There is a party trick that toddlers sometimes perform where they read something or identify letters. The adults coo in admiration and everyone agrees that this is exceptional. My son never did this trick.
In preschool, the teachers were impressed with his imagination, his vocabulary, and his humour. They did note that he had struggled a bit with writing his name, but assured us that it would come in time.
Boys sometimes take longer, they said.
By the time he was a couple of years into primary school, it was clear that something wasn't right. I had begun to laugh ruefully every time I heard someone unpack the old saw about kids who are read to, kids who grow up in 'language rich environments', and the other 'sure things' that guarantee a high level of literacy.
The day he was born, I happened to be rereading Shakespeare's King John. I read a couple of scenes to him at the hospital in the evening and haven't missed a night since.
His environment couldn't have been more 'language rich'. His mother and I were both English teachers. There were books everywhere. I was working on one about Shakespeare when he was a toddler. He acquired an imaginary dog called Hamlet and, as I have often recounted, gave me the premise for that book one morning in the car while I was explaining a problem I was having with the fictional aspects.
But the reading simply never came. There were occasional advances that weren't much noticed but took an enormous toll on him. Meanwhile, the other kids had started to pick up on his difficulties. He's a sensitive kid and this was devastating. His self esteem took hit after hit, leaving him confused and often unwilling to go to school in the morning.
He was tested, of course. The results told us what we already knew, and used a lot of jargon that threw us off course slightly. There was a suggestion that it might be developmental. It wasn't.
"When I phoned the person who conducted the tests, they admitted that it wasn't a word they used, but agreed that the term would apply to my son's condition."
The word for my son's condition did not appear on the report. For reasons I am only now beginning to understand, that term had gone out of use in some quarters. It might have been a matter of workplace semantics or perhaps an admirable but doomed attempt to avoid labels.
Whatever the case, it was a few more years before I took out the report again and realised that it was, in fact, a diagnosis of dyslexia. When I phoned the person who conducted the tests, they admitted that it wasn't a word they used, but agreed that the term would apply to my son's condition.
Last year, he got interested in Marvel comics. I made a deal that if he would read them aloud to me, I'd keep buying them. It worked pretty well and I think there was some progress. We have since moved back to books. Over the summer, he read S. E. Hinton's classic, The Outsiders, using an audiobook.
I got another of her books, Rumblefish, out of the library. He started off pretty well but after a few paragraphs, it was as though someone was moving the text around. He began to lose his place and miss words. The familiar tears of frustration appeared in his tired eyes. The story was interesting — gangs, trouble, knife fights — and he was desperate to find out what happened to Rusty James and his friends.
He adores stories. It's heartbreaking that he has so little access to them in written form.
So what happens next? We'll get him tested again, this time by someone who will use the word dyslexia. We'll start to work closely with the school to make sure he is not put in impossible situations and is given the chance to find some success.
The school has always been supportive but we live in a data driven age where tests matter. Even the finest teachers, and he has had a few, are compelled to teach to the vile Naplan tests.
Dyslexic kids — and the estimates suggest that as many as one in five might have it — are put through unbelievable stress with these tests. If deaf kids were compelled to do listening examinations, there would, naturally, be an outcry. I'm not sure if there's a difference.
I'm also not sure if the ever narrowing scope of education can still accommodate students like my son, despite all the talk about diversity and differentiated learning. From where I stand, as a parent and a former teacher, I can smell the unpleasant odour of the boardroom and hear the faint echo of neo liberal economics in education today. I hope I'm wrong.
Meanwhile, my son paints wildly abstract watercolours, makes stop motion films, watches ancient episodes of Doctor Who, and continues to excel in a variety of sports. His self-esteem remains fragile but his resilience is unquestionable.
Now in grade six, he grabs his bag and jumps into the car most mornings without complaining. On the way, we chat about music, travel, and our plans for the weekend.
As we draw closer to the school, he goes quiet and I know he is getting ready. I don't know how he does it. When he gets out of the car and walks towards the gate, he is facing certain frustration and a great deal of failure.
I think he's a tough guy. I think he's a hero.
Tony Thompson is a Melbourne based writer and former teacher. His articles on education have appeared in The Age and he has written two books for teenagers which were published by Black Dog Books.