In This Issue | Learning Disabilities

I felt guilty making Michael go off to school every morning. He would cry and dawdle and complain about an aching head or an upset stomach. He looked so miserable as he slouched off to the bus stop wearing a backpack bulging with books that he was unable to read, despite being a fifth-grader. I had a lump in my throat as I called out hopefully, "Have a good day!"

Then came the day he exploded. For weeks, kids at his new school in Northeast Portland had shunned him in the lunchroom and called him a "dummy" because he had never learned to decipher written language. Finally, his rage and shame spewed out in a spasm of violence. He punched another kid in the hallway. When the principal asked Mike to write down his version of what happened, his explanation looked something like this: "gdncldmedmndihthm."

At home that night, Mike sat on his dad's lap and cried bitterly, sobbing as though his heart was broken. "I hate my life, I hate my life," he moaned, tears streaking his pale cheeks. "Dad, get a gun and shoot me. Just shoot me."

It's five years later now, but this scene—a sturdy 10-year-old boy folded limply in his daddy's arms, wailing in despair—is clearer in my mind than this morning's traffic jam.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that Mike was struggling with a problem much deeper than simply lagging behind. But in the beginning, Mike's dad (then a single parent trying to hold things together alone) accepted the first- and second-grade teachers' assurances that Mike would "catch up." When Mike wasn't reading by third grade, the school assigned him to the resource teacher for a half-hour of remediation each day. Pretty soon, Dad was running Mike to additional remedial classes evenings and summers. When I started dating Mike's dad, I'd drive up to their house on school nights and spot the two of them through the kitchen window, heads together at the old Formica table, Mike's forehead scrunched in concentration over a schoolbook.

Still, he couldn't read.

After Mike's blow-up at school, we kept him home and insisted that the district find an appropriate placement for him. Testing revealed a huge discrepancy between his IQ level (normal) and his achievement level (somewhere between first and second grade). He showed classic signs of dyslexia, such as failing to link letters with sounds. Finally, we had a diagnosis: Mike had a learning disability. Serendipitously, the school district had just that year launched its Intensive Learning Center program, geared for kids like Mike—bright children whose brain wiring doesn't respond well to traditional teaching methods.

As I drove Mike across town to his first day at his new school, he looked out the window while our minivan cruised across the Marquam Bridge, Portland glowing in the morning sun. "I'm going to go to Harvard," he said.

"Great!" I said.

"And Stanford," he added.

I smiled. A few minutes later, he said, "I'm going to be a doctor. And a lawyer." This was the kid who only a few weeks before had complained, scowling, about facing a certain future as a garbage collector.

Mike stayed in the ILC through seventh grade. In those three years, he soared from zero reading skills to advanced reading skills. He's a sophomore, now. School is still a struggle. But just this week he landed a job tutoring a couple of neighbor kids whose grades are suffering after their parents' divorce.

When I dropped Mike off at school this morning, it was he who called out cheerfully, "Have a good day!" His chin was up, his shoulders were straight. He can read the books stuffed in his backpack. The appropriate placement—one that employed teaching methods proven to work with LD kids—not only made a difference for Mike. We believe it saved his life.