My Dad Who Said “Idiot” His Own Way

Dyslexia and strengths are not always about what is visible at first. My dad could not read very well, but he could fix almost anything. Today, on his birthday, I think about him, about the children in my Oskar series, and about how easily we measure ourselves by what we cannot do instead of seeing what is actually there.

🇸🇪 Swedish Min pappa som sa itiot

🇬🇧 English version

This morning I thought:

I have nothing to write about today.

But then the thought made another round.

Are my words starting to run out?

Or is it simply my fingers that sometimes do not want to write them?

It is Friday, and on Fridays I usually write about the insights and outlooks of the week. I was sitting there wondering what this week had actually given me when I noticed the date.

Today would have been my dad’s birthday.

My dad, who pronounced idiot in his own slightly wrong way.

It almost makes me smile when I think about it today.

At the same time, there is something sad about it.

Because I think that somewhere deep inside, my dad probably believed that he himself was the biggest idiot on earth.

He could say:

If you can’t even do this, then you’re an idiot.

That way of thinking became mine too for quite a long time.

If you cannot do what you are supposed to be able to do, then you must be stupid.

But when I look back at my dad today, I see something completely different.

Dyslexia and strengths – Dad was probably an Oskar

I actually think my dad was a little like Oskar from my Oskar series.

Dad had dyslexia.

So do I.

But that is more or less where the similarity ends.

I am not particularly technical.

Dad, on the other hand, seemed almost born with a need to understand how things worked.

Even as a child, he was everywhere at once and, to be completely honest, not always the best-behaved child in the world.

Once, he took apart my grandmother’s radio.

Not because he wanted to destroy it.

He wanted to see what it looked like inside.

I am not sure my grandmother appreciated that kind of investigation quite as much as Dad did, but it says a lot about him.

He wanted to know.

What is inside?

How does it work?

Why does it work?

And if it does not work – how do you fix it?

That followed him throughout his life.

He could not read – but he could fix almost anything

Dad had major difficulties with reading.

He might not have been able to read a newspaper properly or always know where on a form he was supposed to sign his name.

But my goodness, there were so many other things he could do.

I honestly think there was almost nothing he could not repair.

Cars.
Boats.
Mopeds.
Engines.
Electronics.

My mother’s old electric whisk must have been close to forty years old before Dad finally thought it might be time to buy a new one.

Why buy something new when the old one can still be repaired?

That was more or less how Dad worked.

But he did not just fix things.

He found new solutions.

At the different factories where he worked, he could look at a work task and think that it was unnecessarily complicated.

So he came up with another way.

Something simpler.

Something smarter.

And then he built it.

The man who may have believed he was stupid could see solutions that other people did not see.

Other people knew what Dad could do

Many people around Dad got their things working again because of him.

Sometimes I also think people took advantage of his kindness.

He could repair things.

So people came with their cars, boats, mopeds and all sorts of other things.

And Dad helped.

Once I met the man who bought the local stove business after Dad and his friend had grown tired of it.

He spoke about Dad with great respect.

He said something along the lines of:

I would never have managed this without your dad. What he created is the reason I know what I am doing today.

That stayed with me.

Because Dad may never have described himself as particularly knowledgeable or talented.

But other people saw it.

They knew what he could do.

Dad did not talk – he did

Dad was not much of a conversational support.

He was not the person you sat down with for hours just to talk.

He did not say very much.

When people did things he thought were strange, he could make a small clicking sound with his mouth, roll his eyes and shake his head.

Then you knew.

Dad did not agree.

When he had been drinking, more words and more truths could come out.

And he was drunk quite often when I was a child and also when I was a young adult.

That is part of the story too.

I do not want to erase that part just because I am writing today about everything he was good at.

People are rarely only one thing or the other.

Dad had his difficulties.

But he was also very kind.

And above all, he did things.

I got my driving licence on his birthday

I actually got my driving licence on Dad’s birthday.

I remember how happy he was.

And Dad, of course, had cars.

Lots of cars.

So when I had passed my driving test, he lent me one.

That says quite a lot about him.

No long speech about how proud he was.

Not a lot of words.

He handed me a car key.

When I needed a home, he built one

When I once found myself without anywhere to live, Dad did what he usually did.

He solved the problem.

Up in the attic of my parents’ large house, he built a small apartment for me.

He used what was already there.

A cupboard from somewhere.

A worktop from somewhere else.

Materials that had been left over.

In the end, I had three rooms and a kitchen.

And I loved living there.

It only lasted for one winter.

The house was large, more than three hundred square metres, and there were many power cuts. When the electricity went out, it became cold.

Dad naturally had a diesel generator.

Of course Dad had a diesel generator.

But even that was not always enough to keep such a large house warm.

Eventually, I had to move.

But when I think about it today, I see something else.

My dad may not have been able to read all the words on a piece of paper.

But when his daughter needed a home, he built one.

And then Oskar comes back

That is where my thoughts return to the children in my Oskar series.

To all those children sitting in classrooms who start learning very early:

I can’t.

I’m worse than everyone else.

Everyone else can do it.

There is something wrong with me.

What happens to them later?

What happens to the child who, year after year, is constantly shown their difficulties?

The child who may struggle with reading, mathematics, concentration, sitting still, understanding instructions or fitting in.

How long can you keep trying when it is almost always what you cannot do that becomes visible?

And above all:

Who is looking for what that child actually can do?

At the same time, dyslexia and strengths do not mean that everyone with dyslexia has the same abilities.

What if someone had noticed the radio?

I think about Dad as a little boy.

The boy who took apart his mother’s radio to see what was inside.

What if someone had looked at him then and thought:

There is something here.

Not:

What have you done now?

But:

Show me what you saw.

Maybe that is exactly what we need to do with our Oskars.

Of course they should get help with what is difficult.

Oskar should get help with his reading.

He should get the right support at school.

He should have the chance to learn.

But at the same time, we need to look for what does not yet appear on a test.

What makes him curious?

What can he spend hours doing?

When does he light up?

What does he see that the rest of us do not?

Dyslexia and strengths can look very different

Of course, not every child with dyslexia is technically gifted.

I know that simply by looking at myself.

I have the same diagnosis as Dad.

But if someone puts me in front of an engine and tells me to take it apart and put it back together again, it is probably wise to have a spare engine nearby.

My husband knows a man on Orust who often reminds him of Dad.

He buys old houses, renovates them and rents them out.

He has done very well.

That does not mean, of course, that every child who struggles at school will become an entrepreneur or find exactly that kind of path.

That is not the point.

The point is that life can look very different when a person finds a context where their abilities actually become useful.

For one person, it may be engines.

For another, houses.

For someone else, animals.

Music.

Cooking.

Computers.

Gardening.

Colour and design.

Understanding people.

Selling.

Organising.

Creating.

Seeing solutions.

When I think about dyslexia and strengths, Dad becomes a very clear example to me.

And then the uncomfortable question comes back to me

In the middle of all this, I caught myself thinking:

Why did I not get Dad’s abilities?

I have dyslexia too.

Dad was really good at something.

What am I?

Perhaps a little bit good at many different things.

But really good at nothing.

And that was almost like getting slapped by my own text.

Because is that not exactly what I am sitting here writing about?

How easily we see some abilities and miss others.

Dad’s ability was very easy to see.

A broken engine stood there.

Dad fixed it.

The engine worked.

Done.

There was a result you could point to.

But not all abilities work like that.

And then the next thought came:

What use is it really for me to sit here and think?

I can sit for an entire morning turning a thought around and around.

But what comes from it?

Is that an ability?

Or am I just thinking?

Maybe that is where the difference lies

I do not believe that all thinking is automatically valuable.

Sometimes overthinking is simply overthinking.

But sometimes a thought leads somewhere else.

To understanding something you did not understand yesterday.

To seeing a pattern.

To making a different decision.

To finding words for something another person also feels but has not managed to express.

To a text.

To a conversation.

To change.

Maybe some people’s abilities are simply harder to photograph.

Dad’s could stand outside in the yard with the bonnet of a car open.

Other people’s abilities exist somewhere else.

And perhaps I need to ask myself the same question that I think we should ask children:

Not only:

What are you bad at?

But:

What do you do so naturally that you do not even realise it is something you are good at?

My Friday insight

Maybe Dad was never an idiot.

Maybe he had simply learned to believe that he was.

And maybe that is also why Oskar exists in my writing today.

Because I wish fewer children had to grow up believing that their difficulties tell the whole truth about who they are.

We need to help children with what is difficult.

But we also need to look for what works.

What sparks curiosity.

What the child does in their own way.

What may never show up in grades, test results or on a piece of paper.

Because sometimes the future is right there.

In a radio that has been taken apart.

In an engine.

In an old house someone else had given up on.

Or perhaps even in someone sitting far too early on a Friday morning believing she has nothing to write about.

Today would have been my dad’s birthday.

And apparently, I had quite a lot to write about after all.

For me, dyslexia and strengths are ultimately about seeing the whole person.

Between the lines

Sometimes it is easier to see a person’s difficulties than their abilities.

Perhaps that is especially true for children.

What does not work gets documented, practised, assessed and discussed.

But what the child already carries within them can be much harder to notice.

Maybe sometimes we need to ask a different question:

What happens if, for a moment, we stop looking for what the child lacks and instead become curious about what is already there?

Questions for you

Was there something you were really good at as a child that school never noticed?
Have you ever believed you were bad at most things because the thing you struggled with was allowed to take up so much space?
Is there an “Oskar” in your life whose strengths may not yet have been discovered?
What do you do so naturally that you barely count it as an ability?

Feel free to leave a comment. I like it when our experiences get to meet here.

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Here I write about everyday life, ADHD, relationships, children and young people, self-criticism, life reflections and the things that happen between the lines.

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Carina Ikonen Nilsson

Live today, right now. Yesterday has already passed, and tomorrow has not yet arrived.