The thing I noticed in the cafe on Saturday.

On Saturday my partner and I stopped for a coffee and a bite to eat. Across the cafe was a mother and her daughter, both engrossed in their own books, every now and then putting them down to share a piece of brownie between them.

I remember thinking what a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

Then they got up to leave, and the mother reached for a crutch I hadn't even noticed beside her, and followed her daughter slowly out the door.

It stayed with me, because it's such a clear reminder of something I see in my work all the time. You rarely see the whole of what a person is living with.

Sometimes it's visible, like that crutch, once you notice it. But so often it isn't. I recently met a woman in her eighties who creates the most extraordinary textile work. Six foot pieces, built up strand by strand until the most incredible artwork reveals itself, genuinely breathtaking. Quiet and unassuming, taking everything in around her. And yet she has struggled to read her whole life, and all that time she was treated as though she was stupid. Talking with her the other night, I learned she has carried struggles you could never imagine just by looking at her. Nobody would ever have known.

And sometimes it's someone much closer to home. Someone I have known my whole life, one of the kindest, cleverest people you could meet, the sort who would drop everything to help you and often has. Only recently did I learn that he has spent decades carrying a quiet sense of not being good enough, because of the way he was made to feel at school. Not because it was ever true. Because of how he was treated.

That is the thing about a learning struggle. It rarely shows on the outside. It gets carried on the inside, often for years, by people who are clever and capable and were simply never understood.

That is the thing about a learning struggle. It rarely shows on the outside. It sits on the inside, often for years, held by people who are clever and capable and were simply never understood.

And here is what I have learned after years of this work. The people carrying it are rarely the ones who can see it clearly themselves. Nor are the people around them, because it doesn't look like anything obvious. It just looks like someone finding something harder than they should, for no reason anyone can name.

If you are reading this with someone in mind, a child, or yourself, and you have that quiet feeling in your gut that there is more going on than anyone has been able to explain, there is a simple place to start.

I have made a free quiz. It takes about two minutes. You answer a few short questions about what you are seeing, and it names the pattern for you, and tells you whether it looks like ordinary struggle or the kind that has a reason behind it.

It won't diagnose anything, and there is nothing to prepare. It's simply a clear first step, for anyone who has been left wondering.

You can take it here: https://www.dyslexiaunpuzzled.co.nz/whats-going-on

Ngā mihi,
Nikki