Shame and Pride Sat in the Same Child

What the research found

In 2023, five researchers in Western Australia published a study in the journal Dyslexia. They wanted to understand something numbers alone had not explained: children with dyslexia are more likely than their peers to experience anxiety, low mood, and behavioural difficulties, and no one is quite sure why. Rather than run another survey, the team sat down and listened.

They interviewed 34 people: 17 children and each child’s mother. The children were aged 9 to 14 and living mostly around Perth. Sixteen had a formal dyslexia diagnosis; one had phonological processing difficulties. Seven were girls and ten were boys. Each interview was semi-structured, meaning the researchers had questions in mind but let the conversation wander where the family led it. They then analysed the transcripts for recurring patterns, reading them through what they call a neurodiversity lens, treating dyslexia as a difference in how a brain works rather than simply a deficit to be fixed.

Three themes emerged. The first the authors labelled being “different” in a good or a bad way. This is the study’s most striking observation. The same child could hold pride and shame at once. When parents described dyslexia as a kind of difference, some children took that up warmly. One said the diagnosis was “kinda cool.” Yet many of those same children hid their struggles at school. Asking for help felt exposing. As one put it, with people “you are not so close with, sometimes they giggle and it’s quite embarrassing.” Pride in the identity and shame about the accommodation lived side by side.

The second theme was exhaustion. School asked these children to work harder than their classmates for the same result, and the effort left them depleted. Mothers described “meltdowns” at home and resistance to homework, not as defiance but as the overflow of a day spent suppressing frustration. One mother spoke of brains that had “been working over-time.” The image the authors return to is an old one: a fish asked to climb a tree, capable and struggling at once, in the wrong environment for its abilities.

The third theme the authors called it takes a community. The buffers that seemed to protect these children’s wellbeing were relational: a supportive parent, a good friend, a teacher who understood, a school that felt like it belonged to them. Where those connections were strong, the emotional weight seemed lighter. Mothers were often the load-bearing wall. One wondered aloud what would become of her son “if I didn’t” advocate for him, suspecting he would be struggling far more without her.

It is worth being clear about what this study can and cannot tell us. It is qualitative and small. Thirty-four people, self-selected, recruited through therapists, tutors, and social media. That means the families who took part were likely those already engaged and resourced enough to seek a diagnosis and volunteer their time. The study cannot establish cause. It cannot tell us how common these experiences are, nor prove that shame drives anxiety or that support prevents it. What it offers instead is texture: the actual words children used about their own minds, which surveys tend to flatten.

What it means for you and your child

The most useful thing this study surfaces is the coexistence of pride and shame. If your child seems to embrace being dyslexic one moment and hide it the next, that is not confusion or inconsistency. It appears to be a common and coherent way of holding a difficult thing. You do not need to resolve the contradiction for them. It may be enough to name it, and to let both feelings be real.

The framing you use at home seems to matter. In this study, children whose parents spoke of dyslexia as a difference rather than a defect were more likely to speak of it with something like pride. That is a modest, believable finding, and it costs nothing to try. The point is not to pretend reading is easy. It is to separate the difficulty from the child’s worth, so that needing help does not become evidence of being lesser.

Watch the exhaustion, and read it generously. If your child holds together at school and comes apart at home, the collapse is not the problem. It is often the cost of holding together in the first place. Homework resistance and after-school meltdowns may be signs of a day spent working over capacity, not signs of a bad attitude. Reducing the load, protecting downtime, and lowering the temperature around homework are reasonable responses to a child who is genuinely spent.

The protective factors the study points to are ordinary and within reach: a trusted adult, a good friendship, a school that feels welcoming. None of these are quick fixes, and the study cannot promise they prevent anxiety. But they are the things that seemed to lighten the load for these families, and they are worth investing in deliberately rather than hoping they arrive on their own.

Finally, hold all of this lightly. This is one small study of a particular group of engaged Australian families, and it proves nothing about causation. It does not tell you what will happen to your child. What it does is describe, in children’s own words, an inner experience that is easy to miss from the outside: that a child can be proud of how their mind works and quietly ashamed of what it costs them, and that the adults around them are often the difference between those two feelings.