A/N: This is dedicated to anyone dealing with a disability of any kind, you're amazing and I love you! Also to my little brother who was the inspiration for Tyler. I love you, Bubby!
Disclamor: Not mine, just borrow them.
Kate mounts the stairs, leaving her black ballet flats at the bottom, and grabbing an abandoned baby doll she nearly steps on. She deposits the doll in her daughter's room before crossing the hallway to her son's bedroom. She's met with a closed door, and knocks before twisting the knob and entering. The third grader is lying on his bed, knees bent, clothes and shoes still on, watching a movie on the TV perched on his dresser.
"Hey baby," she smiles, giving her almost nine year old son a once over. Tyler is tall for his age; definitely inheriting his parent's height. He's still in his school uniform: tan pants and a dark green polo shirt, and one of his sneakers is untied, the laces laying on his covers like grey snakes.
Tyler barely glances in her direction, but Kate can see the red tear tracks down his face.
"Scoot over," Kate directs, and as her son makes room, she reclines next to him on the full sized bed. They sit in silence for another minute before Kate starts to weasel the story out of her child. "Dad told me you didn't read with him today. You're not gonna get to go to that pizza party if you don't read every night."
"I don't care; it's stupid anyway," Tyler comments, his jaw setting. She grabs the remote out of his hands and jabs the off button with her thumb.
"Tyler," she starts, choosing her words before continuing. "You know when I was your age we had to learn to write in cursive and I hated it. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the history of the world. I would come home and complain about it to my mom and dad and beg them to let me skip my homework just so I would have to keep writing in cursive. But they didn't let me," she gets an arm around her son and pulls him close. "They made me, forced me, to do my homework and write in cursive because they knew eventually I would get better at it and it would be valuable to me as an adult." Kate looks down at her son who is staring out his window. "Do you get what I'm saying?"
"You gonna make me keep reading because I'll get better?" He asks, looking up at her. Kate hums and nods a reply.
"Come on, sit up," she says, turning over her shoulder to his night stand and grabs the green covered book off the table top. Hatchet by: Gary Paulsen; one of those books Kate herself remembers reading in grade school. She opens up to the hockey book marked page and hands the novel over to Tyler. "Do you remember where you left off?"
"Mmhmm," Tyler replies, pointing to the sentences where he stopped reading last.
"Will you read to me?" Kate whispers, laying a cheek on the crown of Tyler's head.
"The sp-spa-spaks?" Tyler questions looking up at his mom.
"I don't know," Kate shrugs. "You tell me; sound it out." Kate points a finger at the stumbled word, listening to her son struggle to pronounce it.
"S-puh-a-"
"Are," Kate helps.
"S-puh-are-ks. Spuh-are-ks. Sparks," Tyler laughs, smiling up to his mom. "I did it!"
"You did," Kate says, kissing his hair. "Keep going, you're doing great."
"The sparks grew with his gen- I can't do it!" The book gets slammed into the covers, as a hand goes Tyler's face. "I'm so stupid," he says smacking himself.
"Hey. Hey! Stop." Kate says, grabbing Tyler's wrist to stop him hurting himself. "You are not stupid."
"Yes I am!" Tyler's crying now, hot tears out of sheer frustration. How everyone in his class can read with such ease and he gets tripped up over every other word. How he gets bad grades on all his assignments because he can't read the directions. How he silently prays that when they 'popcorn' read in class that he doesn't get picked on because he's scared everyone will hear him trip over the words and find out he can't read them.
Kate was worried it would get this bad; worried her son's self-esteem would get this low and he would not have confidence in himself anymore.
They've known about Tyler's difficulty with reading and comprehension since the previous spring when his second grade teacher brought it their attention. They talked it over with his new teacher once the new school year began and for the first few months of school Tyler's teacher just watched him, originally thinking he was just a bit behind and needed extra time to catch up. But when he didn't catch up with his peers, that's when his teacher and parents started to worry and investigate more.
The months of November and December were spent going from different meeting with various specialists, appointments with more doctors than a kid really should have, and three day testing period that neither the parents or the kid really liked very much.
But finally, just as Ty was about to go on Christmas break, they received a letter and a phone call with the results of his testing. The diagnosis was Dyslexia, a learning disability that affects how a person reads and understands words and numbers. They will sometimes see them backwards or replace one letter or number with another.
Since then, Tyler Castle has been given special help and modifications in school and goes to see a tutor specializing in kids with learning disabilities once a week. He's been doing well, improving and such, but sometimes, like today, it just gets to him.
"Hold on," Kate says, standing and heading down the hallway, stopping at the top of the stairs. "Lucy! LuLu, come here for a second," Kate calls for her three year old daughter. The toddler scampers up the stairs, her pigtails from that morning missing. Once she reaches the top, Kate points her down the hall and into her older brother's room.
"Hop up here, baby," Kate says, lifting Lucy up onto the bed and then into her lap as she returns to her spot next to Tyler. "Tyler wants to read you a story," Kate announces, pulling Lucy's blonde, curly hair back and starts to run her fingers through it, working out the tangles formed during the day.
"Ty Ty read to me?" She asks.
"Yeah, I'm gonna read to you," Tyler responds, giving his little sister a half smile. Tyler picks up the book once again, quickly finding his page. This time he goes slower, using a finger to follow along, just like his teacher, Ms. Blaze taught him to do. "The sparks grew with his g-en-," he stumbles over the word and looks over to his mom.
"Sound it out," Kate encourages.
"G-en-t-luh?" he asks looking up again. Kat doesn't answer him, only continues to play with her daughter's hair. "With his G-en-t-luh breathe."
It's a long slow process, with more than a few outbursts of frustration stopped by Lucy smiling at her brother, wanting to hear the rest of the story, but finally Tyler reaches the end of the chapter.
"I told you you could do it," Kate smiles, pulling her baby in for a hug.
"Thank you," Tyler responds.
"Anytime, kiddo," that gets him another hug and kiss.
"More Ty Ty," Lucy requests.
"I don't know, Lu," Tyler says, looking a little apprehensive.
"Please?" Lucy asks, looking up at her big brother through her eyelashes.
"Okay," He finally relents, picking up the book and continuing the story for his sister, who listens with rapt attention, and who doesn't care about his disability, just that the story continues.