How a teen with dyslexia found her voice

What happens when we stop talking about kids with learning differences — and start listening to them? Kids are the experts in their own experience. When we truly listen, we all learn.

Today we’re joined by 15-year-old Caris, a smart and determined teen with dyslexia, and her dad, Kevin. In this honest conversation, they talk about the everyday challenges and small wins of growing up with a learning difference. Caris shares what she wishes more people understood about dyslexia and how she’s found confidence in unexpected places. And she introduces Through My Eyes, a new digital experience from Understood.org that lets you step into her world.

Want to learn more about her story? Explore Through My Eyes at Understood.org and help others see your child the way you do.

• Signs of dyslexia in high school

• Signs of dyslexia in grade school

• Podcast: What if I think my child might have dyslexia?

(01:50) Growing up with dyslexia

(06:19) Facing stigma around learning disabilities

(11:17) How Through My Eyes reframed their experience

(13:06) Telling friends about her diagnosis

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at init@understood.org.

Gretchen Vierstra: Hello, and welcome to "In It," a podcast for families with kids who learn and think differently. Here, you'll find advice, camaraderie, stories of successes, and yes, sometimes failures from experts and from parents and caregivers like you. I'm Gretchen Vierstra, a former classroom teacher and an editor here at Understood.org.

Rachel Bozek: And I'm Rachel Bozek, a writer, editor, and mom who has definitely been in it. Today, we want to get a sense of what it's like to have dyslexia through the eyes of a kid. Caris is 15 years old. Before she was diagnosed with dyslexia, she spent a lot of time comparing herself to others and feeling like there was something wrong with her.

(01:50) Growing up with dyslexia

Rachel: It's been a long journey for her and for her family to understand why certain things are a lot harder for her than for other kids. Caris is one of the teens featured in "Through My Eyes," a free online immersive platform where you can experience the world through the eyes of three kids with ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia. We are so happy to speak with her and her father, Kevin, today about what her dyslexia journey has been like.

Gretchen: Caris, Kevin, welcome to "In It."

Kevin Dowell: Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.

Gretchen: So Caris, maybe we can just start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself, what grade are you in and what are some of your interests?

Caris Dowell: So I'm going to the 10th grade. I start school next week. 

Gretchen: Any interests you want to tell us about, things you're really into?

Caris: I have just joined a dance team. I've been on it for a year now with my brother, Kire. We do all types of dance, hip hop, contemporary, lyrical, jazz, tap, everything.

Gretchen: Sounds really fun.

Caris: It is. It's really fun.

Gretchen: Well, we're really excited to talk to you today. And as you know, one of the things we want to talk about is dyslexia. And so my first question for you is just to think way back when, when you were younger, when did you first start to notice that things might be a little harder for you than other kids?

Caris: I think I first started to notice when I had to get extra help from a teacher, and they had to keep coming over to me asking me if I understood certain questions because they didn't really go to every other student doing the same thing. So I think that's when I kind of understood like, why am I, you know, having the teacher have to come over to me so many times? 

Gretchen: And what grade was that in? Do you remember?

Caris: Second grade.

Gretchen: So I take it in second grade, you were already doing some reading then.

Caris: Yes.

Gretchen: And so how was that for you?

Caris: Reading was really difficult for me in second grade. I used to read a lot of picture books. I loved picture books because I could, like I was a visual learner, I still am. So seeing pictures helped me understand what was going on in the book. I didn't really read chapter books because it was hard for me to read personally because I used to get my B's and D's and Q's and P's mixed up because I would see them backwards and seeing like long words and big words for me, I was just like, I don't think I could read any chapter books because it was just a bunch of words, like in chapter books, there's not really pictures. So I just read picture books for a very, very long time.

Gretchen: I'm assuming you started to see maybe some of your friends or classmates start to read what may have looked like more advanced books and you weren't. So how did that feel for you?

Caris: I was kind of sad that I couldn't read chapter books because all of my friends were recommending me books that I should read. And of course, I'd say, "Oh yeah, I'll totally read that." But like deep down, I knew that I couldn't really read it. It was very frustrating because like my brother was reading chapter books too. So I was like, so my friends are reading chapter books and my brother's reading chapter books and I'm the only one who's reading a picture book.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Caris: So I was kind of like down.

(06:19) Facing stigma around learning disabilities

Gretchen: Kevin, when all of this was going on in these early years, what do you remember about it? What were you noticing with Caris about things she might have been struggling with?

Kevin: Well, like she said, I remember her always saying, "Okay, dad, is this a B? Is this a P?" She would always get those confused, and we had to find a way where, either we would say, "Okay, the one with the head is the P, the one with the belly is the B." So we would, that's where it started. She would come home extremely frustrated, especially when it's a new book. She will be very, very scared. "Like, dad, I have this book to read. I don't want to read it in front of people."

And I mean, I would literally see her like come in the room and shut her door and she just doesn't want to talk. And I, and I already knew what it was. It's just the embarrassment because she's like, "They're gonna pick on me because I lose my, my space." So it was kind of hard for both me and my wife to see her go through that. She would like not want to speak in public 'cause she's like, "Dad, if I speak out, I'm not going to know what I'm saying and I'm going to get confused." So it made her very, very self-cautious.

Gretchen: When did it occur to you to to kind of look into like, "Hmm, maybe this is more than just a little struggle with reading, maybe this is a learning disability?"

Kevin: A little context. My older brother has dyslexia. I think in the early '70s, I mean, we're talking like '71, '72, they really weren't testing for that disability. So he kind of went through school without knowing. But what it was is that I noticed when my brother and I will like read certain things and he'll ask for my help, I started noticing Caris was doing the same thing my brother was doing when she was like in the second grade, third grade. And I'm like, he was like, "Yeah, I remember how you always ask me questions."

Caris is doing the same thing. He's like, "Well, I don't know." He's like, "You might want to get her tested." So I just, you know, went to the teachers, my wife did, and like, "Okay, she's struggling in this area." And the teachers agreed, like, "Yeah." And that's when they decided to get her tested.

Rachel: And did you all as a family worry or talk about the label that might come with a disability? This is something we talk a lot about on our podcast with lots of people and lots of families. Did that occur to you or were you just like, "We gotta just move forward with this, no matter what?"

Kevin: It's funny that you ask that question because the number one thing she was worried about was like, "Dad, they're going to think I'm lazy because I'm Black and they're going to say that I'm not concentrating and that they're going to want to put me in, you know, ESL or special ed. And they're saying that I'm not trying.” So we were really worried about that, that stigma. And the schools that they go to, they're pretty accelerated. You know, a lot of the kids learn at a fast pace. So the last thing Caris wanted was like, "I don't want them to label me as slow. I want to be able to keep up with the other kids." So being in an accelerated school, that label, yeah, we were afraid and we were not so much the kids, but we were afraid how the teachers were going to label her.

Caris: I do remember always telling my parents that I didn't want to be labeled as slow like my dad said, because throughout all of my schools, I've kind of, me and my brother have kind of only really been the Black kids in our class. We weren't like always surrounded by a lot of Black kids in our school. So I didn't want to be the Black girl who didn't do her work, who was slow, who was lazy, who didn't want to have to have to ask a teacher over and over and over to figure out what I was doing. So I was always telling my dad, "I didn't want to be slow. I want to be a normal student." I always thought I wasn't normal because I had to get extra help. "Why am I the only girl in my class who needs to get extra help?"

Rachel: That's so much.

Caris: It's a little something, I guess.

Rachel: That's one way to put it.

Caris: It's so funny because my favorite class is English. I love English so much now. I get that from my dad though, 'cause I like writing.

Rachel: That's amazing. That's awesome.

Gretchen: So Caris, how old were you when you got diagnosed with dyslexia?

Caris: I was about eight years old.

Rachel: How did they explain it to you at that time?

Caris: So I remember, I had to go get tested in a room. It was me and two other teachers, and they had given me like a little flip book and it had words on it, and then they said, "You're going to take this little test." And so I did, and then it took like about a couple of days for them to get back to my mom and my dad about it. And then my dad had told me beforehand, he was like, "You're gonna go to school today and your teacher is gonna tell you something very important. It's just I want you to be brave and I want you to be strong about it. It's not something for you to be disappointed in yourself."

And I was kind of confused. I was like, "You're giving me a motivational speech right now." So they told me that I have a different way of learning and they told me that I see, when I read, I see my letters a different way than everybody else does. And they told me that I just need a little bit of help with the specific aspect of reading and writing. And they were like, "It's not something for you to like feel discouraged about. It's just that you learn a different way and you see things a different way."

(11:17) How Through My Eyes reframed their experience

Rachel: Mhm. Once you got this diagnosis, what changed for you at school? What kind of supports do you remember getting, you know, what were some of the first things that really helped you out?

Caris: After they told me everything, I started going back to that class every day, and I would be there for about 30 minutes. And for that 30 minutes, we would just do reading and I would just do writing. And they told me that I could take breaks in between if I wanted to. And they told me that I'll be getting extra support in class, like extra help, and that if I didn't understand something, they would give me like something a bit more easier for me to do. 

Rachel: Do you remember any specific strategies they taught you right away that really helped?

Caris: I think the one strategy they told me was reading with like a pencil or they told me to like highlight where I'm reading so that I know I've read that sentence, or get like a ruler and read along the ruler.

Gretchen: Kevin, what do you understand now about how Caris learns and thinks that maybe you didn't understand when she was younger? And do you feel like you understand how her brain works?

Kevin: You know, the true, honest answer to that question, I think I learned more about her disability through this project, just actually hearing it out of Caris's mouth because we got the technical terms from teachers. But just to hear her struggles and hear like clearly through her eyes, how it works. That's when I got the clear understanding. Like there were some things that came out of this project that I didn't even know. Like certain things that she said, I'm like, "Wow, I didn't know she felt that way. She didn't tell me that."

You know, she's very sensitive and in being sensitive, she keeps some things to herself. But in doing this project, she was able to just focus on her and what she went through and she didn't have to hold back because they're just like, "Yeah, let it all out, tell us everything. You're helping other kids." And so when she realized that, "Oh, I'm helping kids that are just like me," she didn't hold back. And then that's how I learned like, "Wow, okay, so that's what it really is."

(13:06) Telling friends about her diagnosis

Gretchen: Can you give us a couple of examples of things you learned that through this project that were news to you?

Kevin: The one is just the idea how she felt about being slow and how that really affected her because it's one thing about Caris is she's very upbeat and she encourages everyone. You know, her teachers have told her, "She's always encouraging her classmates, things like that." So it's like, man, who was her cheerleader? She'll, she'll get that from me and her mom, but I'm like, "Man, while she was at school, she didn't really have a cheerleader, you know?" So that was something that I learned.

Rachel: So Caris, like your dad said, you're so upbeat and so positive, and that really comes through in the video and everything you've done with us. And I know you've talked about having friends, so how much do your friends know about your dyslexia and understand about your dyslexia?

Caris: I was really nervous to tell them at first because I didn't want them to think, "Oh, she's slow. I don't want to be friends with somebody who can't like keep up with me." So I waited a very long time until I told my friends. I waited, I think until maybe fifth grade until I told them. And they were really, really, really supportive of it, and they would help me a lot too. Wow.

So I've been through a lot with them. I know all of them since elementary school. All of my friends now are still from elementary school, and I'm getting more friends in my high school and I'm friends with a bunch of people on my dance team. So they're all really, really supportive of me.

Rachel: That's so great to hear. So we know that dyslexia doesn't just go away, even though there are things you can do to make learning and other processes easier. Does it still frustrate you sometimes?

Caris: Yeah, I think it frustrates me the most when I can't spell a certain word in class. And like if we're, especially if we're trying to write down what the teacher's writing down on the board and like everybody already knows how to spell the word and I have to keep looking up and down to know how to spell it. I think that's what frustrates me the most, but I've gotten better with not seeing my letters backwards. I think I've just, I'm still struggling with spelling. So it frustrates me a little bit, but I know that I have the support, so I just gotta push through it is what I say to myself.

Gretchen: All right, we're going to go back to you, Kevin. So now that you're where you are today and you're here doing this project, what advice do you have for parents or caregivers who may be noticing that their child is struggling at school or at home with things that seem to be easier for other kids?

(11:17) How Through My Eyes reframed their experience

Kevin: Okay, I think with parents, caregivers, you're gonna go through an emotional rollercoaster because you, no one wants to see their child struggle. And you're seeing that your child is struggling and you're trying to find ways, you know, the last thing you're gonna go to is, "Oh, there may be a disability there," because I think the stigma with the word "disability" is different and you're going to be treated different or seen different. And every parent wants to, wants to give their child an even playing field.

So my thing is don't be so emotionally charged with it, take a step back, and the number one person that can tell you exactly what they're going through is the child. You need to listen to the child. I mean, you'd be very surprised what a seven-year-old will tell you on how he feels or how she feels about doing an assignment. You know, when Caris would tell us about how the reading frustrates her and things like that, the first thing that will go to a parent's mind, "Oh, you just don't want to do the work. You know, you're being lazy. You can't be like that."

But you gotta look past that and say, "Okay, ask the why questions. Why does it frustrate you? What about it that you don't understand? Why do you hate that class?" Don't be so quick to just, you know, go to, "Oh, they're just being lazy and they don't want to go to school." Yeah, you gotta ask the why questions. That's the first step.

Gretchen: That's great advice.

Caris: So Caris, do you have any advice for other kids who may have gotten a diagnosis of dyslexia? 

Caris: I would like to say that don't ever doubt yourself because you have a disability and don't ever think that you're not enough and you're less than what you are. You just see things a bit different than everybody else, and that's totally fine. So I just want to let everybody know that it's not always a bad thing to have a disability. It's also a good thing 'cause it makes you stronger and it makes you want to learn more about yourself.

Rachel: That's awesome. Okay, this is our last question for you, Caris. What are you excited about for this year in high school?

Caris: I'm excited that I'm able to be a sophomore and that I passed my freshman year. Nice. I'm excited that I will be able to make new friends this year. I think I'm most excited for my drama class, auditioning for plays. Ooh. I think the one thing I want to do is make my, not only my parents proud, my family proud, but my grandparents proud. I miss them so much, but I want to be able to show them that I'm able to still be the girl, the granddaughter that they're very proud of. And that if they're looking down at me, they know I'm doing good and that they know that I can still get my good grades even with dyslexia.

Gretchen: Well, Caris and Kevin, thank you so much for talking with us today. It's been such a pleasure. And I think that people hearing your story firsthand on "Through My Eyes" and through this podcast is really gonna help everybody better understand and empathize when it comes to having learning and thinking differences. So thank you so much.

Kevin: Thank you.

Caris: Thank you. So great to meet both of you.

Gretchen: Thanks so much for listening today. We hope after listening to this conversation, you'll go check out Caris's story along with Pedro's and Francesca's, which are also featured in the "Through My Eyes" experience. You can find all of it at u.org/throughmyeyes, or just click the link in the show notes.

Rachel: Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any thoughts about the episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at init@understood.org.

Gretchen: And check out the show notes for this episode, where we have more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

Rachel: This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.

Gretchen: "In It" is produced and edited by Julie Subrin, with additional production support from Cody Nelson and Andrew Rector.

Justin D. Wright mixes the show, Mike Errico wrote our theme music, and Briana Berry is our production director.

Rachel: From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson.