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title: "Learning to Read"
author: Greg
layout: post
permalink: /2026/06/learning-to-read/
date: 2026-06-04 23:00:00 -0400
comments: True
licence: Creative Commons
categories:
  - personal
tags:
  - family
  - mental health
  - dyslexia 
- ---

I was recently diagnosed with dyslexia (mild–moderate specific learning disorder with impairment in reading & mild specific learning disorder with impairment in written expression). Researching my diagnosis has been enlightening and liberating. Now I understand why I can listen to a technical podcast at 3x speed but can't follow simple verbal directions with more than 4 steps.

Marisol (my 4yo daughter) was the catalyst for me to seek a diagnosis. Reading her books was a huge cognitive load for me. I have come up with lots of tricks to deal with my deficiencies like rereading a book I already know so it's more remembering than reading. But she's a very clever girl with a sponge for a mind so that trick won't scale. She's already started correcting me when I get words wrong 😅 A diagnosis isn't an excuse, it's a tool I can use to help me find the resources I need. My biggest weakness was decoding fluency (4th percentile). My brain made up for these deficiencies by leveraging its strengths. My pseudoword decoding was 12th percentile, can I read a made up word, but my word reading was 96th percentile, can I read a real word. This is because I don't really read the word phonologically, I just know what the word looks like. It's basically hieroglyphics to me which is why I find it so cognitively straining. My reading comprehension is great once the words get into my head, 98th percentile. I just need to learn how to read which Marisol has started learning at school. We can learn to read together.
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