Stealth Dyslexia and the Trauma of Undiagnosed or Untreated Learning Challenges

If you are a parent, you want your child to have confidence and feel great about themselves.  It just goes with the territory.

But what if there’s something that you can’t see or don’t understand that seems to be chipping away at your child’s self esteem?

Stealth dyslexia is one of those challenges. Stealth dyslexia is a fairly recent term, that’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  These are children, or even adults, who read well enough and have good enough coping skills that they don’t look like they have a problem.

The challenge with being a master compensator is that your struggles go unrecognized by those who might be able to offer help and often are misinterpreted as exactly the opposite of what they are:  laziness or lack of motivation.

Students with stealth dyslexia misunderstand themselves.  They know things should be easier and can’t figure out why they’re not.  This colors their view of learning and of their own abilities.  They may think of themselves as an imposter and spend a great deal of mental and emotional energy trying to hide their “inadequacies.” They may start to associate school and learning with negative self talk:

“I’m dumb.”

“School is a waste.”

“I’m not good at it.”

“I’m not as good as the other kids.”

They may become manipulative or defensive and take on the identity of being “less than.”  

Dr. Dan Peters, Executive Director of Summit Center, and co-founder of the Parent Footprint podcast, shared, as a guest on our LD Expert Live broadcast, that he wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until he was 40, and even though he was an accomplished psychologist, speaker and author, he carried around this feeling that he wasn’t enough because he knew how much effort reading took for him.

These feelings coupled with a strong ability to compensate are not exclusive to dyslexia, but can apply to other learning disabilities as well because these students are often so bright that they are capable of getting through.  What gets overlooked is how taxing this is for them and the cost in mental health, anxiety, and self esteem.   

Kids really want to do well and I find that, especially in the primary grades, children can memorize the stories so it looks like they can read at school and parents are told that their child is doing fine.

At home, it may be a very different story.

Now the child is in an emotionally safe space, there are no peers around, and they’re tired from all the mental effort, so they dig in when it comes to doing homework or reading.  The teacher says the child is doing fine (because they look fine at school), so the parent, who has now taken on the role of teacher, tutor and therapist, begins to second guess themselves.  It begins to stress the parent’s relationship with the child and the parent’s mental health as they take on the deficiency as their own.

At the learning centers, we operate from the perspective that children do well when they can.  They want to please us, and when they can’t there are underlying skills that are getting in the way - that are creating roadblocks to learning as easily as they could be. 

We look at learning like a continuum that builds kind of like a ladder.  You can download a copy of the learning skills continuum here.

Academics and school skills are at the top of the ladder and the rungs underneath are whole sets of skills that need to be solid and in place to support the academic learning at the top.  The main areas are Neurodevelopmental or Core Learning Skills, Processing Skills, and Executive Function.  On the download you will be able to see all the different skills that fall in those major areas.  When any of these skills are weak or underdeveloped, it can cause the student to have to work harder or longer than expected, and that chips away at their self-esteem and confidence..

Here’s the thing that I want parents and teachers to know:

These weak underlying skills can be developed. The brain research and clinical evidence solidly show that new more effective connections or neuropathways in the brain can be made through targeted brain training so that learning can be easier.  

At Stowell Learning Centers, we do what we call a functional academic and learning skills evaluation.  We’re not really going after a diagnosis, although we do diagnose dyslexia, but we want to see what the challenges look like functionally for the student and what underlying skills are at the root of the problem so that we can create a plan to strengthen those skills.

One of the reasons that testing, diagnosis, and treatment is so important is that having dyslexia or any other learning disability is traumatic.

I’ve worked with this population of students for over 35 years and I’ve always known that having learning difficulties is painful and embarrassing, but in the last few years we have been working with a number of trauma informed specialists and realized that our kids are experiencing chronic trauma everyday as they go to school.  They live with the fear that they may be found out or embarrassed in front of their peers.

I always want to encourage parents that it’s never too late to get help for their child, but generally the earlier the better.  It just saves everyone a lot of grief.  But as a parent, it’s hard to know if what you’re noticing really warrants help. 

My advice to parents is to trust yourself.

You know your child or teen the best.  Kids are bombarded with unhealthy messages for society and social media.  They’ve got to be a doctor or a lawyer,  everything depends on their grades, they’ve got to have the perfect life depicted on social media. If you sense that your child is losing their sense of hopefulness; f they seem to be working too hard or too long on school and homework; f they are anxious and resistant; if you’re finding yourself thinking your child is lazy or unmotivated, it’s time to investigate further.     

Testing can help.  Find a clinical psychologist, therapist, or learning specialist that can help you get to the real root of the problem.  We find that when parents and students know that there’s something making it so hard, it becomes a relief to everyone. 

I remember a 16-year-old high school student who came in for testing.  When he found out he was dyslexic, he was so happy. That may seem like an odd response for a young man who had good grades at school, but he knew how hard it was for him.

Knowing there was a reason and that it wasn’t his fault, was an incredible relief to him.

When students struggle with reading, math or other aspects of school, there are almost always underlying processing skills that are weak or inefficient that become roadblocks to learning.  It is important to recognize that kids do not just grow out of learning challenges.  The only way to make real and permanent change is to identify and develop those underlying skills - to retrain the brain to process information more effectively in order to eliminate the struggles associated with dyslexia and other learning disabilities.  

Jill Stowell, M.S.

Author:  Take the Stone Out of the Shoe: A Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning, and Attention Challenges

Founder/Executive Director Stowell Learning Centers where we help children and adults eliminate struggles associated with dyslexia and learning disabilities.  

www.stowellcenter.com

Listen to or watch this episode on the podcast: https://stowellcenter.com/2023/02/24/episode-52-stealth-dyslexia/