Why Are They Giving Him Word Problems?
dyslexia, math shame, and the IEP that wasn’t enough
Nov 05, 2025
I’m sitting in one of those tiny elementary-school chairs. The kind that bites into the back of your thighs and makes you feel small again. The teacher is kind and tired.
The room smells like feet and expo markers. I’m in my youngest kiddos parent-teacher conference.
I have the color-coded folder, the evaluation data, the IEP I wrote myself. I do this for other families all the time. I walk into rooms like this ready to translate, to advocate, to make the system move.
But this time, it’s my son.
And I’m not here as an advocate.
I’m here as mom.
She says he’s doing well in math.
Then she adds, “We’re still working on word problems.”
Word problems.
For the dyslexic kid.
The one whose mom wrote the damn IEP.
I blink, nod politely, and inside my head everything starts to roar.
Every night this fall, Thaddeus sits at the kitchen table until the paper blurs.
He reads the same problem three times. He cries.
He can do the math. He builds rockets in his bedroom.
He watches chemistry videos for fun.
He used to love the puzzle of numbers.
Now the puzzle talks back in paragraphs he can’t decode.
He doesn’t hate math. He hates failing to find the question.
The drive home
I smiled my professional smile, thanked the teacher, packed the folder.
Then I walked to the car and screamed.
I screamed because I shouldn’t have to be both the mother and the monitor.
I screamed because I built the IEP; line by line, law by law and it still failed to reach the child it was written for. I screamed because my kid’s joy in math is leaking out of a system that congratulates itself for inclusion.
Are you kidding me?
No one thought to bridge language and numbers for the dyslexic kid?
No one thought to read the problem out loud?
No one thought to check if “word problem” might be another word for barrier?
An IEP is supposed to mean access.
But it only lives if it’s monitored and responsive.
On paper, it’s perfect.
In practice, it’s paper.
I built the scaffolds. I trained the staff.
Everyone nodded in the meeting.
And still here we are.
My son, crying over math he could solve if someone just let him see it differently.
Math shame lives in the body
When Thaddeus cries, it’s not about numbers, it’s about shame.
The nervous system saying, This feels unsafe. I know that feeling. I learned it in first grade.
Summer school. A tiny, airless Catholic classroom. Sister Basil drilling addition into my head. She never showed me the numbers; she just said them out loud.
I couldn’t see them, so I couldn’t understand them.
That’s where math shame began: in the space between how my brain worked and what was demanded of it. It still lives in my chest, in my jaw, in the heat that rises when someone says, “This one’s easy.”
And now I watch it live in my son.
Teachers carry it too
Math shame isn’t just a kid thing.
Teachers have it. They were trained to value speed, memorization, neat columns of work. Then we handed them classrooms full of kids who think in pictures and told them to differentiate with no time, no training, and no nervous-system support.
So when a dyslexic student freezes at a word problem, they smile gently and say, “We’re building confidence.”
Because saying “We’re giving him inaccessible materials” feels too heavy.
Because they’re scared, too.
The system problem
We keep using “on grade level” like it means something.
But “on grade level” measures compliance, not comprehension.
If a kid can reason through ratios visually but can’t read the paragraph, are they below level? Or are we grading the wrong skill?
Word problems are not math they’re language tests. They demand reading, sequencing, inference, and working memory before you ever touch the numbers.
For dyslexic or ADHD learners, that’s not a challenge. It’s a trap.
What I built
When I realized what was happening, I did what I always do when systems fail: I built the bridge myself.
A Word Problem Helper Sheet that starts with a body check:
☐ Calm ☐ OK ☐ Tight ☐ Buzzy ☐ Heavy
Then:
Circle the action words.
Cross out the story noise.
Rewrite the problem in your own words.
I paired it with interactive number lines, fraction bridges, and visual equation frames so he could trace, jump, and reason before writing.
Everything dry-erase, nothing permanent.
Mistakes are movement, not failure.
Slowly, his shoulders unclenched.
He smiled.
He started noticing patterns again.
That’s what learning looks like when safety comes first.
The larger anger
Because this shouldn’t depend on having a parent who knows the law and the acronyms.
Because kids shouldn’t lose their love of math over something we could fix in ten minutes.
Because every IEP is only as strong as the monitoring behind it.
Because I’m tired of watching brilliance collapse under bureaucracy.
He’s not “fine.”
He’s brilliant.
And he deserves instruction that meets him where he actually lives; in patterns, not paragraphs.
What parents need to know
An IEP isn’t a promise; it’s a framework.
Ask how it’s being tracked. Ask for data.
If a teacher says “he’s fine,” ask what fine looks like in evidence.
Accommodations aren’t favors. They’re access.
And emotional safety isn’t optional. You can’t logic your way out of dysregulation.
If your child cries over math, stop fixing and start co-regulating.
Breathe first. Then problem-solve.
What teachers need to know
You’re not failing. You’re exhausted inside a system that mistakes speed for mastery.
But you can repair.
You can say, “Draw it.”
You can give a number line.
You can read the problem aloud.
You can let them breathe.
That’s what inclusion actually looks like.
For all of us
Math shame isn’t about numbers.
It’s about belonging.
It’s what happens when we decide intelligence must look a certain way and finish within a certain time.
Thaddeus doesn’t need easier math.
He needs access to the part that feels like play.
And if I’m honest, so do I.
Because somewhere inside me is that small girl in Sister Basil’s room, sweating over a worksheet.
And somewhere inside me is the mother gripping the steering wheel, screaming after the conference.
And somewhere inside me is a woman who’s done being polite about it
