My daughter was being thrown out of the sixth grade. The teacher said to me, "She may not be up to what we're trying to accomplish." He was really saying she didn't have the intelligence. I got mad because I knew she was smart, just as my father had known I was smart when I was failing in school. We had her tested and found that the troubles my daughter was having were the same as those I had had. I decided to get tested as well. She was dyslexic, and so was I. By then I was a successful television writer and producer. I'd won an Emmy for "The Rockford Files."
Had I known earlier, though, that there was a reason beyond my control to explain why I was a low achiever, I may not have worked so hard in my late 20s and early 30s. I was writing and writing. I was working for no other reason than to hear people praise me.
I needed that praise because I was carrying around the failure in studies. I did badly in all my courses.
I once asked a friend who had always gotten an A, "How long did you study for this?" He said, "I didn't. I just glanced at it." So what do I take from that? He must be smarter than I am. I began to ask, "What will happen to me when I'm not good at anything?" Despite my doubts, I did become successful, and people now say to me, "So you've overcome dyslexia."
No. You don't overcome it, you learn to compensate for it. Some easy things are very hard for me. Most people who go through college read at least twice as fast as I do. I avoid dialing a phone if I can, because I sometimes have to try three times to get the number right. I get that recording "The number you have reached is not in service" more than any man on earth.
Despite my weaknesses I view dyslexia as a gift, not a curse (诅咒). Many dyslexics are good at right- brain, abstract thought, and that's what my kind of creative writing is. And I can write quickly— I go like wind — and can get up to 15 pages a day. Writing is not the problem. That's my strength.
The real fear I have for dyslexic is not that they have to struggle with regular school studies, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school. Parents have to create victories whenever they can, whether it's music, sports or art. You can make your dyslexic child able to say, "Yeah, reading's hard. But I have these other things I can do."