Fans of the Duggar family worry when Joy-Anna Duggar says she wants more children.
With the kids she and Austin Forsyth have already had, she seems to have her hands full a lot of the time.
In fact, Joy-Anna just gave an update about Gideon, who is 5 years old.
After a number of tests, Gideon has now been given a diagnosis. It’s something that runs in the family, so he might not be the only Duggar child with it.
Joy-Anna Duggar talked about her son Gideon on her YouTube page.
In fact, he was in parts of the video and smiled with a cute toothless grin. He talked about how excited he was to learn to read.
Joy said that he has been having trouble counting numbers and “putting the letters in the right order.” She didn’t mean the order of the letters, but how words are read.
“We looked at him again,” Joy told her listeners. “This time by a tutor for dyslexia.”
That would help explain why someone might be having trouble with those specific skills with letters and numbers.
Joy said, “I didn’t know that dyslexia is caused by genes.”
She said, “I have it on my side of the family.” “It runs in Austin’s family on his mother’s side.”
Joy-Anna then confirmed that “Gideon is likely to have it.”
Even a member of a cult can see that this is true. That says a lot about how far our society has come. Only a few generations ago, adults would often punish left-handed kids for using their right hands.
Joy said on YouTube, “They learn in different ways.” “People with dyslexia use the right side of their brains more than the left.”
Joy said, “If you just use a standard way to learn to read, it tends to get much harder and take much longer.”
She said that in the near future, her son will meet with a dyslexia tutor twice a week for an hour each time.
She hopes that Gideon will be able to “start reading in about six to seven months” if everything goes well.
On other social media sites, both Duggar fans and critics talked about the topic and the fact that Gideon might have dyslexia.
“I do think Joy is smart for admitting it. “Gideon would be so much better off in school, where he can get help,” someone wrote.
Another person said, “Joy did a good thing by paying attention to Gideon’s different ways of learning and getting him extra help. “The sooner, the better!”
And someone else said: “Michelle [Duggar] is a mother,” said a third person. And this also hurts her. If Josie got tested, Michelle would find out that she has it, too, if Josie had it.
Someone else thought, “I wonder who in that family is giving Joy trouble about this.”
“There’s no shame in this, but I hope her family isn’t praying it away because that doesn’t help.”
“I can’t even imagine what school is like for Gideon and Josie,” wrote someone else. A commenter who seems to be wrong.
“I hope the schools don’t pick on them,” they wrote. “And their parents make sure that their kids get the help the law says they should get.”
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have to teach their kids at home, which is a shame. And so do Austin and Joy-Anna. A tutor for Gideon’s dyslexia may be one of the few ways he can see the world outside the cult.
A lot of the answers from fans are just guesses. Josie doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. And Gideon doesn’t seem to have a formal diagnosis yet.
We hope that he does well with this tutor. The way people’s brains work is different, and some work better than others. We all need places to live so we can grow and do well.
Gideon would learn much more at a real school, so no amount of tutoring can make up for that. They are not giving him the best chance in life.