'It wasn't just me': After struggling with dyslexia for years, PEI woman finally diagnosed as adult

Cassidy McKellop would spend hours sitting at a table with her mother, trying to get through her homework.

Sometimes, they both ended up crying.

Her mother wanted to help, but neither could understand why assignments that seemed straightforward for other students could become such a struggle.

Reading was difficult.

Spelling was worse.

Even when McKellop managed to read a passage, understanding what she had just read was another challenge.

School carried on, and so did she.

“I kind of just got passed through,” McKellop recalled.

She rarely failed a grade, but she struggled to keep up with the demands of school. Throughout elementary school, she attended additional classes intended to help with reading, yet the difficulties persisted.

A classroom assignment that required students to read a passage and answer questions could be particularly challenging. McKellop would often spend so much time concentrating on individual words, how they were spelled and how they sounded, that she reached the end of a paragraph without understanding its meaning.

As she grew older, she began to suspect there was something more behind her struggles.

“I just felt like I was smart, but I never knew how to take the extra step,” she said.

By high school, she had told her mother she wanted to be tested for a learning disability. She knew something was interfering with her ability to learn, even if she did not have the words to explain it.

This experience affected how she saw herself. Watching classmates complete work that required considerably more effort from her sometimes left her feeling “stupid or dumb,” she recalled.

Some teachers, she said, were unwilling to provide the additional help she needed, leaving her feeling unsupported.

“It felt like a failure of me,” she said.

It was not until McKellop was 18 that she received a diagnosis of dyslexia, along with “a written language disability”. She also lives with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

For the first time, she had an explanation for difficulties she had experienced throughout her school years.

Her mother later looked through schoolwork she had saved from McKellop’s childhood. With the knowledge of the diagnosis, the signs of her daughter’s learning difficulties became easier to recognize.

For McKellop, the diagnosis brought relief and opened the door to resources she had never known how to access.

“It was useful just to have that acknowledgement that it wasn’t just me,” she said.

Her experience reflects a wider concern among advocates during October, recognized as Dyslexia Awareness Month: children can spend years struggling with reading before their learning needs are fully understood.

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability affecting the accuracy or speed of word reading and spelling. According to the International Dyslexia Association’s updated definition, adopted in October 2025, its causes involve a complex interaction of genetic, neurobiological and environmental influences.

The association also identifies difficulties with reading comprehension, academic achievement and psychological well-being as possible consequences.

The severity and experiences of people with dyslexia vary.

Ainsley Congdon, executive director of the Learning Disabilities Association of New Brunswick, said misconceptions continue to shape how students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities are perceived.

“Students with LDs (learning disabilities) are not lazy,” she said.

Although October focuses attention on dyslexia, learning disabilities can affect more than one area of a person’s education, and several conditions can occur together. Congdon said awareness of dyslexia should also bring attention to other learning disabilities, including dysgraphia, which affects handwriting and written expression, and dyscalculia, which affects numerical and mathematical skills.

“It’s just that everyone talks about dyslexia,” she said.

Research suggests these conditions overlap more frequently than would be expected by chance.

A 2019 review published in New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, led by University of Colorado Boulder researcher Erik Willcutt, found that learning disabilities affecting reading, writing and mathematics frequently occur together.

A more recent study, published in March 2025 in the journal Psychological Science, examined data from children in the Netherlands Twin Register. Researchers led by Elsje van Bergen of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that children with dyslexia were 2.7 times as likely to have ADHD and 3.1 times as likely to have dyscalculia as children without dyslexia.

Although the conditions were more likely to overlap, most children in the study who had at least one of the three conditions had only one.

For Congdon, recognizing different learning disabilities matters because difficulties can extend beyond the classroom.

She pointed to dyscalculia, which can affect everyday tasks involving numbers, including managing personal finances, preparing budgets and filing taxes.

“We’re not just bad at math, right?” she said.

Understanding which difficulties a student is experiencing can help educators identify the different types of support they need.

She said students with these disabilities have the capacity to learn, but may require different approaches to instruction.

“What students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities need is they need a clear explicit instruction on how to read,” she said.

That includes teaching foundational skills such as phonemic awareness, recognizing the individual sounds in spoken words, and decoding, the process of connecting letters with sounds to read unfamiliar words.

New Brunswick has introduced early literacy instruction aligned with the science of reading. However, Congdon said, there are still significant gaps in how students experiencing difficulties are identified and supported. One of her organization’s priorities is universal early literacy screening, which can help schools identify students at risk of reading difficulties before they fall further behind.

Although New Brunswick uses an Early Grades Literacy Assessment for students from kindergarten to Grade 2, a 2025 review by Dyslexia Canada found that the assessment did not meet the criteria for a validated universal screener. The organization said the assessment lacked established measures of validity and reliability, as well as standardized benchmarks to identify students at risk.

The distinction matters because identifying reading difficulties is only useful when schools can respond with appropriate instruction.

In N.B., a June 2026 report by Auditor General Paul Martin found persistent gaps in literacy achievement and weaknesses in how schools monitor and respond to student performance. No provincial literacy assessment target was met during the period examined, and identified difficulties were not consistently leading to timely interventions.

Similar concerns have emerged elsewhere in Atlantic Canada, even as provinces introduce new approaches to reading instruction.

On P.E.I., a 2023 review of inclusive education recommended establishing universal screening for literacy, numeracy and developmental needs from kindergarten through Grade 9.

The province has since expanded its structured literacy programs. According to the Department of Education and Early Years’ 2024-2025 annual report, the Fundations reading program was implemented in all Grade 3 classrooms, with 70 teachers trained and 1,309 students affected. Another 24 teachers received training in small-group literacy intervention for students from kindergarten to Grade 3.

A 2025 article published in the Journal of Teaching and Learning, examining reading instruction and assessment policies across Canada, reported that P.E.I. was planning to pilot a universal literacy screening tool during the 2025-26 school year. Whether that pilot has been completed has yet to be confirmed.

N.S. has also revised its approach. The province introduced updated literacy instruction for its youngest students in 2024 and expanded its structured literacy curriculum to Grades 3 through 6 in September 2026.

According to provincial screening guidelines revised in August 2026, early-reading screening is mandatory for students in Primary, Grade 1 and Grade 2, with limited exemptions. Schools use Acadience Reading assessments to identify students who may need additional support.

However, a separate audit released Sept. 29 by Nova Scotia Auditor General Kim Adair found that the province’s Education Department had no measurable targets for student performance in reading, writing or mathematics and could not demonstrate how provincial assessment results informed its decisions.

The audit also found no clear link between assessment results and decisions about where literacy support coaches were assigned or what professional development teachers received.

In N.L., the government announced Sept. 9 that it was introducing universal reading screening for kindergarten and Grade 1 students during the 2026-2027 school year.

The provincial developments reflect growing attention to early literacy, although the assessments and reforms differ. General literacy achievement results also cannot establish how many students have dyslexia.

For advocates such as Congdon, the central concern remains whether students who struggle to read are identified early and receive appropriate, sustained support, regardless of whether they have a formal diagnosis.

“You should get the intervention and support that you need at school without a diagnosis,” she said.

She explained that psychoeducational assessments can be difficult to obtain in Atlantic Canada because of a shortage of available assessment services. In the meantime, children may continue struggling unless schools recognize their needs and intervene.

Support could include explicit classroom instruction, targeted small-group teaching or specialized literacy intervention.

McKellop’s experience shows why the distinction between receiving some additional instruction and having one’s learning needs fully understood can matter.

Although she received extra reading help as a child, she continued to encounter difficulties throughout school. It was only after her diagnosis that she began accessing accommodations designed around her specific needs.

The effects of those earlier experiences did not disappear when she received her assessment.

McKellop said years of difficulty in school made her nervous about pursuing further education, even after she understood why learning had been challenging.

Her experience is consistent with findings from a systematic review by researchers Rosa Gibby-Leversuch, Brettany Hartwell and Sarah Wright, published online in 2019 in the academic journal Current Psychology.

The researchers examined 19 studies involving children and young people with dyslexia or literacy difficulties. They found that those students may be more likely to develop negative perceptions of their abilities as learners, although that did not necessarily translate into lower overall self-worth.

The review also found that supportive relationships with parents, teachers and peers, along with a better understanding of dyslexia, could help protect students’ perceptions of themselves.

A separate meta-analysis published in Clinical Psychology Review in 2019 examined 34 studies involving 16,275 participants. Researchers found an association between poor reading skills and increased symptoms of anxiety and depression, with a stronger association for anxiety. The findings did not establish that reading difficulties directly caused those mental-health problems.

Congdon said the emotional effects of struggling in school can extend well beyond childhood.

“It has a huge impact on mental health because you see that you’re not progressing the same way that your peers are,” she said.

Those difficulties can influence future education and employment, she added, particularly when students reach adulthood without having received the support they needed.

Congdon said her organization is advocating for literacy intervention to continue beyond elementary school, as well as stronger inclusive education policies and better employment support for adults with learning disabilities.

“They still need access to literacy supports and intervention,” she said of students entering middle and high school.

New Brunswick’s inclusive education policy, known as Policy 322, remains a focus of provincial discussions about classroom resources, staffing and support. Congdon said her association wants to ensure students with learning disabilities are adequately considered as that work continues.

For McKellop, continuing her education eventually became possible with accommodations that addressed the difficulties she had spent years managing on her own.

After completing college and spending five years in the workforce, she made the decision to return to the University of Prince Edward Island.

It was not an easy one.

Her earlier experiences had made asking for help difficult. She recalled being reluctant to approach student support services during college because requests for assistance in the past had not always produced the help she needed.

“Because when I did in the past, I didn’t get the support I needed,” she said.

This time, she approached her return differently.

Before beginning university, McKellop contacted student support services to arrange accommodations and identify the resources available to her.

She now uses assistive technology, including Speechify and Grammarly, which read written material aloud. Having textbooks and other documents available electronically allows her to listen while following the text or completing another activity that helps her concentrate.

She also receives testing accommodations, including the option of writing examinations in a separate room.

These adjustments have helped her approach learning with a clearer understanding of her needs.

Her strategies extend into everyday life. She relies heavily on her phone calendar to organize dates and reminders, and she uses writing software to check documents before sending them.

Even spelling a single word can require an unexpected amount of effort.

“If I can’t spell a word, spell check doesn’t even help me out. I’ll change the whole sentence to do it a different way,” she said.

The challenges also appear in the workplace, where she sometimes asks colleagues or employers to review written documents before they are submitted.

She said disclosing her learning disabilities to employers can be intimidating, particularly when she does not know how the information will be received.

“Sometimes it’s scary because you don’t know that’s going to affect your ability to get this job,” she said.

McKellop has also worked as a youth worker and educational assistant, experiences that allowed her to support young people who were having difficulties of their own.

She said children who appear distracted, disengaged or unwilling to complete schoolwork may be dealing with circumstances adults do not immediately recognize.

Taking time to understand what is happening in a student’s life can make a difference.

Her experiences have also made her wary of the misconceptions surrounding dyslexia.

“People just think that you see words backwards,” she said.

Although McKellop remembers confusing similar-looking letters, including lowercase b and d, she said that experience does not capture the range of challenges associated with her learning disabilities.

She is equally frustrated by the tendency to portray dyslexia as a special advantage or extraordinary gift.

Congdon shared that concern.

“It’s certainly not an easy path. It’s not a superpower,” she said.

As part of Learning Disabilities Awareness Month, Congdon’s association is organizing Steps 4 Learning, a virtual fundraising challenge running until Oct. 31.

Participants can walk, run, cycle or take part in other physical activities, with the organization aiming to collectively cover 1,000 kilometres and raise $2,000 to support its work, Congdon said.

For both women, recognizing the strengths of people with learning disabilities should not obscure the barriers they encounter in classrooms, workplaces and everyday life.

Congdon, who has spent a decade working with the Learning Disabilities Association of New Brunswick, said the issue is personal as well as professional. She has also had to navigate the education system as a parent of a child with learning disabilities.

Her advice to families who suspect their children may be struggling is to learn about their rights, understand the supports available in their school districts and speak with educators as early as possible.

She encouraged parents “to trust that you know your student best.”