How do we encourage young people who experience low self-esteem as a result of their experiences with dyslexia? Let’s talk about their strengths and how valuable they are. Today the focus is Resilience.

Young people with dyslexia commonly experience poor self-esteem according to 89% of parents who participated in the recent ‘Human Cost of Dyslexia’ survey. In that same survey 96% of those parents also indicated that their children often felt frustrated by their dyslexia.

There is nothing about these experiences for our young people that is positive, we need our education system to change to reflect the needs of our young people. They are literally taking hard emotional knocks in their day to day lives.

But there is a ‘flip-side’ to these experiences.

Some young people are able to look beyond the challenges and if they get knocked down, they get up again and again and again. Whilst I can’t say that this is a nice experience, it is essential for living in the world beyond education.

For example, there is a statistic that says that 40% of our most successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic and the ones that are quoted as examples of successful dyslexics are Sir Alan Sugar, Jamie Oliver, Richard Branson, Theo Pathitis to name but a few. We see them in the public eye as being these successful types but we have no idea of their background and how they got to being successful. They didn’t become successful overnight. It took time and resilience!

Richard Branson

On Wikipedia, I discovered that Richard Branson started out trying to sell Christmas trees and budgerigars gaining little success after an unsuccessful time at school. In fact, on his last day of education, his headmaster told him that he will either end up in prison or a millionaire! Then he started a magazine called ‘Student’ which started the ball rolling in terms of his success. He could have chosen to give up, but his ‘failures’ were perhaps more like learning opportunities. So he took the knocks, learnt from his experiences and kept up his momentum to success. That success didn’t just land in his lap!

Interesting trends with famous dyslexic entrepreneurs.

I did some further research on Sir Alan Sugar, Theo Paphitis and Jamie Oliver. I all three cases they left school at 16 and it would appear from various sources that they worked to their strengths.

Both Alan Sugar and Theopaphitis used their natural instincts for business and engaging people to develop their businesses. Jamie Oliver was passionate about being a chef and gained a good grounding in the industry in some very popular restaurants before becoming noticed for the TV.

As I said earlier, none of these guys became successful overnight, they needed time to find their strengths and their place from which to demonstrate their strengths.

Not all of us can be famously successful dyslexics, but we can take our place to make a difference with the strengths that we have. Sometimes we don’t see those strengths until we have experiences (good and bad) that hone them. For young people, it is really hard as time is always short and they can be impatient for change especially when experiencing low self-esteem. As parents and teachers we need to help our young people to view their lives from a ‘bird’s eye view perspective.

But why is Resilience important?

On Friday 29th November, the British Dyslexia Association held it’s annual awards evening at Twickenham Stadium. Presenting the awards was Welsh rugby star , Lee Byrne and one of the awards was the Cadogan Resilience Award. The award is in recognition of great tenacity to pvercome real challenges with dyslexia.

Talking about Resilience, Lee has reminisced publically about how with his own challenges with dyslexia resulted in him being accused of being lazy but he was able to push through his challenges and discovered that he had not only the strengths of resilience but also understand the visual concepts of playing a rugby match faster than any of his team mates which resulted in his successful career playing internationally for his country.

Clearly resilience is a strength that is valued by the BDA.

The recipient , Treya Lufu (18), was nominated by her tutor, Elizabeth Shepherd and said this about Treya:

As a young girl Treya’s speech was so bad few could understand her. At every school she struggled at the bottom of the class. By Year 7 she had a reading age of 7.8 and a maths age of 6.

The result was Treya’s anxiety was so bad her stomach ached.

Despite everything, she persevered. Her younger brother and mother did homework with her for eight or nine hours every weekend.

Only at 16 was she diagnosed with severe dyslexia. 

With a grant from the Bedgebury Foundation she was able to receive Davis Method tutoring with Elizabeth Shepherd – this gifted her with more confidence, calmed her anxiety and gave her more independence. 

Even though she was four or five years behind her peers she persevered to get her C in maths and English.

She’s now got a Distinction and Distinction Star in first two A levels. 

This year she’s completing an Extended Project Qualification, researching tools to help teens with anxiety, and an A level in Philosophy. 

Next year she’ll be venturing off to study therapeutic psychology at university. 

Treya wants to focus her career on giving back by supporting and empowering children, teens and families.  

The Cadogan Resilience Award was sponsored by an independent school that is leading the way in dyslexia provision, St David’s College. I asked St David’s Registrar and Director of Strategic Management, David Ward why St David’s were sponsoring this award.

David, who has been a successful senior manager in schools across the UK, is dyslexic himself. At a recent meeting of parents he shared that whilst he has had a successful career in running schools as headmaster, in his own experience of education he actually failed his eleven plus exams. He went on to having a career as a rugby player and was inspired to become a teacher at a later stage and then went on to his roles of headmaster. His story very much reflects his thoughts on resilience for dyslexic students.

“St David’s is sponsoring the BDA’s Cadogan Award for resilience because we believe that resilience has a wider meaning. For researchers and professionals working with kids, resilience is not about bouncing back but about bouncing forward. It isn’t as phrase that is used to describe getting back to normal after a difficult situation, it means learning from that situation in order to become stronger and better at tackling the next challenge. Being able to see life’s challenges from a learning perspective enables a child to learn how to cope but also to become a better version of themselves. Treya, is an excellent example of a young person who despite experiencing the challenges of dyslexia is no longer being held back but who is absolutely bouncing forwards and we can’t wait to hear about what she achieves next. Well done Freya.”

The BDA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Whilst attending the BDA Awards Gala, I was thrilled to see that my good friend, Tim Hall received the lifetime achievement award for his services to the dyslexic community. As chaplain of St David’s College, Tim has been supporting pupils as well as contributing to the work of the BDA for almost 50 years. I mention this as a part of this article because it is people like Tim who comes alongside young people who are experiencing he challenges that come with dyslexia and he gives them the strength to ‘bounce forward’. For me, having got to know Tim over the past few years, I have found a man who sees beyond behaviour and into the heart of the potential of a child and he simply applauds them and helps them to grow. In his acceptance speech, rather than focus on what he has achieved over the years, he referred to ex-pupils who he has taught and what they have achieved and simply celebrated their successes. Tim is a lovely man who I am proud to consider my friend. Congratulations Tim!

St David’s College have released a resource that supports the teaching of dyslexic pupils.

Click the banner below to download.