Read and read. Same five letters, two completely different sounds, two completely different meanings, depending on how you’re using them.
The English language is funny like that, isn’t it?
I’ve been thinking about words like these, in one form or another, since I was nine years old.
When Needing Help Made Me Feel Less Than
That was Grade 4, the year I was identified as a student who needed extra help with learning to read and with reading comprehension.
I was pulled out of class during language arts blocks. Not the whole school day, but enough that in my nine-year-old brain it might as well have been the whole day.
In my head, at the time, the room I went to was where they put the kids who weren’t as smart as everyone else.
It’s an awful thing to think about yourself, but this is a blog about telling the truth, so there it is.
I cried many a time to my parents. I told them I didn’t want to go. I was embarrassed in a way I didn’t have the words for yet, but that I can still feel somewhat today.
I Had Something to Prove
And then, somewhere inside me something ignited.
I decided I was going to prove my teachers wrong about what I was capable of.
I made the honour roll from Grade 7 onward, right through to graduating valedictorian of my Grade 12 class.
Here’s the part that might still surprise some people.
I have eight years of postsecondary education behind me and I am a registered psychologist in Alberta, British Columbia, and the United Kingdom.
But I also still can’t spell to save my life.
I’ve gotten very good at working around it with technology (thank you, spellcheck, thank you, autocorrect, I genuinely owe you both a piece of my career).
By most measures, things worked out.
And there is still, every so often, a small voice that whispers that I’m not actually a good reader, not really a good writer, not really one of the smart ones.
I worry about mispronouncing a name out loud. I worry about stumbling over a word in front of a room.
I know, with my whole professional brain, that this has nothing to do with intelligence.
The whisper doesn’t always get the memo.
What If I'd Understood My Brain Sooner?
I would not be surprised if I do have a specific learning disability in reading.
I didn’t let it be a showstopper for me because it doesn’t have to be. But others may not believe the same, and that is really sad.
Psychoeducational assessment simply wasn’t available, or wasn’t talked about, when I was a kid. Maybe that is the same for you?
Being identified as needing extra help in Grade 4 is not the same as actually understanding why, or how my brain works.
I think about what even a little bit of that language, that explanation, that “oh, this is a known thing and here’s how your brain works” moment might have done for my confidence at ten, at fourteen, at twenty.
I suspect it’s also a big part of why I ended up doing the work I do now.
Years later, I found myself on the other side of this as a parent, wondering about my own daughter’s reading. She got the understanding I never had, and I wrote about that journey in When Something Doesn’t Quite Add Up: Should You Get Your Child Assessed?
It's Not Too Late to Find Answers
For what it’s worth, getting assessed myself doesn’t really make sense anymore. I know these tests a little too well at this point, which is its own kind of occupational hazard.
But that’s me.
It is absolutely not too late for you.
And this isn’t only about reading.
Adult assessment covers the full range of neurodevelopmental differences, specific learning difficulties like what I suspect, ADHD, autism, all of it.
An Assessment Is About More Than a Diagnosis
Why bother, if you already have a hunch?
Because an assessment isn’t just there to confirm what you already suspect about yourself.
It gives you a full learner profile, your strengths and your areas of difficulty, and every single one of us has both.
It’s the difference between knowing something is harder for you and understanding exactly why, and what to do about it.
That’s where the actual relief tends to live, in the strategies and the interventions, not just the label.
It also tends to come with a healthy dose of self-compassion, which, if you grew up quietly believing you weren’t as smart as everyone else, is worth more than people expect.
And practically speaking, if you’re heading back into further education, an assessment can also open the door to possible funding and academic supports.
What Does the Assessment Process Look Like?
Here’s what the process actually looks like:
- A free consultation before you commit to anything
- Three sessions total, spread over about three to four weeks: intake, testing, and a feedback and report session
- Sessions one and three can be done online or in person, whichever works better for you
- Session two, the testing itself, is done in person
- Covered by some insurance plans
Understanding Yourself Can Change Everything
Know or no?
However you spell it, it’s the same question.
If you’ve spent years wondering how your brain works, whether that’s reading, focus, or something else entirely, it is genuinely not too late to find out.
Reach out for a free consultation whenever you’re ready.
