“It was the worst. I would scream and shout and he would cry and cry. He would tell me the words keeping moving. I was not happy because I was impatient and became angry,” she said.
Mereyotlhe took her son to an educational psychologist to find out why he was “too stubborn to read or spell correctly”. The educational psychologist told her that her son had dyslexia – a learning difficulty that affects a person’s ability to read and spell.
Homeschooling
“Children who have it are often smart and hardworking but they have trouble connecting the letters they see to the sound those letters make,” said Mereyotlhe, who started doing research about dyslexia and how best to help her son. She decided to enroll him in a homeschooling programme.
“I almost fainted when I was told the fees were double his mainstream school fees, but the progress he has made is worth every cent,” she said.
According to Mereyotlhe, the sooner a child is diagnosed the better.
“Many children who have dyslexia go through school without it being diagnosed and drop out in the long run.”
Her message to parents going through this challenge is to be patient with their children and take them to an educational psychologist for an assessment. – Health-e News.
An edited version of this story was published by IOL.
