Fort Mill mom starting dyslexia support group

Nearly a year since beginning a journey that led to the discovery of her son’s dyslexia, Lissa Felzer is trying to start a support group she hopes will help other parents confronting the condition.

“I knew his brain was wired differently in preschool,” said Fort Mill resident Lissa Felzer, about her 6-year-old son, Garrett, who was recently diagnosed with dyslexia.

“I contacted the public school system to ask for testing,” she said, “knowing the sooner we figured out how he learned, the better.”

Felzer said the representatives from the school district were very kind and listened to her concerns, but in the end she said she was told Garrett was just young and that he would be fine.

Later, during Felzer’s first parent conference with Garrett’s kindergarten teacher, she was told that he wasn’t meeting his reading benchmarks. But again, she was told that he was just a young kindergartener and they agreed that she would work with him intensively for a period of time before testing him for learning disabilities.

“Garrett was first tested in February 2015, (while he was in kindergarten),” said Felzer.

He scored above average and superior in math and spatial relations, and average in reading and writing.

“The district said he didn’t have a learning disability, but a relative weakness in reading,” she said.

But when Garrett’s kindergarten teacher urged her to have him tested privately at the end of the year, she knew she needed to take another step.

“She said he was too bright to be having so much trouble with his reading,” said Felzer. “Had I known private testing was an option, I would have done it in preschool.”

So, Garrett had extensive testing done during the summer and in August 2015, he was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia, or difficulty writing.

“Dyslexia is so much more than reversing letters, as so many people believe,” Felzer said. “It is not a visual issue, but more of a processing issue.”

According to the International Dyslexia Association, the signs and symptoms of dyslexia can be numerous, including: difficulty pronouncing words and learning the alphabet, difficulty remembering names and shapes of letters, having many spelling mistakes in their daily work, difficulty naming colors and a weak memory for lists, directions or facts.

“For Garrett, I knew because he had so much trouble learning his alphabet and their associated sounds,” she said. “And subsequently, he is having a bear of a time learning to read.”

Felzer said when she was told that he had dyslexia, she was relieved.

“Yay, an answer to his struggles,” she said. “Help is on the way, I thought.”

But then she was told that the South Carolina Department of Education does not recognize dyslexia as a learning disorder.

“This translates into three options as I see it,” she said.

“One, pay tens of thousands of dollars to send your child to a specialized school in Charlotte where they have trained staff who can teach my child to read with relative ease; two, keep them in the school system and pay for specialized tutors many hours each week; or three, homeschool and tutor, which isn’t cheap or easy, or always an option for many families.”

Felzer chose the third and took Garrett out of public school after Christmas break.

“He was so frustrated and unhappy and starting to really fall behind,” she said. “Now I am homeschooling him with the help of a wonderful tutor.”

It’s something she’s used to doing with her other children as well.

“Three out of my four children are non-traditional learners and I have had to go to bat for each one on more than one occasion,” she said. “If the schools were more equipped to recognize hidden learning issues, then so many other children could be served in more effective ways.”

But she doesn’t blame the school system.

“I have come to understand that the local schools’ hands are tied, so to speak,” she said.

“I would like to see the laws change at the state level to require districts to have a certain number of teachers on staff who are trained in how dyslexic children learn and for there to be routine screening and acknowledgment of the disorder.”

Felzer said that the state of South Carolina didn’t even recognize dyslexia as a learning disorder until recently, and that may other states are the same.

“One thing that I have been personally pushing for is this,” she said. “There is a bipartisan dyslexia congressional caucus in which South Carolina has no representation. That would be a start in getting legislators educated. South Carolina needs representation in this caucus.”

She also wants to start a support group for parents of dyslexic children in the Fort Mill area. The first meeting is this week.

“I have felt very alone, much like I would imagine a salmon swimming upstream, for the last year and a half,” she said. “It is awful to watch your child struggle like this and I don’t think anyone should have to do it alone.”

But perhaps most importantly, Felzer wants people to know that dyslexics can indeed learn to read and go on to be enormously successful in life. She named Agatha Christie, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg and Albert Einstein as examples.

“There are so many resources out there and these children are so bright,” she said. “They just need to be shown how bright they are and teachers need to know how to develop their potential.”

“Think Albert Einstein…”

This story was originally published January 11, 2016 at 2:52 PM with the headline "Fort Mill mom starting dyslexia support group."