Beaches Reading Clinic

Circa 1996, a teenage Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden sat in a classroom at Enskilda Gymnasium in Stockholm, arriving before her classmates every single morning, not because she was eager or energetic, but because she had to. She had dyslexia. Reading aloud in class was not something she dreaded quietly and privately. Her classmates laughed. They made fun of her stumbling over words, and she internalized it the way most kids do, deciding the problem was her, deciding she was slow, deciding she was stupid. She has said so herself, in her own words, at a bullying conference at the University of Orebro in 2002, where she stood before an audience and spoke openly and without a prepared script about what those years had felt like. The spontaneity of that speech struck people. She had not planned to share those details. She just did, because she thought it might help someone in the room. Her father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, has dyslexia too, and so does her brother Prince Carl Philip, so the condition was not unfamiliar inside the palace walls. Her mother, Queen Silvia, recognized the signs early and hired a specialist teacher to help her daughter work through the particular way her brain processed written language. Victoria arrived at school an hour before her peers, worked harder than anyone could see from the outside, and graduated in June 1996 with top grades. That outcome was not a gift. It was a result. She earned it, one early morning at a time, in a school building that did not always feel like a safe place. Years later, after the anorexia recovery, after Yale, after everything, she continued to speak publicly about dyslexia because she understood that her platform came with a responsibility to use it honestly. She said once that many people had not received the support she had, and she was right, and she seemed to carry that awareness without vanity. The girl who thought she was stupid became the woman who used her voice to tell other kids they were not. That is a kind of transformation that does not show up in official royal biographies, but it is the most human one.

Today's comes from one of our all-time favourite superheroes: Spider-man, Tom Holland.

Tom has played Spider-Man more than any other actor. He might use his spidey senses to save New Yorkers from crime, but he first found out that he was born with extra-ordinary abilities at the age of 7. Tom's dyslexia gave him added strengths as a dancer and gymnast. In fact, he flipped his way in and out of his Spider-Man audition.

Amazing to see Tom speak about the power of Lego to unleash his creativity. Like many dyslexic Makers, Tom uses his xtraordinary Dyslexic Thinking skills to imagine and create, as well as see the big picture!

Find out more about dyslexic thinking in kids in Kate's book, Xtraordinary People. Available here: https://www.dk.com/uk/book/9780241705124-xtraordinary-people/

https://mailchi.mp/dyslexiacanada.org/join-us-to-learn-how-you-can-bring-dyslexia-awareness-to-your-community-this-october?e=6b43aa2d99

Join us to learn how you can bring dyslexia awareness to your community this October Over the past 10 years, Dyslexia Canada has worked alongside community members to raise awareness in towns and cities like yours. We’ve made significant progress, but there is still a lot of work to do, and we can’t do it alone! We believe that awareness leads to action, and by working together,...

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.9/5 700 fun, print-ready detective cases that build reading comprehension, confidence, and independent learning—without lesson planning or expensive tutoring.