Dyslexia: When Learning Feels Harder Than It Should

Many parents come to us with the same worry.

Their child is bright, curious, and understands ideas when they are explained — yet school feels like a constant struggle. Homework takes hours. Writing is exhausting. Progress feels unpredictable. School feedback focuses on effort rather than understanding.

Parents often say, “They know it — they just can’t show it.”

This experience is deeply confusing, especially when a child is clearly intelligent and trying hard. What many families are seeing is not a lack of ability, but a mismatch between how learning is being asked for and how their child’s brain processes information.

Dyslexia is commonly described as a difficulty with reading and spelling. While this description is familiar, it rarely captures what families are living with day to day.

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental difference that affects how easily written language and information are processed, organised, and retrieved — particularly under cognitive load.

This means a child may:

Many dyslexic children can read fluently. Difficulties often show up more clearly in writing, memory, organisation, or keeping up as learning becomes more complex.

Yes — dyslexia is real. Dyslexia is a recognised neurodevelopmental difference that affects how the brain processes written language and learning under cognitive load. It is not a lack of intelligence, motivation, or effort, and it appears consistently across languages, cultures, and education systems.

Dyslexia is sometimes dismissed as laziness, particularly when a child is articulate, curious, or capable in other areas. But dyslexia is not about not trying. Many dyslexic children are working significantly harder than their peers just to keep up with reading, writing, and school demands. When effort is invisible and outcomes are inconsistent, this can be misread as a motivation problem rather than a processing difference.

What makes dyslexia real is the effort it demands. Tasks such as reading, writing, and homework often take far more time and energy than they should, even when understanding is strong. When that extra effort isn’t recognised, children are asked to meet the same expectations without the same cognitive capacity — which is where frustration, fatigue, and loss of confidence begin.

One of the most distressing aspects of dyslexia for families is inconsistency.

A child may cope well one day and fall apart the next. They may understand work in class but struggle at home. They may perform well orally but poorly in writing.

This is often misinterpreted as carelessness or lack of effort. In reality, it reflects fluctuating cognitive load.

Learning draws on multiple systems at once — attention, working memory, sequencing, organisation, and emotional regulation. When several of these are required at the same time, the system can become overloaded. On days when demands are lower, the same child may appear entirely capable.

Reading and writing words and sentences will only get them so far. Reading and writing are about communication. Unless their skills are good enough to find, understand and think about new information and then express their unique creative responses in writing, they are not doing well. More importantly, they need to discover what their genuine thinking style is and how to communicate their ideas effectively.

Many dyslexic children understand far more than they can show. Learning must pass through working memory before it becomes long-term memory. Working memory is the mental space used to hold information briefly while the brain organises it and connects it to what is already known. When working memory is overloaded — by writing, spelling, organisation, time pressure, or anxiety — information may not be held long enough to settle into long-term memory or may be difficult to retrieve later. This is why a child may understand something clearly when it is explained, but struggle to recall it later or express it on paper.

Writing places particularly heavy demands on working memory. To write, a child must think about what they want to say while also managing spelling, handwriting or typing, sentence structure, punctuation, layout, and sequencing — all at the same time. For many dyslexic learners, this creates cognitive overload. Parents often notice a puzzling pattern: a child may spell words correctly in isolation, but spelling and grammar fall apart when writing content. Or they may produce accurate writing with very little substance. This is not inconsistency. It is the brain prioritising one demand at the expense of another when capacity is exceeded.

Many dyslexic learners are pattern thinkers.

They grasp meaning quickly, make intuitive connections, and often understand ideas best when they can see how everything fits together. This can be a real strength.

School learning often expects the opposite — isolated facts first, meaning later. For dyslexic learners, learning without context is fragile and hard to retrieve.

New learning sticks best when it connects to existing knowledge, experience, images, or meaning. Without these connections, memory becomes unreliable.

When learning repeatedly feels harder than it should, children begin to protect themselves.

This may look like anxiety, perfectionism, avoidance, withdrawal, or humour used as deflection. Confidence often drops. Some children stop trying altogether to avoid repeated failure.

These are not behavioural problems. They are protective responses to overload.

Not every child who struggles fits neatly into a diagnostic category.

Difficulties with memory, sequencing, processing speed, or sensory integration can all affect learning — whether or not a formal diagnosis is given. Similar patterns are often seen in dyspraxia or ADHD.

Understanding how learning systems interact is often more helpful than focusing on labels alone.

Effective support starts with understanding how a child processes information.

Rather than pushing harder, it focuses on:

This neurodevelopmental approach is particularly helpful when standard tutoring or classroom adjustments have not addressed the whole picture.

Dyslexic learners are often thoughtful, insightful, and capable of deep understanding.

When learning is organised in ways that support how their brains work — rather than fighting against it — confidence grows and learning becomes more sustainable.

If you are worried about your child, trust that instinct. Struggling at school rarely reflects a lack of intelligence or potential. It usually means learning has been asking too much of certain systems without adequate support.

Yes. Many dyslexic children can read fluently. Difficulties often show up more clearly in writing, memory, or organisation.

Writing places heavy demands on working memory. When ideas and mechanics must be managed simultaneously, cognitive overload can block expression.

No. Dyslexia does not affect intelligence. Many dyslexic learners are highly intelligent and insightful.

Support that looks beyond reading alone and considers how learning is processed, organised, and taught — particularly from a neurodevelopmental perspective.

Many children struggle even when no single label explains everything. Understanding how learning systems interact can still be helpful.