It’s Father’s Day soon, and we’re gearing up after a bit of a weird year to let Dads everywhere know that we care. It’s a little celebration of everything that’s wonderful in a Dad or a Grandad, whether he’s your taxi of choice, reluctant Sunday-afternoon goalkeeper or even just always up for a call about that one flashing light appearing on your dashboard again – and it’s a great time to come together and spend time in the sun as the perfect team.
Also, when you’ve got dyslexia, your dad might be one of the strongest voices in your corner or that special person you go to when it all gets a little too much. Dads can be some of our biggest advocates and supporters whether we’re taking our KS2 SATs or applying for the promotion of a lifetime, and it’s always comforting to have somebody around who just understands.
Supportive dads are the best. That’s why we’re taking a look at some of the online dyslexia community’s most inspirational stories, from those who go the extra mile for their kids to those who are just beginning to understand what the condition entails, and celebrating the dyslexia dads who make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Embracing Dyslexia is a moving documentary by the filmmaker Luis Macias that tells the story of a dad learning to work with and embrace the reading disorder that affects his 8-year-old son, Alejandro. Told from the perspective of those who live with dyslexia every day, it opens up the narrative and offers the floor to the emotional struggles of parents whose children have dyslexia, as well as the adults who have lived with it their entire lives, and mythbusts some of the alarming misconceptions that people have.
Reading to My Son is the story of an educator (tap dancer, blogger and author too!) who has dyslexia himself, and overcame his own reading insecurities using a framework of preparation and Assistive Technology to make sure that reading is an immersive and enjoyable experience for both him and his kids. The author, Khalil Munir is also behind The Crown is Yours, a stellar short book that focuses on positivity and empowerment within the young, Black and dyslexic experience.
The Belief of Fathers is a short and heartwarming little piece from Dyslexic Advantage that takes a look at just what a supporting dad can mean when it comes to doing great things with your dyslexia through the lens of the Irish dramatist and poet William Butler Yeats. It details how Yeats struggled to read and write as a schoolboy and how his father – the Modernist artist John Butler Yeats – inspired a love of poetry in his son by reading to him aloud as they sat together outdoors. William Butler Yeats went on to become one of the country’s finest poets and was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
On the 20th of June, we’re celebrating dads everywhere, but we want to make a special mention to those dads who have dyslexia, are parenting somebody with dyslexia, are becoming a great dyslexia advocate – or all three. We’ve also put together a handy gift guide for dads with dyslexia here, just in case you were feeling a bit stuck for ideas this Father’s Day.