Your Dyslexic Kid and Negative Situations: 3 Tips

What's the best way to handle difficult situations with your dyslexic child while supporting yourself along the way? Is gaining control of the situation the way to go? We don't think so.

Okay, so let's consider a couple different scenarios that might seem familiar to those of you with dyslexic children. So in scenario one, let's say you're a fourth grader, so that would be someone who's about eight or nine years old, comes home from school and tells you that in class that day, their teacher made them read something aloud that they had never seen before, and when they struggled with it, some of the other children in their class laughed at them and made fun of them.

So obviously, as a parent, that's going to be very stressful. Okay, let's consider a second scenario with that same child who's in fourth grade, so eight or nine years old. Let's say that child has a spelling test the next day, and you know that your child is capable of learning how to spell these words with a little bit of studying. But for whatever reason, that particular day, they are very resistant and refusing to study and learn those words.

And you know that if they don't do that studying, that they're going to go in the next day, they're going to do badly on that test, and then they're going to feel badly about themselves. So that is another difficult situation that you might face or might have faced similar situations with your children. And so your temptation as a parent might be to control as much as possible, control what's happening and make it go a certain way.

It's just natural when something feels hard or unmanageable, particularly when it involves our child, you know, a sense of threat to our child, maybe, you know, around emotions or in some other way. That's our instinct to do that. And then just in general, our brains don't like uncertainty, and control can feel like this really good way of gaining certainty. However, I would argue, we would argue, that latching onto control actually puts us into a closed state, and then we are not as open to potential solutions.

So that's one factor against it. Another is that it causes more of a closed state in your body. So this gets into, like, supporting yourself as a parent, right? It's more of a stress response, and, you know, it's not healthy for us to be in a stress response very often. So it's, if we were trying to control things in life all the time, that would be more of a fight or flight state for the body.

And so it's not good for us. Yes. And a third problem with trying to assert control over situations like this is that the reality is you can't actually control other people. Whether that's your child, your child's teacher, in all of these situations, there's somebody else involved, even if it's just your child. You can't actually control anyone except yourself. That's the fundamental truth here. So in the book Die Empty by Todd Henry, he talks about control and it not being the way to go.

And so what he talks about is that you should strive for influence rather than control, which is a good philosophy in lots of areas of life. But we'll talk a little more about how it's applicable to these situations with your dyslexic child. So how might you approach a situation where you feel like you're starting to want to control things? Okay, so the first step is to notice that you're doing it. And there's kind of three different areas you could do this in.

The first one is your thoughts. So if you notice yourself thinking things like, I have to make sure that the teacher never does that again, or I need to go tell the teacher what's what, or in the case of your child, if you're thinking, I have to make sure that they do this. And so it can be any of those sort of have to kind of thoughts or just something that really shows that you're wanting the other person to change what they're doing, shows that control kind of thinking.

And emotionally, you might notice this as feeling angry. You might feel like you want to go yell at the teacher. You might feel frustrated with your child. You might have sort of emotions around feeling frustrated that your child has to deal with this, sad for your child that they have to deal with this, that other children don't have to do things like that. Right. So lots of different emotions can crop up and sort of a combo with thoughts and emotions are that you might find yourself really like either ruminating about the issue or it immediately has grabbed all your attention.

Maybe there's some other stuff you're supposed to do and you can't focus on it now. That's that kind of combination of the thoughts and emotions. And then just physically, you probably would have a sensation of feeling more tight or closed. You might notice an actual anxious sort of feeling. Maybe your pulse rate goes up a little bit or something like that, or you feel more dysregulated potentially.

So the second tip is to think about how you might then disengage from that sort of immediate impulse to control. So one idea is that you could try to get space from the situation first. So that might even involve physically, you know, being alone a little bit or not. It could be more of a just just coming into yourself a little bit, depending on where you are in the situation. And then you'd want to take some deep breaths.

And secondly, it's good to take some time to acknowledge your emotions. So let yourself really, really recognize what you're feeling and name the emotion, anger, and let yourself really feel it. And that can help you also make the link a little more with the fact that what you're feeling is, you know, you're feeling something that's making you want to control. It can make that link to between what you're thinking and that wanting to control in your feelings.

And then so that's kind of a physical way of removing yourself from the situation, taking deep breaths emotionally to acknowledge what you're feeling and feel it. And then getting to those thoughts, once you're feeling maybe a little more processed or calmer, you can remind yourself of the fact that you can't control the teacher or your child. And so when you remember that and really acknowledge that, that can help you move into the third tip, which is what you can do, which is to influence the situation.

So what would influence rather than control actually look like? So there's a lot of different ways that this can manifest, but in general, influence rather than control involves listening to other people, understanding their perspective. So that means, of course, understanding your child's perspective, but also understanding the teacher's perspective, understanding the other children's perspective and so on. And so the reason that it's really the fundamental reason that it's better to strike for influence rather than control is that people don't like to be controlled.

I mean, obviously, none of us like to be controlled. And so if you come in with the, if people sense that you're trying to control them, they are going to react negatively. Whereas if they recognize that you're trying to really understand their perspective and then share your own perspective, they're liable to be much more receptive to the message that you're trying to communicate. Right. So really, that means that you're both opening up to more creative solutions with whoever else is involved.

And you're also just going to have a better relationship with them overall, right? So, so the influence over control is like much better in both of those ways and actually going forward with solutions and in maintaining good relationships. And then for yourself, getting back to, you know, self-care and in your own journey as a parent, hopefully this kind of process will allow you to go through the difficult situation with a more relaxed body and mind.

So hopefully that was helpful. If you have any other tips you'd like to add for dealing with difficult situations with your dyslexic child that have cropped up, please put them in the comments. And we would love it if you would like, share and subscribe. And if you're listening to the podcast, please leave us a rating and a review. Thanks.