At My Parents’ Anniversary Party, One Insult—and One Letter—Changed Everything

behind in reading compared to where we’d expect her to be at this point.”

“How far behind?” I asked.

The reading specialist slid a paper across the table and tapped a line with her pen. “She’s reading at a first-grade level,” she said. “And she’s in second grade.”

I swallowed. That one grade difference felt enormous, like a canyon between where my daughter continue reading …