I Actually everyone turned out better than fine. You could play a game of Scrabble with all the post-nominal initials gathered around the table.
I get comments like
"Who cares if he is dyslexic. It isn't like he'll be illiterate. He'll figure it all out without any greedy therapists involved in his little five year old life. He'll figure out what works for him and be fine. He is an engineering type. There are worse things than being an engineer you know...(cough)...lawyer...(cough)"
And
"I am pretty sure the gifted program at my school was cancelled to provide new carpet for the football locker room. I turned out fine. Just pick a house you like. It isn't like you are trying to choose between the school district where they might be maimed and the one where they might become drug addicts."
See, these comments are beacons of hope for me. I don't have experience with learning disabilities in my family (turns out my dh's brother might have undiagnosed dyslexia), so I love hearing things will turn out fine. I actually do think that's true in regards to my 2E son, but I like hearing it. Still, it doesn't stop me from getting tutoring and services and I wish I had been educated enough to know I should have pressed on when my son was quite young.
I KNEW when my son was 4 that something was wrong, but anyone I mentioned it to ignored me because he was so young. Plus, his twin is a huge outlier and people always said, "don't compare him to his twin," "it would be hard for ANYONE to be a sibling to [PG boy]." But I also knew they were similar intellectually, so my son's reading and writing misses didn't make sense.
Finally in 2nd grade, I had him privately tested and the tester said she knew immediately he had dyslexia-- from his writing sample I sent in before the test. (Now why wouldn't the school/teacher recognize that?!!) The school still wasn't in a hurry to remediate, so we hired a private tutor who worked with him 2-3 x week for almost 3 years. He's still not where he should be in writing, but he's an advanced, but slow reader now in 5th grade. I wish we could have started tutoring in K to avoid the year of tears, as someone mentioned, but also before he got the attitude that he wasn't good at school.
We're still working to undue the damage as he heads to middle school next year.
If I were you, I wouldn't talk about testing to your family if their comments bother you or dissuade you from testing. And I think you should absolutely be testing now, rather than later. If it turns out there's no problem, it's one less thing to worry about!
