Parents!!!

Both my parents and Ed's have curious attitudes to the girls' diagnoses of dyslexia etc.

My parents were both primary teachers but come from the era when dyslexia was seen as either a complete inablity to learn to read or write, or it was the sign of a lazy child. They find it hard to accept that the girls, who are highly intelligent, have high reading ages relative to their chronological ages and score above average even in maths, where they struggle the most visably, could have a learning disability. When I try to explain that they are scoring highly despite the disability and that they are not fulfulling their potential and that this has a huge knock-on effect on confidence and self-esteem they struggle to accept this could be the case. They say things like, "It's just the way she is." or, "She's just not very mathematically minded."

This drives me insane because we have a way to make it easier for them and it helps with the self-seteem and confidence as well. If they had a physical injury they would not argue to leave it to get better by itself, or that they would outgrow it.

Ed's mother on the other hand, has no problems in accepting that the girls might have learning disabilities. What she doesn't understand is why we are doing anything about them. She said to Ed, this weekend, "You had dyslexia but we didn't tell you and you worked hard and got over it." Ed remembers going to an Ed. Psych. but as far as he was concerned there was no follow up. What actually happened was that his parents were told, as we have been with the girls, that he had a high IQ etc but that he had processing problems that came under the dslexia and dyspraxic  umbrellas. They decided that if tehy didn't tell him then he would work hard to keep up and as he got older it would all disappear. What actually happened was that Ed has suffered from crippling self-esteem and confidence issues and they have had a significant effect upon his life.

So, we have one set of grandparents who "don't believe" in such things and the other set that think that if we ignore it and make the girls work harder, get extra tutors and do more homework so they don't fall behind, it will all work out.

It was hard arduing the case with them on Abi's behalf. I have the feeling that it will be even harder now we have the two of them to fight for. Fight we will, however!