because I couldn’t read and write. I was stupid.
I gave up acting because I was scared to cold read scripts, and I won’t be able to.
I gave up writing stories. Convinced I’d never be able to write them in a way that others could read or understand them.
My mother didn’t love or care about me. (There was a lot more to it than reading but reading was the epicenter.)
I received a lot of emotional, psychological, physical damage that’s rippled into many areas of my life, but one bullet I did dodge…not being brainwashed by my mother.
Dodging the Bullet
Sidenote: I’m the youngest of my mother’s six children. I’m also the only one with a different father (a father who’s dyslexic). I’m the only one of her children that’s dyslexic. She had no idea how to handle it.
Reading is my mother’s love language. Something that I don’t even think she knows. Since I couldn’t read, I never developed an emotional love connection with my mother. By no fault of my own.
Through my personal healing and reflection, I’ve been able to connect the dots to my mother’s traumas, trauma responses, and love language.
I learned that when my mother was about eight years old, she ran and jumped into her father’s lap to struggle with him. He threw her to the ground, “Your too old for this sh*t.”
She carried that trauma with her through raising her children. She believes that by eight all physical or emotional affection with children was inappropriate. (this really f*cked my father, but that’s a story for later)
Yet, she found a solution for herself. She chose to share love and affection created through books and stories.
I got a taste of that when the Harry Potter series first came out. I was in my teens and a teacher read it to our class. I was hooked. Finally, I’d found a book series that I was interested in, so she read it.
Every time a new book released; she’d buy it, read it, then pass it to me. It was an unspoken shared experience, something only we shared together. (no matter what became of us, I will cherish this experience)
I’ve watched her do this all her grandchildren as well. Each grandchild has their own specific series that she only shares with them. Which led me to the understanding that her love language is through sharing books and stories.
Since she couldn’t create a loving mother/child relationship with me, her manipulations and lies didn’t work on me. My brothers and sisters weren’t as lucky.
She controlled what stories they read and the stories they told. (As lovely as it was to have a surprise book on my bed that I hadn’t asked for. It was a statement of “I approve” this and gave her the idea that she was in control.)
My siblings could not separate her truths from lies because she wove her stories as love and affection. They didn’t know any better but neither did she. (It doesn’t excuse all the pure evil things she did, but I understand and have compassion for why it happened.)
My siblings and mother were all love starved children that found love through sharing stories. Something I was never able to do with any of them. As much as that sucked. I feel lucky that I dodged that bullet.
The Mystery of Dyslexia
Although I could do without all the panic induced anxiety that comes when I need to take notes, order at a new restaurant, read directions, or type anything with someone watching me. I don’t know if I’d be the person I am today without dyslexia.
Dyslexia saved me from my mother’s brainwashing. It’s led to some very humorous mix-ups and of one my catch phrase “Dyslexia for the Win!” And it taught me to fall in love with oral story telling.
But one thing that’s always fascinated me is that I can quickly pick up other ancient/native languages (reading, writing, and speaking). Which has left me pondering how that would be.
I know there’s more research on dyslexia than it was in the 90s BUT I don’t believe that it’s something we can understand logically. I think it’s actually something to look at spiritually.
There are many “truths” around dyslexia like how it also affects our speech and hearing. Yet, I haven’t met anyone that has dyslexia present in the same way, and we all have our own solutions for it.
I had one friend whose dyslexia assigns colors to specific letters, numbers and words. (broke my brain when she explained it)
My dyslexia only looks at the first and the last letter, the length of the word and fills in the blank. I could write an entire article on how my dyslexic presents itself, but I won’t unless you ask.
Those that are dyslexic tend to gravitate to each other. Somehow, we can communicate and read each other’s writing without skipping a beat. (It’s like how people with ADHD communicate…we can just follow what the other is saying.)
Which leads me to a theory.
Those that are dyslexic have a consciousness isn’t from this world/time. That their souls that remember a different depth to language. They remember a more primal and instinctual language. They unknowing remember the magic of language.
Today we don’t even speak a “native” English. The English we speak is flat, cut, extracted, and merged from multiple languages. (I learned this from the dictionary studying HA)
It’s disconnected from the rhythm of life, the earth, and the culture. (Think about how “Old English” has a rhythm, dance, and beauty to it.)
Studying Gaeilge from a native speaker today you experience depths and magic of the language.
Gaeilge is alive and it breathes life into communication. It’s like it awakens and walks through worlds.
I’ve also experienced magic from American Indigenous and Hispanic speakers.
These languages just make more sense than English. They feel like the magic words I’ve been missing.
So maybe, just maybe dyslexia isn’t a disability, but a remembering.
Pulling a thread of ancient knowing into today’s tapestry. A connection to the magic of communication. A communication that travels through worlds and time.
If you want to share some joy with me… a cup of tea always brings a smile to my face. - thank you!
I encourage you to explore the language of your ancestors, especially if you’re dyslexic.
(if it’s English maybe look into Old English)
We may not be able to revive every word, but maybe we can breathe new life and magic into our language.
