My name is Afreen Khundmiri and I’m an IT auditor by profession and an artist in Atlanta, Ga.
On a recent jog through the park, my neighbor shared her son’s struggle with Dyslexia and I haven’t been the same since. I often wondered why her son attended a different school, although my son is the same age as her’s, so I asked her. Her son struggles with Dyslexia and after years of uncertainty, bewilderment and disappointment with teachers, she moved him to another school. Her son would come home in tears, frustrated at himself, not wanting to go back to school. After researching similar behavior online, she suspected Dyslexia and approached his teachers. Long story short, his teachers were of no help and so she moved him.
After listening to her story, my childhood struggles hit me like a ton of bricks. Memories, I tried burying a long time ago.
In my earlier years, I attended an Urdu (which is a language spoken in India) school. As my father was a renowned Urdu poet, he was passionate about the Urdu language and wanted his kids to learn Urdu as well. Although I was very young, some events have haunted me my entire life. I vividly remember the first day of school and how the Urdu letters blurred into each other and I just could not distinguish between them. I struggled to understand the sound of each letter as it just didn’t make sense to me. My teachers would punish me every day for being unable to read or write Urdu by placing a pencil between my fingers and pressing down hard until words would come out of my mouth. I would be sent to the principal’s office and at times, made to sit in the corner. I was scared to go to school, so I started skipping, hiding behind trees and auto-rickshaws until school let out. When my parents received my attendance from school they were surprised and worried. I told them I had no interest in Urdu and wanted to go to an English school.
I was on cloud 9 when my parents decided to send me to an English school. I thought Urdu was a funny and boring language and all would be fine once I started my new school. Not so fast. I faced the same issues. This time, with the English alphabet, a few letters were blurred and confusing; “E” would appear as “3”, lower case “b” was a “d”, uppercase “W” was “M”, and vise-versa. I continued to be punished. Teachers would grab me by my ponytail and hang me on the wall where school bags were hung and punished me with a ruler on the back of my hand. I was fearful and upset and didn’t know how to explain my issues. I thought everyone had the same struggles and I was just not given enough time to learn. When I was supposed to be studying, I instead painted and found it to be relaxing. It really helped with my emotions and so I started painting whenever I would get frustrated, which was practically, every day. It wasn’t long after I joined the English school that I started to make excuses and began influencing my parent to transfer me to a different school. This act was becoming too familiar for my parents and so I had to think about more creative ways to get them to listen and act.
By this time, I had become a pro and managed to escaped two more English schools. Often times, kids change school because they move to a new area or the district is rezoned, but for me, it was because I did not understand my own abilities. At this point in my life, I had changed school five times and I was tired of running from my problems. Luckily, this time it was something outside of my control that forced me to change schools. During the early 90s, communal riots were widespread in India and given the school I attended at the time was far away, my parents decided to send me to a local school which recently opened near my house. Since this new school didn’t have a lot of students, I was excited and thought that I would get individualized attention which would encourage me to stay put. I decided to work even harder but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not get with the program.
The new school was close to my house so I recognized a lot of the kids from my neighborhood. This made me very nervous because of the social stigma of being punished in front of others, so I kept on creating excuses. Every time I felt it would be difficult for me to accomplish a task, I started to complain of stomach pain and left early or didn’t attend at all. Since the principal knew my dad very well, teachers wouldn’t question me, but I was not very happy with my behavior. My frustration reached new heights. To date, I had made every excuse possibly known to a pre-teen and my poor parents had heard it all so I had to up the game for them to believe me. At this point in my life, I was battling with two issues, dyslexia and to mask it, lying and making excuses which became so habit forming that It became second nature, in the context of school mind you. This time, things went too far and changed my life forever.
One morning I woke up crying so hard that my parents got extremely worried and rushed me to one of my mom’s friend’s hospitals. After hours of tests, the doctors cleared me but I insisted that the pain was still there. The doctor (mom’s friend) told my mom not to worry and that I would be fine in a few days. She was unsure of what to make of this and took me for a second opinion, this time to GI surgeon. Looking at how I was squirming, the doctor told my parents that the only other option was to cut me open to see what was going on. I remember the feeling of excitement, thinking I wouldn’t have to deal with school for a few months and that was the last thing I remember. Since I was complaining of lower abdomen pain, doctors, performed an appendectomy, even though I was never diagnosed with appendicitis.
During surgery, something went wrong and I fell into a coma. I regained consciousness after 3 days and I will never forget the expression on my mom’s face when I opened my eyes. She was in tears like a baby and was screaming for the doctors like a mad woman. Doctors came running into my room and checked my vitals and said, “she is out of danger”. My cousin who treated me like his child was holding my hand and crying but was smiling and thanking God. That incident changed me completely.
On the bright side, if there is one, I stayed home for three months, to recover. When I finally rejoined, I was a changed person and had decided to overcome my fears, until I heard about a new English teacher who recently joined. A retired foreign teacher, Mr. George Anthony, was definitely very different from all the other teachers. He noticed me during the class and asked if I was a new student. My friends started to speak for me, but Mr. George interrupted them and encouraged me to talk. I was talking softly and he asked me to speak louder. After hearing me, he told me to come and meet him after the class. I don’t remember our conversation exactly, as I was so nervous but I do remember how I felt after having spoken with him, an overwhelming sense of relief. Finally, I found someone who understood me.
Over the next few months, Mr. George would take extra time to teach me. I clearly remember the first things he taught me, “try to understand the word, take your time to read and place your finger under each sentence so you won’t jump or skip lines”. It was small techniques, which gave me confidence that I could overcome my challenges and he is one of the main reasons I came out from my fear.
My confidence grew more and more each day and I also became more aware of my abilities. I began applying the techniques Mr. George thought me outside of school and I came up with my own system to mask mistakes. The confidence boost made me more active and social. I began to take part in plays and extra-curricular activities and went on to receive awards. I won awards each year I played Charlie Chaplin in the school play and soon became one of the popular girls in high school.
Fast forward 10 years, I immigrated to the US and graduated with a Finance degree and landed my first job with one of the Big Four auditing firms. Fast forward 20 years and I took a sabbatical from work to focus on painting and calligraphy, which is my biggest passion. Work was too structured and non-creative and so I had to find my fix. Over the years, I found painting to be the best way to express myself and connect with people.
The jog in the park with my neighbor brought back so many emotions. Until now, I never had the courage to open up and share my side of the story with anyone, including my family. They don’t know why I made excuses to skip or change schools. They don’t know that my stomach pain was not real and hopefully, since so much time has passed, they won’t hate me for putting them through hell as I almost died. I’m still in touch with many of my classmates from school and I’m sure they will have questions.
It is my hope that my experiences can highlight the impact of dyslexia and more importantly that it is not a life sentence. Please listen to your kids and don’t be quick to judge them because they don’t understand or aren’t keeping up with your expectations. You never know what they are going through until you take time to listen and be their friend. And if they are as lucky as I was, they too will have someone like Mr. George to coach them and give them the confidence to overcome their fears.
