ABSTRACT
At a day to day level all the mothers in this sample thought that they had the major responsibility for dealing with their child’s dyslexia. This may be partly because this was an atypical sample with several fathers working away from home for long periods of time and several more regularly working away from home for shorter periods of time. In addition there were three single parent mothers. Van der Stoel and Osmond in their interviews both document detailed views from fathers on their dyslexic children, Edwards on the other hand also notes the lack of input from fathers in the eight case studies of dyslexic adolescents which she presents. Scott, Scherman and Phillips (1992) found in their research that mothers were the most likely adults to support their dyslexic children. Several mothers in this case study said that their husbands gave them support on specific occasions such as open evenings or an important meeting in school and generally felt that their husbands supported what they were doing despite their lack of regular involvement. It may therefore be that some fathers have a higher profile in the public arena than they do on a daily basis at home. Edwards wonders if some fathers are less involved because their own experiences of dyslexia make this a painful area for them to cope with. Whilst this is a possibility there was no direct evidence from this study to support this hypothesis. There appeared to be no consistent difference in involvement between dyslexic and non-dyslexic fathers
in this sample and dyslexic mothers were just as involved as non-dyslexic mothers in supporting their children. In the health area we know that mothers are often the ‘guardians’ of the family’s health and take the responsibility for monitoring family health. In this sample within the family it was exclusively mothers who first realised something was wrong and took the initiative in identifying the problem. For many of them their day to day support appeared to be an extension of this early initiative.
