Some days the news feels like someone shaking a snow globe just to watch the flakes fall wrong. A man with a microphone says that dyslexia should disqualify someone from being president, and suddenly the air is full of old dust again, the kind that settles in children’s lungs before they even know the word for shame.

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I work with kids whose brains read sideways, upside‑down, diagonally toward the truth. They sound out a word like they’re trying to coax a shy animal from the underbrush. They apologise for taking too long. They apologise for existing in a way the world didn’t blueprint.

And then, one afternoon, a child will look up from a page and say something so sharp, so startlingly original, that you feel the floor shift. Dyslexia didn’t stop them. It rerouted them. It taught them to think in spirals instead of straight lines.

But try telling that to a man who thinks different is the same as less.

When public figures talk about learning differences like they’re stains on a shirt, I think of the boy who rearranges Lego sets into impossible machines because the instructions make no sense to him. I think of the girl who can’t read aloud without stumbling, but can tell a story that makes the whole room lean in. I think of the quiet ones who carry their embarrassment like a heavy coat, until someone finally says, “You’re not broken. You’re just built for a different route.”

If we’re going to talk about disqualifying traits, let’s talk about cruelty. Let’s talk about the ease with which some people flatten others into punchlines. Let’s talk about how quickly power forgets the children who are listening.
Dyslexia isn’t a disqualifier. It’s a different weather system; unpredictable, sometimes stormy, often brilliant. The kind that clears the air after a long, stale season.

And if a child with dyslexia ever grows up to run for president, I hope they read their speeches in whatever way works for them. Slowly. Haltingly. With a finger under each line. Or from memory, because their brain prefers the shape of ideas to the shape of letters.

I hope they stand there, unashamed.

I hope the world has learned, by then, what should truly disqualify us.

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Donate today to a fantastic Dyslexia charity, like Dyslexia Scotland.