I had a 1:1 consultation with a parent this week and we spent some time looking over her young dyslexic and ADHD son’s testing results.

If you’ve ever been in that situation, you know how heavy those reports can feel.

Pages and pages of scores.
Percentiles.
Terms like low, very low, deficit, below average.

It can feel like someone just reduced your beautiful, intelligent, creative child into a collection of numbers.

And sometimes those numbers can be scary.

But here’s what I want you to remember:

Your child is not a test score.

Testing can be incredibly helpful. It can point us toward the kinds of support our kids may need. But it does not measure curiosity, creativity, empathy, determination, humor, imagination, or the many other qualities that make our kids who they are.

And it certainly does not determine their future.

One of the things I remind parents during consultations is this:

You know your child better than any evaluator ever will.

You see their strengths.
You see their struggles.
You see the whole picture.

That insight is incredibly powerful when it comes to educating kids who learn differently.

The truth is that kids with dyslexia (especially with the ADHD/Executive Function overlay) learn differently and on a different timeline.

That is normal.

Test scores don’t reflect that. They compare our non-traditional learners to traditional learners and that is not accurate.

If you are consistently teaching your kids with methods and programs that work – they are right where they need to be!

If you ever need help sorting through testing results, planning next steps, or simply talking through what might help your child most, I do offer both 1:1 consultations (enter discount code ‘reader20’ to save 20%) and group mentoring where we walk through these kinds of questions together.

Now, here are three things I’ve been thinking about (and writing about) this week that might be helpful for you.

1. Dyslexia can be surprisingly unpredictable

One of the most confusing things about dyslexia is that it rarely looks the same from day to day.

A child might read a word correctly five times and then miss it the sixth. They might understand complex ideas but struggle to decode simple text.

In this article, I talk about why dyslexia can seem so inconsistent and how understanding this pattern can help parents respond with patience instead of frustration.

Read here:
​The Unpredictability of Dyslexia​

2. A clear explanation of dyslexia

If you’ve ever tried to explain dyslexia to a grandparent, teacher, or even your own child, you know how difficult it can be.

I wrote this guide to provide a simple, clear explanation of what dyslexia actually is — and what it is not.

It’s a helpful article to bookmark or share with friends and family.

Read here:
​What Is Dyslexia? A Clear Guide for Parents and Homeschoolers​

3. Are there different types of dyslexia?

This is a question I hear from parents all the time.

The short answer is yes… and no.

Different researchers categorize dyslexia in different ways, and understanding these patterns can sometimes help us better understand our kids’ unique learning profiles.

In this post, I walk through the most commonly discussed types and what they might look like in real life.

Read here:
​Are There Different Types of Dyslexia? A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Dyslexic Kids​

Learning with you,
Marianne Sunderland
HomeschoolingwithDyslexia