Isn’t it funny how God uses our kids’ struggles to point out our own glaring issues. It is like looking in a funhouse mirror:
“You’d better stop yelling or … !” Did I really just yell that?
“Sweetheart, I have no idea why you would let your room get so …” Oh, never mind, I’d better go clean the kitchen before lecturing you.
I love words. I write for fun, read to relax, and listen to things like Grammar Girl in my spare time. I regularly google vocabulary to make sure that I’m using words correctly, I cringe every time I see plural/possessive errors, and I have a strange love affair with the Oxford Comma. Unfortunately, I’m not just obsessed with writing (despite my own mistakes), but I’m also horribly judgmental about it.
Confession time: I am a snob. For years I have thought myself superior to people who struggle with spelling or writing. It is awful to see that written down, but it is the truth. I’ve been insensitive, and summarily dubbed everyone who doesn’t think/learn/act like me uneducated, and incapable of intelligence.
I also have a dyslexic child. ~ Can you hear God giggling? I think I can.
Teaching my dyslexic student has been not only eye opening, but convicting. Writing came easy for me. I never had to study vocabulary or learn how to spell words. I simply understood them. There was no effort involved. I thought everyone could learn just as easily.
My dyslexic student puts more effort into constructing a single sentence than I put into a day’s worth of writing. Does she deserve shame or belittling for that effort? Not at all. In fact, she deserves high praise.
Literacy and writing ability are not measures of intelligence. The goal of writing is to communicate ideas, not put letters in a pleasing string. My dyslexic girl has a lot to communicate. Time for me to get off my high horse, leave my elitism behind, and get real.
It’s not that I never make writing mistakes of my own, but I somehow have a difficult time moving past the mistakes of others. A sentence like “Who’s car is that?” instantly translates in my mind to, “Who is car is that?” then, “Who has car is that?” and I have to stop for a fraction of a second to figure out what the writer intended, rather than what they wrote.
Logically speaking, since I’m the one stymied by syntax and grammar, I guess makes me the dumb one. Most people not only understand the incorrect sentence, but they don’t even notice the problem. It is a tragedy that I let grammar color my opinion of the author.
Yes, writing is a powerful form of communication, and grammar, spelling, and punctuation are important, however I’m learning that I truly need to work on my own judgement of others as much as I work on teaching my student writing skills.
I hereby vow to intentionally evaluate written work by the substance of what the writer is saying, rather than the form in which it is written. I will keep my condescending comments to myself, and continue to work on reigning in my careless judgmental thoughts. I won’t always succeed at being non-judgemental, but I now know that I need to give it a much greater effort, and I promise to do so.
I will move beyond my own bias. I have to. I’m proud of my smart dyslexic kid.
