Yasmin Mills talks about her daughter’s dyslexia torment
When writer Simon Mills and his wife Yasmin kept finding the youngest of their two daughters, Maddie, 8, in floods of tears, it never crossed their minds that she could be suffering from dyslexia. Yasmin recently spoke to Hello! magazine about Maddie’s diagnosis and asked for people to be more understanding towards other children who also suffer from the condition.
It was so awful to hear [Maddie] so distressed. We could tell something was was making her frustrated, but we didn’t know what it was for a long time. It took one lovely, patient, particularly dyslexic-aware teacher to pick up on it.
She goes on to say that Maddie is a "changed child" since her diagnosis 18 months ago.
Maddie is so much happier [since moving to a dyslexia-friendly school]. She got teased quite badly at her old school. Now she’s proud to tell people that she’s dyslexic.
Now the 41-year-old model wants to give something back to an organization that has had a big part in helping her deal with her daughter’s condition. The proceeds from her next project — a series of books that both her children helped to come up with, involving the family pet dog Alfie — will go to a dyslexia charity called Xtraordinary People. The charity aims to raise awareness and funds to support special training in schools.
Every child should have a right of that support within the national schools system.
If you can get over the difficulties, you can achieve anything. In some ways, dyslexic children can be quicker and more determined as they have to think about things in different ways, so it can be a real positive thing.
Yasmin and Simon also have daughter Laurie, 13.
Source: Hello! Magazine, Issue: 1018, April 29th 2008
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- Posted on Apr 25, 08 at 8:01AM
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April 25th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Dyslexia is really difficult, especially when you are a kid and have moderate to severe. a plus is moderate to severe dyslexic people tend to be super intelligent.
i have a mild dyslexia (unfortunately, this does nothing for my intelligence) and it’s super annoying, especially when I write. colleagues have no idea what i’m talking about when i write quick notes to them (the letter mix up is annoying, but the lack of ability to spell sucks the most). typing is a lot easier, but I still have to check and recheck all of my words.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I wish we had schools in the US that teach only dyslexia children. Not every school has a teacher that has his or her learning disabilities license (LD). And if they do most of the time it is a roaming teacher meaning that one teacher per 70 to 100 children share him or her. Before anyone bashes me I am a teacher. With all the cut backs everything and everyones position is in jeopardy. For some reason city officials think that a child with LD only suffers in Math and English (or maybe there is no money in the budget to have an LD teacher full time) so they have an LD teacher for only those subjects but not History, Social Studies, Music, etc. Its just so messed up! And those kids suffer. Very sad! I am glad that they have that kind of option over there in the UK.
April 27th, 2008 at 12:57 am
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