Dyslexia Awareness

October was Dyslexia Awareness Month and we couldn’t let it pass without doing our bit to raise awareness.

Dyslexia is a life-long learning disability affecting reading, writing and spelling. It’s something our team know something about, either personally or because they are supporting a family member.

Dyslexia affects 1 in 10 people, yet 80% of dyslexic students leaving school without a formal diagnosis. Dyslexics are 3 x more likely to suffer with their mental health.

Here are 4 ways you can support a child with dyslexia.

1 – Listen

Teachers and parents can make a huge difference to how a dyslexic child feels. Failure and frustration are daily companions for these children, and we need to help them talk about their feelings. This is part of what we refer to as ‘seeing, hearing and holding’ our children in the Making Me program. When we do this, we show children that their feelings matter, and they don’t suffer in silence.

2- Knowledge is Power

We must give children a simple explanation of dyslexia and why they are experiencing daily challenges. To these children it doesn’t seem to matter how hard they try, so they begin to believe themselves to be lazy or stupid. We need to help them get rid of these misconceptions because Dyslexia does not affect intelligence and there are so many wonderful examples of famous dyslexics both current and throughout our history.

3 – Set Realistic Goals

We need to help these children to set realistic and achievable goals, so they can start to experience success and show them their hard work and effort pays off. We need to help them break their cycle of failure.

4- Celebrate Success

Self-esteem can be salvaged through prowess in sport, drama, art, computing, engineering…literally anything. What’s important is that we find what they are good at and celebrate it because how children feel about themselves has a lasting impact on the rest of their lives.

Dyslexic children will not always be at a disadvantage, they grow up to be adults with highly sought-after skills including creativity and problem solving. Our job is to help them navigate these tricky early years, so they emerge from education feeling good about themselves and knowing they are capable and competent individuals.

At Making Me we believe schools, teachers and parents all play a critical role in laying the foundations of good mental health and wellbeing for life. If you want to find out more about how Making Me can support you or your school with an emotional literacy program developed specifically for Primary please email contactus@makingme.org.uk

If you need more information or support regarding Dyslexia you can find help on the British Dyslexia Association or NHS websites: