Dyslexia - The Daily Struggle (Part 1)

Greetings from the Author's Chair,

This week has been awesome. There's a lot going on with the release of book 5, The Rune in the Secret of the Crystal Franchise. In celebration, I've been having several great deals this week with free Kindle Free Days and Kindle Countdown Deals. 

So, I've been meaning to tell you a little about my story and why having a published book is such a big deal to me.  

If you follow me, you may have heard me tell you that I suffer with Dyslexia. Now, I'm not here to get your sympathy...far from it. I really want to raise awareness for this little talked about disability. 

Dyslexia, isn't that where you see letters backwards making it difficult to read? Perhaps, and those are some symptoms. But if you dig deeper into this issue, you'll find that there are a myriad of problems. Some can have many of the symptoms, other have few. Many don't even know they suffer.  Tomorrow, I'll go more in depth on symptoms and then later this week, I'll provide some tips on some of how to better deal with symptoms.

Today, I want to give you a little short story on my experiences when I was in grade school. 

I began attending school in the early 60's. Back then, Dyslexia was only barely understood. Not many schools had training to recognize and help those had it. My school was no different than many. They recognized that I was "a slow reader", but didn't know what do to.  In 2nd grade, I thought I read better than others when we had our group reading session. I read faster than other children in my class. In fact, I hated the reading in the circle group because I couldn't stand waiting for the kid next to me to finish his sentence so I could read mine. But they held me back a grade because I was slow. To a seven year old, that's a devastating thing to do. The friends I had made all laughed when they advanced and I didn't. Back then, bullying was rampant. Well, it's rampant today too, but at least some things are being done about it. This simply gave them more bullying material. But I digress. 

Later in about the 3rd and 4th grade, the teachers would get frustrated when they were teaching english because I couldn't write and learn how to express my thoughts on paper. So to prevent me from holding the entire class back, the teachers would pull me out of the classroom during the english lesson and plunk me in a conference room out in the hallway. My instructions were simple. Write the alphabet over and over and over and over again... Some days, I got to copy text from a workbook. Entire paragraphs and then the teacher would grade me on how well I copied. With all the present mistakes, I was made to continue copying the same paragraph until I eventually got it right.

I never really did well in school. My grades were proof that I was disinterested in school. They thought maybe I had vision problems, so they put me in the front of the class to see the chalkboard better. Then I got glasses...bullying continued...

I understood the material I was taught. I just couldn't convey my thoughts to the page. Essay tests? Forget it Multiple choice? Marginal. Math? Never mind that. 

I did manage to pass my sophomore english class as a Senior in High School. I'll never forget the look on Ms. Scoogle's face when I walked into her class that first day. I had her every class I had taken...lucky me. "Ah, Mr. Larson," she said, eyebrows raised and a smirk on the corner of her mouth, "I see you've come to have another go of it...do you think you'll make it this time?"


The entire class of freshmen roared with laughter. I took my usual place in the front and she made sure that she picked me to answer most of the class questions...lucky me again...but she passed me and I did graduate. 

 So, having difficulty relaying thoughts to a page and wanting to become a writer...well, that was just never something I'd ever accomplish. I loved reading books. I was named bookworm in grade school. Later, in high, they called me bookie, 'cause I always had a book under my arm.

I had many stories in my mind that I dearly wanted to write, but never had the gumption. That's when I discovered that I suffered with Dyslexia. So in my late 40's, I decided to better myself and went to college. 6 years later, I obtained by MBA in Business and graduated with honors. I was a 4.0 GPA student and made the deans list.

This gave me the confidence to write books...so I did. Five books and three years later, I am now writing full time. 

Tomorrow, I'll go over warning signs and other symptoms to help you identify things perhaps in your own self or children. I hope that, by me telling my story, others will benefit and can be saved from ridicule I suffered when I was a kid.

Thanks for tuning in today and I hope you'll come back tomorrow.

Author,
Brian K. Larson
#TheDyslexicAuthor