Supporting Your Child Emotionally When They Have Dyslexia

Wondering how to support a child who hates reading, avoids schoolwork, or has started believing they are not smart?

When a child struggles with dyslexia, the difficulty does not always stay confined to reading and spelling. Over time, repeated struggles can begin to affect how children feel about school, how willing they are to try, and how they see themselves as learners.

Some children begin saying things like, “I hate reading,” “I’m dumb,” or “I can’t do it.” Others refuse to read aloud, become angry during homework, shut down after one mistake, or avoid tutoring altogether. Some become perfectionistic. Others seem not to care.

These reactions can be confusing and exhausting for parents, especially when you know your child is capable of more.

Research confirms that these concerns deserve attention. Children with dyslexia can experience anxiety, negative feelings about their academic abilities, and emotional or behavioral difficulties connected to their struggles at school. In interviews with children with dyslexia and their mothers, children described worry, school-related stress, embarrassment, and feeling exhausted or overwhelmed. Parents described homework resistance, meltdowns, and school refusal related to their children’s school struggles (Wilmot et al., 2023a).

I have seen these emotions firsthand.

I remember meeting a new student for the first time because I needed to assess their reading skills and determine where to begin intervention. Before we could even get started, I could see how frightened the child was. They were physically shaking with fear and anxiety and did not want their mother to leave their side.

Experiences like this have taught me that sometimes the first thing a struggling reader needs from us is not another reading strategy. We first need to understand what may be happening underneath the behavior.

Key Takeaways

Supporting a child emotionally does not mean removing every difficult task or constantly reassuring them that everything will be fine. It means understanding how repeated reading struggles may be affecting them and helping them experience appropriate support and genuine progress.

In this article, you’ll learn how to:

• Look beneath reading avoidance instead of immediately assuming laziness or defiance.

• Understand how dyslexia can affect a child’s academic confidence without defining their overall self-worth.

• Help your child experience and recognize genuine progress.

• Know when to encourage perseverance and when to investigate why a task is causing significant distress.

• Pay attention to shame, anxiety, and your child’s sense of belonging at school.

• Recognize when your child may need emotional support in addition to reading intervention.

• Take care of your own emotional well-being as you support your child.

The encouraging news is that emotional struggles do not have to become a permanent part of your child’s identity.

Look Beneath Your Child’s Behavior

When a child refuses to read, the behavior is easy to see. The reason behind it is often much harder to understand.

Parents may see a child who argues about homework, procrastinates, refuses tutoring, or simply says, “I’m not doing it.” It can be tempting to interpret those behaviors as laziness, stubbornness, or defiance.

Sometimes there is more happening underneath.

In research by Wilmot and colleagues, mothers described homework resistance, school refusal, meltdowns, and emotional and behavioral reactions that they believed were connected to their children’s school struggles. The children themselves talked about worry, stress, embarrassment, and exhaustion (Wilmot et al., 2023a).

This does not mean that every child who refuses to read is anxious. It does mean that we should be careful about deciding what the behavior means before we understand what may be causing it.

I was reminded of this recently when I evaluated another student. His mother told me that he refused to read to her at home. You might assume from that information that he was unable to read grade-level material.

That was not what I found.

His overall reading ability fell within the average range, and he could read grade-level material. When I tested his foundational skills more closely, however, I found significant weaknesses in word-attack skills and letter-sound knowledge. He had learned to compensate well enough to read much of the material he encountered, but the underlying skills needed to decode unfamiliar words were much weaker.

His refusal to read at home had not given his mother a complete picture of his reading ability. The assessment helped us see both what he could do and where he was struggling.

A child who refuses to read may genuinely be unable to do the task. Another child may be able to do it but find reading exhausting. A child may be afraid of making mistakes, or they may have developed compensating strategies that make reading look easier than it actually feels.

Instead of asking only, “Why won’t my child try?” consider asking, “What is making this so difficult for my child?”

That question can lead us toward a very different response.

Understand What Dyslexia Can Do to Academic Confidence

One of the most important things parents need to understand is that dyslexia does not automatically cause a child to have poor self-esteem.

Terras, Thompson, and Minnis (2009) studied children with dyslexia and found that they did not universally have low overall self-esteem. Their greater weakness was in how competent they believed themselves to be academically. The researchers also found higher rates of social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties than in the general population. Better global self-worth and a better understanding of dyslexia were associated with better psychosocial adjustment.

I find this distinction incredibly helpful.

Your child may know they are funny, kind, creative, athletic, musical, mechanically gifted, or capable in many other areas while simultaneously believing they are a poor reader or a weak student.

The concern is when a specific difficulty begins changing the way a child sees themselves.

“Reading is hard for me” can become “I’m bad at school.”

Eventually, it can even become “I’m dumb.”

This is one reason helping children understand dyslexia accurately is so important. Reading difficulty is something they experience. It is not a measure of their intelligence, worth, character, or potential.

Remember That “I Don’t Care” May Not Tell the Whole Story

Discouragement does not always look like sadness or anxiety.

I remember working with a student who told me he did not care whether he learned to read. According to him, reading simply was not important.

His behavior during lessons seemed to match what he was saying. He avoided reading and did not always seem invested in what we were doing.

Then he passed a level.

His reaction looked nothing like indifference. His face lit up. He danced around the room and cheered.

That moment has stayed with me because it reminded me not to assume that a child who says, “I don’t care,” truly feels indifferent. I could not know exactly why this student had said those words. Perhaps he was protecting himself from disappointment. Perhaps reading really did feel unimportant to him at times.

What I did know was that when he experienced success, it mattered to him.

Children may express discouragement in many ways. Some cry. Some become angry. Some refuse to participate. Some become perfectionistic. Some give up before they start. Others appear not to care.

As adults, we need to remain curious about what is happening underneath.

Supporting a Child With Dyslexia Through Real Success

Children who have struggled repeatedly need encouragement, but they also need something more. They need opportunities to experience progress for themselves.

This is one reason appropriate reading intervention is so important. A child who has not been taught foundational reading skills explicitly may continue encountering tasks they do not know how to approach. Effective intervention addresses the academic problem directly instead of simply asking the child to try harder.

We should be careful not to promise that improving reading will automatically resolve anxiety or other emotional concerns. Some children need both reading intervention and support for anxiety.

Francis and colleagues (2021) studied children between the ages of eight and twelve who had both poor reading and significant anxiety. Their 12-week intervention combined targeted reading instruction with anxiety treatment. The children showed improvement in reading and spelling accuracy as well as reductions in anxiety. Because this was a small case-series study, the results are promising rather than definitive, but they provide useful evidence that reading difficulties and emotional needs can be addressed together.

In my own work, I have seen how meaningful genuine reading success can be to a child.

The student who physically shook during that first assessment eventually became a much more confident reader. Over time, the fear I had seen at the beginning was replaced by a very different attitude toward reading. Eventually, that same student proudly announced:

“I’m such a good reader. I don’t need your help anymore.”

I have never forgotten that transformation.

The reading progress mattered tremendously, but so did the change in the way the child viewed their own ability.

I saw something similar with another student who began tutoring with a great deal of fear around reading. As his skills improved, he began earning good grades at school. Our lessons became easier and less stressful, and he started feeling good about himself.

These are individual stories, and every child is different. Still, they remind me why we should pay attention to emotional progress alongside reading scores.

Help Your Child Notice Progress

When a child says, “I’m dumb,” our first instinct may be to immediately answer, “No, you’re not. You’re so smart.”

Children absolutely need to know that difficulty with reading does not determine their intelligence or worth. Research by Terras and colleagues (2009) is encouraging here. The children with dyslexia in their study did not show universally poor overall self-esteem even though they felt significantly less competent academically.

Parents can help children keep reading difficulties in perspective while also pointing out concrete evidence of progress.

Instead of relying only on broad praise, try noticing something specific:

• “You read that word without any help.”

• “You remembered something that used to be difficult for you.”

• “You caught your own mistake and fixed it.”

• “You kept trying even though that was frustrating.”

• “You were nervous about reading that, but you tried.”

• “Look how much easier this is for you than it was a few months ago.”

Parents can also notice emotional progress.

Maybe your child used to cry after every mistake but now tries again. Perhaps they once refused tutoring and now participate willingly. Maybe they finally volunteer to read a sentence aloud or attempt a difficult word before saying, “I can’t.”

Those changes may never appear on an assessment report, but they matter.

Know When to Push and When to Back Off

One of the hardest questions parents face is whether they should insist that a child continue or whether pushing will make the situation worse.

There is no single response that works for every child. Research shows that homework resistance and school refusal can accompany the emotional burden of dyslexia, but it does not establish one parenting method that is best for every reluctant reader (Wilmot et al., 2023a).

I have watched families handle resistance in different ways.

One parent told me they had reached the point where they were no longer willing to allow their child to refuse tutoring. They established consequences for refusing and rewards for reaching important milestones, such as passing a level.

For that particular child, something changed once the expectation became consistent. He stopped fighting the lessons and eventually began enjoying them.

I would not present that family’s approach as a formula for every child. The reason behind the resistance matters. A child who is testing a boundary may need something different from a child experiencing significant anxiety.

Parents need to find a balance between removing every difficult experience and ignoring genuine distress. Sometimes a child needs encouragement to persevere. Sometimes a task needs to be broken into smaller pieces. Sometimes the child needs additional support. Other times the workload, instructional level, or accommodations need to change.

If homework consistently takes hours, reading practice repeatedly ends in tears, or your child is being asked to complete work far beyond their ability, simply increasing the pressure may not address the real problem.

Instead of asking only, “How do I make my child finish this?” ask, “Why is this becoming so difficult, and what kind of help does my child need?”

Pay Attention to Shame and School Belonging

Children with dyslexia already know when reading is harder for them. They do not need adults unintentionally making that difficulty more humiliating.

Research with children with dyslexia has identified school-related stress, embarrassment, friendships, parent support, and school connectedness as important parts of their experiences (Wilmot et al., 2023a).

Parents can pay attention to questions such as:

• Is my child embarrassed when asked to read aloud?

• Does my child feel comfortable asking the teacher for help?

• Does my child have friends and feel accepted at school?

• Does receiving intervention make my child feel singled out?

• Do teachers understand why certain tasks are difficult?

• Has my child been described as lazy, careless, or unmotivated because of reading or spelling difficulties?

Terras and colleagues (2009) also found that children with better global self-worth and a better understanding of their dyslexia tended to show better psychosocial adjustment.

The goal is not to pretend that reading difficulties do not exist. It is to help children understand those difficulties without turning them into a judgment about their intelligence or worth.

Remember That Parent Stress Matters Too

The emotional side of dyslexia does not affect children alone.

Parents worry about reading scores, school performance, intervention, homework, accommodations, finances, and the future. Many of the parents I talk with carry very real fears.

Some worry that their child will never catch up. Others wonder whether their child will be able to attend college or have the future they imagined. Some are unsure whether the school is providing enough help or whether they need to seek outside intervention. Others see their child becoming discouraged or resistant to reading and simply do not know what to do.

Research suggests that these experiences can be emotionally demanding for parents. Wilmot and colleagues interviewed mothers of children with reading difficulties and identified chronic worry and stress, distress from watching their children struggle, challenges to parenting confidence, and feelings of isolation and lack of support. The mothers also described the importance of social support and coping strategies (Wilmot et al., 2023b).

I see that exhaustion in families too.

Some parents have become so tired of nightly homework battles that they eventually stopped trying to complete the homework regularly with their child. One mother told me that she preferred to hire someone else to teach her child so that she could simply be his mother instead of always being his teacher.

There is wisdom in recognizing your own limits.

Parents have an important role in supporting their child’s learning, but every interaction does not have to become a reading lesson. Sometimes bringing in an appropriately trained professional allows someone else to handle the difficult instruction while you protect something equally important: your relationship with your child.

Parents need support too. You do not have to know everything about dyslexia or solve every problem by yourself.

Know When Your Child Needs More Help

Frustration with reading does not automatically mean that a child has an anxiety disorder or another mental-health condition. An occasional complaint about reading, a difficult homework night, or resistance to a challenging assignment does not by itself indicate a mental-health problem.

Significant or persistent emotional difficulties, however, deserve attention.

If anxiety, persistent sadness, school refusal, or other emotional or behavioral concerns become severe or begin substantially interfering with your child’s everyday life, talk with an appropriate pediatric or mental-health professional.

A child can have genuine reading difficulties and genuine anxiety at the same time. Parents do not always have to decide whether a problem is academic or emotional.

Sometimes both need attention.

Reading intervention should address reading. Mental-health treatment should address significant emotional or psychological concerns. When a child needs both, those supports can work alongside one another.

Final Thoughts

One of the greatest privileges of my work is seeing children change over time.

Some arrive expecting reading to be difficult. They hesitate, avoid, and become frustrated quickly. Some say they hate reading. Others insist they do not care whether they learn.

Then, sometimes, something begins to change.

They read something they could not read before. They master a skill. They pass a level. They make a mistake and correct it. They begin participating more willingly. Lessons that once felt tense become easier.

I have watched a child who claimed he did not care about reading dance around the room after passing a level. I have watched a student who approached reading fearfully begin earning good grades and feeling confident in his abilities. I have watched a child who physically shook with anxiety during an initial assessment eventually announce, “I’m such a good reader. I don’t need your help anymore.”

Those experiences have taught me that the emotional side of dyslexia deserves our attention just as much as the academic side.

Research does not tell us that every child with dyslexia will follow the same emotional journey. It does give us reason for hope. Children with dyslexia are not destined to have poor overall self-esteem. Positive self-worth and a healthy understanding of dyslexia may help protect children from psychosocial difficulties (Terras et al., 2009). Children and families also describe the importance of parent support, friendships, and connection to school (Wilmot et al., 2023a).

Your child may hate reading today. They may resist intervention, avoid reading aloud, or expect to fail. Those feelings are real and deserve to be taken seriously, but they do not have to become the defining story of your child’s future.

As a parent, you can listen before judging the behavior. You can help your child notice genuine progress. You can pay attention to what is happening emotionally as well as academically. You can seek effective reading intervention and get additional help when anxiety or other emotional concerns become more serious.

You can also give yourself grace. Supporting a struggling child is difficult. There will be frustrating evenings, moments when fear takes over, and times when you wonder whether you are making the right decision.

Your child does not need a perfect parent. They need a parent who keeps learning, keeps listening, and keeps believing that today’s struggle does not determine tomorrow’s possibilities.

Sometimes, until children can see the progress for themselves, they need us to keep believing that change is possible.

If your child is struggling with reading, spelling, or confidence, remember that there is hope. With appropriate instruction and support, children with dyslexia can make meaningful progress.

If you’re looking for practical, research-based guidance, I invite you to explore the other articles in my Dyslexia Toolbox. If you’re wondering whether your child would benefit from specialized reading intervention, I’d be honored to help.

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About the Author

Hi, I’m Heidi. I am a licensed Reading Specialist and a Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner with over 20 years of experience in education. Since 2022, I have been supporting children with dyslexia and spelling challenges both online and in person through private practice, working with students in grades 2–12 in the United States and with international school students around the world.

My goal is to make this journey less overwhelming and more empowering for families, helping children gain confidence and success in reading and spelling.

Connect with Heidi at Successfuldyslexiatutoring.com or on Linked in.

References

Francis, D. A., Hudson, J. L., Kohnen, S., Mobach, L., & McArthur, G. M. (2021). The effect of an integrated reading and anxiety intervention for poor readers with anxiety. PeerJ, 9, e10987.

Terras, M. M., Thompson, L. C., & Minnis, H. (2009). Dyslexia and psycho-social functioning: An exploratory study of the role of self-esteem and understanding. Dyslexia, 15(4), 304–327.

Wilmot, A., Pizzey, H., Leitão, S., Hasking, P., & Boyes, M. (2023a). Growing up with dyslexia: Child and parent perspectives on school struggles, self-esteem, and mental health. Dyslexia, 29(1), 40–54.

Wilmot, A., Pizzey, H., Leitão, S., Hasking, P., & Boyes, M. (2023b). “I struggle at times to see her struggle”: Mothers’ perspectives on dyslexia-related school struggles and the inter-connected nature of mother and child well-being. Dyslexia, 29(2), 136–150.