Protecting Your Child's Self-Esteem
When Sally Shaywitz is asked what the most important thing parents can do for a dyslexic child is, her answer is not “find the best reading tutor” or “get into the best school.” It is: protect your child’s self-esteem. Dyslexia is not just a reading problem; it is an experience of daily failure, confusion, and often shame in the environment where children spend most of their waking hours. How a child learns to understand and feel about themselves in the context of their learning difference will shape their trajectory far beyond what any specific reading program can determine.
Why Self-Esteem Is at Risk
School is an environment that constantly and publicly evaluates the very skill that dyslexic children find hardest. Reading aloud in class, spelling quizzes, timed tests, book reports — these activities that are routine for typical learners are humiliating minefields for the child who cannot yet decode fluently. By the time many dyslexic children receive a diagnosis, they have internalized a story about themselves: that they are stupid, lazy, or broken.
This is compounded by the “sea of strengths” paradox. These same children are often clearly perceptive, articulate, curious, and socially skilled — they are acutely aware of the gap between how capable they feel and how poorly they perform in the reading-heavy school environment. That discrepancy is painful.
Explaining Dyslexia to Your Child
Shaywitz recommends talking to children about their dyslexia directly, in age-appropriate language, as soon as they are old enough to understand. Children who are not given an explanation fill the vacuum with their own theories — and those theories are almost always worse than the truth.
A child-friendly explanation might go: “Your brain is really good at lots of things — understanding ideas, solving problems, and making connections. But the part of your brain that links letters to sounds works differently. That makes reading harder for you than for some other kids. It’s not about trying hard enough or being smart enough. It’s just how your brain is wired. And there are things we can do to help it.”
Key messages to convey:
- Dyslexia is not their fault
- Dyslexia does not mean they are less intelligent
- Dyslexia does not define what they can achieve
- Help is available and things will get better with the right support
Building Islands of Competence
Psychologist Robert Brooks, whose work Shaywitz references, emphasizes the importance of helping children build “islands of competence” — areas where they experience genuine mastery and success. These can be anything: sports, art, music, robotics, cooking, animal care, or any activity where the child’s strengths shine and their reading difficulty is irrelevant.
Islands of competence serve as psychological anchors. A child who struggles all day in the classroom but knows they are genuinely skilled at soccer, or at building things, or at caring for animals has a resource of self-worth that the reading difficulty cannot erode. These successes need to be real — not inflated praise — and they provide the foundation for resilience.
Finding a Community
Dyslexic children benefit enormously from knowing that they are not alone. Meeting other bright people with the same challenge — through support groups, dyslexia advocacy organizations, or specialized schools — dissolves the isolation that often accompanies the condition. Learning about successful dyslexic adults in fields they admire (technology, art, science, medicine, law) provides role models and evidence that the path forward is real.
Parents’ Own Emotional Response
Shaywitz also addresses parents’ emotional experience directly. Parents of dyslexic children often feel grief, guilt, anxiety, and frustration. These feelings are understandable and normal, but it is important that they not be transmitted to the child. Children are highly attuned to parental anxiety. A parent who communicates panic about their child’s reading struggles inadvertently confirms the child’s own worst fears about their situation. Parents who can present a calm, matter-of-fact, problem-solving attitude give their child permission to approach the difficulty the same way.
Based on “Overcoming Dyslexia” by Sally Shaywitz, M.D. (2020 edition)