Uncanny Commonsense

March 14, 2022

Marin Resnick

Uncanny Commonsense…

That’s how my boss described me. He said I had an uncanny commonsense.

“But to get you to sit and do your work, that’s another story….”

“But, I do my job well,” I retorted.

“Yes, you do, but that’s only because most of what we do is easy for you,” he said…

There are moments, like today, when the world is spinning in varying directions when I think of his words. Many of us have some kind of attention issues especially now with Facebook, Instagram and all sorts of other discrattins there to take us away from the doldrums of 2 p.m

But yet, how do we get to paying attention.

This question often enters my mind when thinking about my daughter. She is tall, beautiful, and has as uncanny common sense.

But she has ADHD…

Often times when children have ADHD they have some kind of another learning disability - my daughter has dyslexia. And how could I get her to read became one of my biggest questions as she grew. For I didn’t know how she could learn about life or for that matter live life without being literate.

Illiteracy in our country is a huge issue. According to the According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54 percent of people aged 16 to 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth grade level. However, literacy Is a predictor of financial stability. A study by the Barbara Bush Foundation found the average annual income of adults declines with their reading level: Those who read at a sixth grade level earn about $63,000 and those who read below a third grade level earn $34.000.

Third grade level….I just couldn’t see having my daughter not be able to support or take her of herself.

Googling dyslexia, I learned that my daughter had visual dyslexia, where the words moved up and down on the paper and she had a hard time focusing on words. But after reading her many books and stories I learned that she could recognize rhyming and read certain fonts. So we focused on learning the words in those books which she could understand. But after a while she got bored of them, and asked…

“Mommy, will you write me a book?”

Sure I had been a writer for many years. But a children’s book???

Of course then inspiration hit. My daughter and I had been spending the summers in Florida Keys and had a huge iguana on our property who we monikered Scary because he looked like a dinosaur, and there is was Scary the Scared Iguana was born.

The book had the candanace that my daughter needed to hear the sounds of the works, the sight words for her to memorize and the special font so the words stopped moving.

It was a miracle.

My daughter, who is now 13, is almost on reading level, which for a child with dyslexia is a blessing.

Reading helped my daughter learn to read.

And that’s why we’re here, to teach everyone to love to read.