TPP 453: Dr. Lisa Rappaport on Parenting Dyslexia and Supporting Dyslexic Learners in School and Beyond
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
29 min
1 speaker
4 chapters
transcribed 8 hours ago
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Who is Dr. Lisa Rappaport and what is her expertise in dyslexia?
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I'm Debbie Reber, and this is Full Tilt Parenting, formerly known as Tilt Parenting. And this is a podcast for parents, for therapists, for educators, for anyone who is raising and supporting neurodivergent kids. And today I'm talking with Dr. Lisa Rappaport, a licensed psychologist who specializes in learning differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and anxiety, and who also has personal experience with dyslexia herself. Lisa's on the faculty at the Rose F. Kennedy Center Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center, and she is the author of a new book called Parenting Dyslexia, a comprehensive guide to helping kids develop confidence, combat shame, and achieve their true potential. So today, we're going to explore what dyslexia really is and isn't, how awareness and support have evolved over the years, and why early diagnosis and strong advocacy is so important.
Lisa is going to share insights from both her professional work and her lived experience, along with practical ways parents can support their kids at home and in school. So here's my conversation with Dr. Lisa Rappaport. Hey, Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining me to talk all about dyslexia. We have done a couple of episodes on dyslexia. There are a lot of folks in my community whose kids have dyslexia often alongside a multiple of other things going on. But I'm really always excited when we get to kind of dive into a topic like this, like we'll do today. But before we get into dyslexia and your new book, would you... Introduce yourself in your own words and the work you do.
And as part of that, your personal why for the work that you do. I
am a neuropsychologist. I work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. I'm going on 25 years there, and I am on a pediatric unit where we diagnose all sorts of learning differences, and we work with all sorts of children with all kinds of differences and genetic disorders. I wanted to do this work since I was in high school. I knew I wanted to advocate for children who were dyslexic and for children in general because I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was six. And although I got the diagnosis at a very young age, there was a then what. Nobody knew what to do. And my mom is actually the one that taught me to read and worked with me straight through high school because my school just didn't know how to support me.
So that's where my desire came from to do what I do.
So that's where I would like to start is thinking about how things have changed. It's been a very long time since I was in school. It just wasn't something people were talking about at all. And I remember one of my bosses in one of my earlier jobs out of university was dyslexic. And it was like... wow, how did you defy the odds to make it to this big role as a dyslexic person? Because it was just something I didn't know much about. And so I'm curious to know how things have changed over the past 25 years that you've been doing this work in terms of understanding and awareness of dyslexia in general, and even of the stigma that can surround it. What kind of changes have you seen when talking about dyslexia?
I have seen tremendous changes because as you said, no one even talked about it. And I think there was an assumption that if you were dyslexic, you really couldn't learn when I was growing up and there were no accommodations for anybody. And so I tended to hide my dyslexia. To the point where I had this book in mind for two decades and didn't put it out there because I didn't want anyone at work to know I was dyslexic, even though that's what we do, because I thought they would see me differently.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is Dr. Lisa Rappaport and what is her expertise in dyslexia?
0:00–7:12
2
How did Dr. Rappaport’s personal experience with dyslexia shape her career?
7:12–14:24
3
What major changes have occurred in dyslexia awareness and stigma over the past 25 years?
14:24–27:48
4
How is dyslexia diagnosed and why is early screening important?
27:48–29:54
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
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TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids