FA M I LY
WHAT WE FOUND AT HOME
> I’m a journalist; my husband is a rocket scientist.
How was it possible that our 7-year-old couldn’t read? And that I didn’t see it until the shutdown? From an early age, our daughter baffled us with her stage presence. The talent show was the highlight of our daughter’s pre-pandemic school year. All by herself, she choreographed and performed a dance routine to a song from the Descendants 2. She was truly wonderful, well beyond her 6 years, and although neither of us can relate, we couldn’t be prouder. When we moved to Pasadena from the Westside in 2013, our daughter was months old, and I’d just given up my magazine office job for full-time mothering. (We’ve since welcomed a In a year that could have counted son in 2016 and another daughter in 2018.) I started parent as loss, we found the missing piece education classes right away. After the infant class I took the for our daughter. ones for preschoolers and elementary-age students. The WholeBY J E N N I F E R A S H TO N RYA N Brain Child, co-authored by neuroscientist Daniel J. Siegel and Pasadena’s own parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson, became a bible. Child rearing by the wisdom of neuroscience. While the perspective did wonders for helping us manage emotional little kids, I never imagined that I’d later be looking to brain science to address signs of dyslexia in my second-grader. Big sister takes center stage Conversations with friends and even teachwith her younger siblings, ers about our daughter’s low test scores and helping them with a backyard academic resistance left me without answers. craft project during a 2020 stay-at-home order. When she was in kindergarten, I’d assumed she couldn’t read because we came from a progressive preschool. In first grade, it made sense that she tore up her notebook because another kid was poking fun at her. What could be wrong? Our curious extrovert had been read to, socialized, and extracurricular enriched up the wazoo. But then distance learning began, and I could make no mistake. From my new vantage as her teacher’s aide, I could see that the same girl who’d been thriving in dance and gymnastics class was in fact having a very difficult time in school. After opening up to my parenting class instructor, she suggested an hourlong cognitive test that swiftly filled the void of explanation. Reviewing the results—which did not diagnose her but identified lagging skills such as auditory analysis and selective attention—felt disorienting. Hearing words like “dyslexia” and “attention deficit” brought a gut punch of grief. Shock, denial, anger, and shame flared up as I became ravenous for information. I read articles and listened to podcasts such as Emily Hanford’s Educate. Hanford’s reporting on the “science of reading” exposes a gap between new brain research and literacy instruction. In her 2018 The New York 20 PA S A D E N A
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