I scanned the wall carefully looking for my daughter's picture. It was so cute to see all the other art pictures. Each one had a house with a traditional-looking thatched roof with neatly placed red tiles. The sides of some of their houses were even marked with carefully drawn bricks. These 3rd-grade students' drawings exhibited a sense of professionalism that belied their youth.

'She did a nice job with the kids". I mumbled to myself. As the corners of my mouth started to lift up, almost immediately they relaxed as they stiffly and slowly separated. My mouth was now wide open as I took in the picture that had my daughter's name on it.

Taking a closer look at the picture, I bent closer to it as though looking through dirty glasses. As I continued to bend forward and squint, I asked myself, "Where is the house?" I squinted again as I shuffled my feet closer to the wall. Haltingly, I asked, "Where are the trees?" It was easy to see the brown and red tones, but the lines were strewn throughout the page. The colors I recognized, but not a shape which I can name.

In such a short period of time, my talented daughter was able to complete any jigsaw puzzle I gave her, and read so many books that we kept at the house. She was bright and lively, and she loved math. But where was this intelligence? Why couldn't it get it out?

A voice whispered "Hello" as it broke into my thoughts. My attention was drawn to my daughter’s teacher. Across from me, a large smile spread across her face.

"Look at her picture" I stammered. Over my daughter's educational career, I received the same answer over and over again.

"It's okay, she is a lovely girl and she is doing okay"

Because she had hydrocephalus, she regularly saw a neurosurgeon and was already diagnosed with dyslexia. The school referred us to an outside entity that could work with her. At that facility, we met a gracious lady who introduced us to all sorts of different interventions. However, throughout our search and implementation of interventions, none of them made a significant difference, and none of them specifically addressed the dyslexic characteristics. Throughout the years, we spent a great deal of money on so many different programs. She acquired new diagnoses on the journey and we relayed the information to her school. Unfortunately, the school wasn't sure what to do with the information. My daughter was doing 'okay' and that was enough.

In our search, we found a school that offered the Texas Scottish Rite Literacy Training program as a substitute for a year of English in High School. That was when we saw real progress.

But, her academic journey through high school and college is another story.

A health issue prevented the facilitator from continuing the Texas Scottish Rite Literacy Training program. The overall result was that she graduated from college. She chose a job that was not suited to her intelligence or ambition. Reading was not required, nor did the job require convincingly and competently communicating with peers.

There is only one weakness - Dyslexia; difficulty reading, spelling, finding the right words, as well as mispronunciations, and inability to comprehend words. This weakness was so long unmastered that it overshadowed her intellectual abilities.

This is my story. Don’t let this be your child’s story too.