Crooked or Maybe Not?

When my son started to learn how to talk in sentences (about 4 years old) he was constantly entertaining us with his adorable mistakes.

One day we were visiting family and all sitting in the living room. My son was looking intensely at a picture hanging on the wall.

He turned to me and said, “That picture is cockroached”.

My husband and I looked at each other and giggled.

We explained that he meant to say “crooked”, not “cockroached”.

He went on though elementary school, received a diagnosis of dyslexia and continued making grammatical errors in his writing and speech. These errors continue to this day, and we all love him for it.

This week my niece is visiting from Germany, and she is trying to teach us basic German words.

My son who has dyslexia is making mistakes all over the place.

His version of German is a mixture of Spanish and Mandarin, but he keeps trying to get the right dialect. The whole family was laughing and having a good time. His cousin was shaking her head and thought he was the hilarious.

My other two kids who don’t have any speech or learning issues wouldn’t try the German words. They were too embarrassed.

The kid who has dyslexia and speech problems had more guts and confidence to get the words wrong, than his siblings who don’t have any issues with their speech.

When a child must work harder than their peers to achieve the same success, they learn early on that mistakes are no big deal. They end up making SO many mistakes that they actually teach themselves grit.

It’s the compound effect in action and my son has it down to a science. He consistently puts in the work to learn how to do challenging things, this work becomes a behavior and then a habit. Over time he masters the challenging “thing”.

This constant compounding effect takes time especially when you have a diagnosis. There are more roadblocks to overcome when you have some sort of learning/medical/developmental challenge to navigate.

So, you need to be consistent and have patience with yourself and your child.

Having the extra challenge of a diagnosis doesn’t mean you don’t engage in difficult tasks. It just means you must get creative in how you approach the challenges you face. Employing the compound effect towards challenges is a good starting point to teach yourself and child the beginnings of grit.

The next time you see your child struggling at something, let them go a bit longer to see if they can figure it out on their own.

I promise it’s going to be ok.

Better to learn grit now so when you aren’t there to help them, they know who to fall back on.

Themselves.

Have an amazing weekend!

Americ