In this video, literacy specialist and author Lois Letchford recounts her son Nicholas's harrowing first‑grade experience in 1994, when severe language difficulties and dyslexia led to daily humiliation, wetting, nail‑biting, and a teacher’s constant criticism. Standard school testing labeled him as low‑IQ and “not smart,” ignoring his strong spatial abilities. Letchford reflects on how the trauma placed Nicholas’s brain in a fight‑or‑flight state, preventing learning, and she laments not removing him from school earlier. She critiques the reliance on language‑based assessments that mask strengths, emphasizes the damaging impact of social isolation, and urges parents to protect struggling children by believing in them, discarding harmful assessments, and ensuring emotional safety. She hints at the later interventions that helped Nicholas achieve a PhD in applied mathematics, promising a follow‑up episode detailing those changes. The video ends with a call to action for parents to like, subscribe, and seek help for children struggling to read.
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Hello, I'm Lois Letchford, author of the book Reverse to Memoir and The Literacy Problem Solver. Over the past weeks, I've talked about my journey with dyslexia and with struggling with learning to read. Today, I want to talk about my son's journey because it was through him that I became aware of the depth of my struggles. And I became aware of how to get out of it. However, my son's journey, his first part of the journey, was really traumatic, and that today really scares me. Still today, it scares me. So what happened? My son went to school in grade one in 1994 in Brisbane, Australia. He knew that he struggled and he was afraid to go to school. As a parent, what do you do? You still send them along and hope that it's okay. My son, throughout that whole year, wet his pants every day. He bit his fingernails and in the classroom stared into space. What was my reaction as a parent? My reaction was actually to dress him for school every day. I could see him in his bedroom standing there frozen and I dressed him. I'd say, come on Nicholas, we have to get dressed for school, and I sent him to school every day. What did the teacher do? The teacher actually shouted at him every day, for not being able to keep up in the classroom or follow directions. At the end of that year, testing showed that he had no strengths, that he had no spatial awareness, that he could read 10 words, and that he had a low IQ. I knew my son's Struggled with language. Nicholas appeared to have no memory for language. And when people see that, and even as a mother, I thought my son is not particularly smart. The school thought Nicholas is not particularly smart. So really, in effect, what they did was said he's not smart, we can do whatever we like there because he can't remember anything. He can't do anything. And here comes the problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. I talked to my son in 2018 after he had achieved the heights, unbelievable academic heights in the academic tree. And I asked him what happened in first grade. My son cried. Tears went, ran down his face and the tongue went round and round in his mouth and not a word came out. And that's when I started to recognise the depth of the problem and how I wished I had done Something, a lot of things entirely differently than what I did during that first year of school. Because that first year, that foundational year in school, has left him with a memory that he wants in a box, thrown away the key, I never want to touch it. And that's quite disastrous and dangerous. And what actually happened in his brain during that time? And you know, if you know, I'm doing a series called When Learning is Trauma. And on Monday this week, my sister Lenore, Lenore Hall, the psychiatric nurse, has taken an interest in trauma. Totally, entirely different from my journey. But she said the brain changes when there is trauma around. And there's the picture that's on my website. My son was learning here. Let me get this picture right. Learning here. Nothing is happening. His brain is in a survival state. He's in fight and flight mode. No information's going in, no information's going out. That was really obvious to me. Now, there's a number of things that are incredibly concerning about this at this point in time. What do I wish I'd done? Why? What I wished I'd done was I wished I'd removed him from school from day 6. On day 6, the teacher spoke to me and said, Lois, well, he's so far behind, I don't know what I can do with him. Between that comment and Nicholas's physical distress of wetting his pants and biting his fingernails, I should have removed him from school. Because he was— he wasn't able to take anything in in that classroom in that set of circumstances because it was not a socially and emotionally safe environment. He was not only isolated academically, he was isolated socially, and the isolation, the social isolation, is as bad as the academic isolation. Utterly humiliated from that whole year in school and from learning nothing. The brain doesn't function when we are in fight and flight mode. Nicholas's brain did not function. Now, number of problems happened. School never told me. This child can do something. They said he can't do anything. He's not very smart, and that's what they were sticking to. I wished I'd had some of the knowledge I have now. Okay, what happened to Nicholas? If you read the book Reverse to Memory, you will know he had a PhD in applied. He has a PhD in applied mathematics. So what do I wish I'd done when he was six? I wished I'd taken a photo of him in a cap and gown to say, one day you will be there. One day you will achieve. My problem? I did not believe that my son was particularly smart. Now, why? We deal with language. We see the language problem. In the classroom, it was obvious he was struggling with language. We take a language test, we give it to children with really poor language and say they are not very smart. There's a problem there. Never should Nicholas have been given that test and it— the fact that it showed a low IQ showed that Nicholas shut down more than anything. There are the problems, the layers of problem, one after the other after the other after the other shows How damaging what we do to children when they have these language difficulties. I wished I could have seen more of his strengths. Nicholas's spatial awareness is amongst the absolute best in the world. He had that when he was 5 and 6, but we're not interested in spatial awareness when your children are 5 or 6. We're interested in their language skills. The children who speak quickly and sprout out ideas, they're the ones who we say, they're really smart. Children like Nicholas who've got this enormous discrepancy, one strength and the weakness, they say, well, so what? What do I wish I would do today or what advice would I give my other parents today? I would say, Do not let your child suffer. Do not let your child sit in school and cry because the damage that is being done is far greater than anything else. And they're not in an environment where they can learn. They are still operating here. If they're in a survival mode, nothing's going in, nothing's going out. They're not learning. They're not— they have to be— for children to learn, and this is the brain science, they not only have to have an emotional state of a connection with the teacher and feeling safe, they need to enjoy it where the frontal lobes are functioning. What can I learn from here? Now, if you've read the book again, Reverse to Memoir, you will find out what turned Nicholas's learning around. And I think I'll talk about that next week because that's huge— everything that went on to turn Nicholas's story around. But that first year in school is the one that haunts me. I know at the time I I had a 2-and-a-half-year-old, 2-year-old. That's why I wouldn't have taken Nicholas out because I thought I won't be able to teach Isaac and Nicholas. I knew Nicholas needed an absolutely quiet learning environment to learn. However, when the learning that's going on in school is so detrimental, anything I would have done would have been better. than leaving him in that failing environment where he's in a fight and flight mode, socially isolated, not learning anything academically and failing every day. Those are the things that were happening and he knew it, but he didn't have the words to say to me, Mummy, I cannot do anything. He had no words. Social isolation for children Is as bad as physical punishment. Do I need to repeat that? Social isolation is as bad and hurts like physical punishment. Nicholas didn't have the physical punishment, but he had the social isolation. Parents, if your child is struggling, grab a copy of my book, And see what happens because there are things we can do. And the first thing I would do is throw away all the assessment, put it in a box and believe in your child. What do I wish I'd done with my son Nicholas? I wished I had put him in his father's cap and gown and said, one day Nicholas, you will wear this gown. It means you're a really smart boy. I didn't see that strength in my son when he was six, and not being able to see that, you know, is really, really just really difficult, really difficult. So, what can we do? Next week, I'll talk about what happened and the total change that happened because we took Nicholas's brain from here. From here, where he was in a survival state, to one where he, he's asking these amazing questions, to the executive state. We had the connection. What did I do? What changes occurred? And what changes do I have with every single student I teach now? And why can I do it? Thank you for listening. Please hit like and subscribe and make a comment because That's the data that the YouTube channel likes. When people hit like, it promotes it to other people. And particularly if you have a child struggling, please let us know the struggles that your child is going through. Reach out to me because we can make a huge difference to every child who is struggling today. There is no need for that. We know what has to happen to teach children to read. And it's not always as simple and as straightforward as the textbook— as the books make out, because the first thing we have to do is get them out of that survival mode, get them out of the survival mode of the red, and put them into an emotional state so that they can get into the executive function where they can learn and function and be happy in school. Thank you. Hit like, hit subscribe, as I've said, and share it with everyone so that we can promote simply, we must teach children to read. I'm Lois Letchford, literacy problem solver and author of the book Reversed: A Memoir.
