U2 drummer Larry Mullen has opened up about parenting a child with dyslexia saying that “it was difficult in the house”.
Appearing on the The Kelly Clarkson Show on Wednesday in the US, Mullen bonded with the singer over their shared experience of raising a child with dyslexia.
“I knew my son was dyslexic, but I really didn’t understand him,” Mullen said of his eldest son, Aaron, who is now 29. “It was difficult in the house... I was away, coming home. He’s acting out, they’ve got the police at the house.”
Clarkson, whose daughter River also has dyslexia, agreed: “It’s a really hard thing being a parent, especially a parent that doesn’t have dyslexia.”
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“I feel like I’m failing,” said the singer. “You just try to talk to them or help them with homework or whatever, and you don’t really know what’s going on.”
Mullen has produced and written music for Left Behind, a new film about dyslexia and the New York school system. The pair discussed the impact that the film had on Mullen, who said it “hit home” when he first watched it, and that it set into motion his “realising and recognising what I didn’t do, and what I could have done”.
“I’ve spent all my career avoiding talking about my family. I just don’t want to involve them,” Mullen said, “And now, here I am on your show.”
The musician recently revealed that he has dyscalculia, saying that counting bars within music is like “climbing Everest” for him due to his learning difficulty which affects his ability to understand number-based information and maths.
He told Times Radio in London: “I’ve always known that there’s something not particularly right with the way that I deal with numbers. I’m numerically challenged. And I realised recently that I have dyscalculia ... so I can’t add, I can’t count.”
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