Seeing the world from dyslexics eyes.

A lot of families will benefit from your effort.

Mary

Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s one of the most moving things I’ve read in a long time. My son is too young to understand the similes you use to explain dyslexia, but I will save this for the future.

Eileen

Your website Dr. Brad :) is incredible! It really showed me a small piece of your world. I have a son with a learning disability. Although it is not dyslexia, he has gone through difficult times at school. He has had some supportive teachers, and has I hope, supportive parents ( we do everything we can to help), but he struggles, and some teachers just do not understand, and are unkind. He is smart and I asked him to read your story. He refused, I guess it is too emotional for him. I printed out your story, hoping that he will read it when I am not around. I hope he will be encouraged to hear your success story. My son is turning 14. We are worried about college. How did you do it? Did you receive help in your undergraduate program and graduate program to reach this height of success? Were both at Kansas State University? I WANT TO CONGRATULATE YOU ON YOUR RECENT GRADUATION!!!!Do you know any colleges/universities with good programs for students with disabilities?

Brad,

Great website. Outstanding job surviving the gauntlet! Congratulations on all that you have done, including graduation from college!

I’m sure there is much to be learned by many from your site, and mostly from your experience.

Your poster from 6th grade class says it all: “Success is getting up one more time then you fall” .

Best regards,

Andy

Thank you for posting this page!!!!
Will email the link to my daughter and read the page to my son.

k30a

What an inspirational message. I’m a retired teacher who has just really realized that I have an 8 yr. old grandson who needs special educ. help. He probably has a learning disability. His self esteem has dropped to zero. The other night he was mad about something(not school related)& yelled that no one understood him; he felt like he was stupid & he wished he’d never been born. It really shook me up.

He repeated kg. & completed first grade this past yr. I talked with his first gr. teacher over the weekend & she feels he needs special educ because of his reading problems. She is worried that as he enters 2nd gr. & is in class with high readers, he will really feel overwhelmed. He was in a low reading group this past year. Second gr. will not group.

My problem is this. I’ve got to convince his mom(my daughter)that she needs to ask for him to be tested for sp. educ. She will be very upset but this must be faced—the sooner the better for Cole’s sake. He acts & looks very normal but school is just so hard for him. How can I convince my daughter that this is help him so much? She will worry about the stigma attached to sp. educ. (Two of my daughter-in-laws are spec. educ. teachers.) How did you cope with that stigma?

I thougt I emailed this letter to you but Just realized that that might not be the case. So here is the reply through the dicussion board.
:O)

Mom,
Thank you for you letter!! Its really good to know the page is helping people.
I think when I was young, I was so discuraged that I didn’t want to beleave that people could
suceed with dyslexia. It was hard for me to hear for along time. I think I started getting enough
sucess out side of school that I started having fath in what I could do in school. I was such a
hard road to fath in my self. Your son has a great chance to be any thing he wants because of
you, your husband, and his teachers. I do not know that my page will give him fath in himself, but
I think the quote at the bottem might help him throughout life. “Success is getting up one more
time then you fall” You might sneek that into his room :O)

I have some pointers about college on my FAQ page. I talk about what makes a good college
and what makes a bad one. I recived my undergraduat degree from Adrain college (1,200
students). I simply could not have made it at a larger college/university. At the Phd level, you
really only interact with colluges and a few other proffesors. So the big university was not a big
problem then. The best college I ahve come across for LD students is LandMark college. It is a
college Just for LD students. I think its a great college. Unfortuntaly the price is too much, I
think. Its over $30K a semester. It has only 300 students and a faculty to student ration of 1 to
3! I could not think of a better environemt to learn. But the college would have been out of
reach for me then and would be out of reach for me now.

Take a look at the resources I ued when I was in college. With out them I simpley would not
have been able to graduate, let alone get a PhD.

Well I hoped that helped,
Good Luck!
Take care of you!
Brad Elder

I thought I emailed this to you but I’m not sure it went through as I replied to the message board address. Any whay here is is again.

Karen,
Thank you for the letter!
Special ed for me was a drag. I was imbaresed to be in it. I was much more mortified about my
glasses, my braces, and bing fat. If I had found a genie in a lamp and had 20 wishes I would not
have never mentiond getting out of the LD classes. I would ahve whished to be smart (some
where down the line) just to be smart, but not get out of the LD classes.

I think you might show your daughter my page and this letter. I really did want to die because I
did not know why I could do what the other kids could do. Knowing was a god send. I was
still depresed to be sure, but at least there was a reason. Without that reason I had nothing.
Kids will always find a reason to pick on each other. That is waht kids do best. As a adult I do
not fear what the kids told me when I was young, I cry form time to time because of what the
adults called me (directly and indirectly). Cole will have a reason for his bad grades and it will not
be because he is lazy or stupid. Teacher will ahve a reason for his grades and it will not be
because he is lazy or stupid. His parents will ahve a reason for his bad grades and it will not be
because he is lazy or stupid. Without this reason, this (possable) fact, Cole will have only what
the most important people in his life have, a view of himself as lazy and stupid. Nothing will affect
his core beleaf more about who he is and what he will become then his famly and his teachers.
Get her to look past grade school and see his life.
Ask her what she thinks he will say to her when he turns 40 and descovers the truth. What will
he say when he realizes that he could have been a computer engineer, a geneticist, a heart
surgeon, a poet, a painter, a commander of the space station, the greatest president the US has
seen since Abe Lincoln, or just a Dad who is proud of who he is, where he has gone and what he
has accomplished.
One of my cloest friends in highschool went throuh the LD classes with me. He had a natural
nack for computers and in 83 there were not many who had even tuched a computer. His mom
and dad refused to get him tested so he could not get help. He was in the LD class because he
had failed all his other classes, they just didn’t have anywhere else to put him. I past him 3 years
ago. He was working at McDonnals. He can’t hold a job for a whole list of excuese he gave
me. He has become the person everyone though he was. His name is Skip S. I knew
him when he had a future. When I hear some on call me Dr it reings hollow because I know
Skip should ahve been here too.

If Cole is dyslexic or does have an LD, Nothing in his life will be as important, Nothing will ahve
a more prfound impact on what he can do then getting tested.

If I can be any help at all let me know.
Good Luck!
Take care of you!
Brad Elder

Karen Conner wrote:

Karen,

First off, it may be a real blessing to have the two sister-in-laws who are special ed teachers (?). Hopefully they can shed some light on how much a positive approach can have for a child and the opposite, when parents or a district are resistant to helping a child who clearly needs help.

As to why your daughter is (your implication) going to be resistant to addressing or dealing with your grandson’s situation; that is something that will probably complicate matters worse than the ld issues, I suppose.

What you may want to consider is approaching the matter one small step at a time, however, remembering that every minute counts. The older he gets, the more difficult it will be to remediate him. I’m not trying to alarm you, but advise you to be vigilant to the timeframe.

Hopefully you can convince your daughter to have him tested/evaluated for ld matters, just to see if that is a problem, or at the very least to rule it out. Either through the district, through your own health insurance or through an outside party. (I suppose you could offer to pay, if you can, and if money is the issue. Not appropriate for me to even suggest, but you wrote to the bb, she didn’t).

Finally, Cole is lucky to have you to notice and be willing to be proactive in looking for help. So, on that note, I’ll wish you good luck and hope that all works out.

Andy

ps/ as was posted by momo a little while ago, here’s a pasted copy of an appropriate story for your daughter; or at least I thought so…

“Author: Chas
Date: 06-07-01 12:22

A water bearer in India had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily,with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water in his master’s house.

The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, but the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you. I have been able, for these past two years to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master’s house. Because of my flaws you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.

The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot,and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”

Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back
from the stream, you’ve watered them.

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”

Moral:

Each of us has our own unique flaws.We’re all cracked pots. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are, and look for the good in them.

There is a lot of good out there. There is a lot of good in us!

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape (even though some of us are pretty twisted)

Remember to appreciate all of the different people in your life! Or as we like to think of it — if it hadn’t been for the crackpots in our lives, it would have been pretty boring and not so interesting…”