Is Dyslexia a Superpower? A Founder Who Lived It Says No

Why Does a Bright Child Decide They Are Stupid?

Jamie did well in his first years at school. Then, he says, school changed. It stopped handing out awards for showing up. It started scoring what you could do. That is when the word stupid started to stick. He was bullied, then became the bully, then opted out.

To us, nothing in that story looks like a child who wasn’t smart. It looks like a child who believed what he heard. Your child isn’t broken. Their brain is learning differently. In 2025, the International Dyslexia Association changed its definition of dyslexia. It dropped a line from 2002. That line called these reading troubles “often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities.” Catts and colleagues (2026) give the reason. They say IQ-gap approaches “lack predictive validity.” Struggling to read says nothing about how smart your child is. Here is more on reading and intelligence.

What changed Jamie’s mind was meeting his wife. She is dyslexic too, he says, and she earned a high-grade degree. That got him thinking dyslexia does not mean low IQ. One review of nineteen studies fits his story. Gibby-Leversuch, Hartwell and Wright (2021) studied children who find reading hard. These children were at greater risk of a low view of themselves as learners. The review did not find the same risk for their overall self-worth. Jamie built a big business while still sure he was bad at school.

Should You Tell Your Child Dyslexia Is a Superpower?

It is the kind thing people say. A teacher says it, or a friend. Then comes a list of famous names. Jamie is the sort of success story that ends up on those lists. He does not agree with the line.

“I’m not a fan of simply changing the message from deficit to superpower,” he says. He calls dyslexia an “Achilles heel.” He says he feels it every day. His strengths are real to him, but they “come with shadows.” The superpower line, he says, is “not useful for the next generation.”

He also asks who gets to tell the success story. Success stories from older white men are easy to find, he says. But “there’s a lot more to it.” Everyone’s road is different. He credits his mother, who backed him. A small charity gave him his break. In the video he quotes big figures about entrepreneurs and prisons, too. The studies behind numbers like those disagree, so we leave them out.

So what do you say instead? If strengths come, your child earns them through the struggle. They are not a prize handed over in place of it. We won’t paper over how hard it is. We also wrote about a diagnosis that brought a reason and a plan.

What Helps a Child More Than a Cheerful Label?

For Jamie, the turn came from naming it. Hiding it, he says, kept him “living in a shell.” For years he worked hard to hide it. He practiced a new accent every day. He feared his own accent would make people think he was stupid. He even went by James, because it sounded “posher” than Jamie. Telling people the truth was “completely liberating.”

The same review found two sides to a label. Some young people felt others saw them as “unintelligent or idle.” For them, a diagnosis gave “an alternative picture of themselves.” The review also calls this a trade-off. Against the relief, some children saw themselves as weaker at school. Some also felt the struggle was out of their control. Knight (2025) describes the label’s effects as conflicting, too.

So, to us, the question is not label or no label. It is what the label replaces. A name that replaces “I’m stupid” does real good. Maybe your child already says “reading is hard, and we’re working on it.” Then a label has less to add. Here is where to start tonight.

• Listen for the story your child tells about themselves. To us, “I’m stupid” is a story, not a fact.
• Name the hard part plainly. Try “Reading is hard right now, and we’re working on it.”
• Skip “you’re so smart” when your child has evidence the other way. Confidence comes from evidence, not encouragement.
• Talk about it openly at home, so hiding never becomes your child’s job.
• When the work gets hard, name the skill, not the child.