Advocacy

Children who have reading difficulties can be perceived by their peers as being unintelligent. Children often perceive that being a good reader means you are intelligent and if you are not then you are unintelligent.

Children can become aware of their own reading difficulties and carry shame with that difficulty. This shame can be remembered and carried throughout a lifetime.

The greater the number of experiences of reading where a child experiences shame, the more likely it is that every experience of reading is going to be associated with the expectation of shame. Children that struggle with reading associate it with different emotions like fear, weariness, nervousness, embarrassment, being shy, and scared.

Children often times do not want to ask for help because they want to feel the same as their typical peers. They may develop strategies that hide their difficulty to read to protect themselves from that feeling of shame.

Being asked to read aloud in front of class can be a terribly humiliating situation for a child with dyslexia.

Overtime children with reading difficulties become can become confused before even processing information. They begin showing this not during reading but as they approach any type of reading activity.

If something reliably triggers shame, it's going to prevent learning and make someone shy away from participating in it.