"We don't worry about dyslexia until 2nd grade."

[Anonymous]

Reading specialist here:
Dyslexia has nothing to do with anything just visual or written. It has to to with the pairing of sounds with written letters or phonemes. You can tell if a child has auditory issues very early on. However, the reversal of letters is common in young kids...and perfectly normal. That's not dyslexia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading specialist here:
Dyslexia has nothing to do with anything just visual or written. It has to to with the pairing of sounds with written letters or phonemes. You can tell if a child has auditory issues very early on. However, the reversal of letters is common in young kids...and perfectly normal. That's not dyslexia.

YES! OMG, the teacher who thinks dyslexia involves letter reversal makes me want to scream!!!!!!! My child was not diagnosed until after third grade because of ignorant teachers like that who told me, "it's ok to be average" and "you're expectations are too high." Nope. Turned out my child had dyslexia all along (which we suspected in first and second grade). She's very smart so she could fake it and scrape by at grade level or just below. By fourth grade, she was about a year behind and showed signs of anxiety and depression. It shattered her self esteem. This is why organizations like Decoding Dyslexia are trying to get legislation passed in states nationwide to require teacher education on dyslexia and early screening.

OP, if you suspect something, get your child screened by a dyslexia expert (or do psychoeducational or neuropsychological testing if you can afford it). There is a huge benefit to being diagnosed before third grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading specialist here:
Dyslexia has nothing to do with anything just visual or written. It has to to with the pairing of sounds with written letters or phonemes. You can tell if a child has auditory issues very early on. However, the reversal of letters is common in young kids...and perfectly normal. That's not dyslexia.

YES! OMG, the teacher who thinks dyslexia involves letter reversal makes me want to scream!!!!!!! My child was not diagnosed until after third grade because of ignorant teachers like that who told me, "it's ok to be average" and "you're expectations are too high." Nope. Turned out my child had dyslexia all along (which we suspected in first and second grade). She's very smart so she could fake it and scrape by at grade level or just below. By fourth grade, she was about a year behind and showed signs of anxiety and depression. It shattered her self esteem. This is why organizations like Decoding Dyslexia are trying to get legislation passed in states nationwide to require teacher education on dyslexia and early screening.

OP, if you suspect something, get your child screened by a dyslexia expert (or do psychoeducational or neuropsychological testing if you can afford it). There is a huge benefit to being diagnosed before third grade.

Ditto.

Actually my son was struggling and the school consistently told me he was a jock so that is why he did not read, he preferred to play sports over reading and all he needed was to practice reading as much as he did sports.

I finally had him tested in 3rd grade and he has completed the OG program and is doing fine, but my 1st grader was tested immediately since it runs in families, started OG 2 years earlier and is doing much better than my older son, academically and emotionally.

The oldest also has to deal with anxiety and frustration leading to depression due to his reading being so labored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone told you this for a child that's behind in reading? I posted about getting a full neuro-psych, but I'm also interested specifically about this question. I've gotten this or variants from several people, including a child psychologist and a teacher trained in ABA therapy and focused on special needs children.

ABA has nothing to do with dyslexia and by child psychologist do you mean a clinical psychologist who works with kids? If so, does she specialize in assessment?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone told you this for a child that's behind in reading? I posted about getting a full neuro-psych, but I'm also interested specifically about this question. I've gotten this or variants from several people, including a child psychologist and a teacher trained in ABA therapy and focused on special needs children.

In addition to testing, read to your child at her cognitive level. Get audio books - those are great in the car and at home. Get them hooked on it in the car if they are reluctant. then they will bring inside. 20-30 minutes in the car was long enough for most books for DC to get hooked. We listened to many books as we drove to Oma and Opa's in NC or Aunts and Uncles in NJ and CT or wherever we went. They are now in HS and one is about to leave in the fall and we still listen to audio book sin the car. You don't have to buy them, the local libraries have enough. If you are near enough to the Arlington Central library, they have an excellent selection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading specialist here:
Dyslexia has nothing to do with anything just visual or written. It has to to with the pairing of sounds with written letters or phonemes. You can tell if a child has auditory issues very early on. However, the reversal of letters is common in young kids...and perfectly normal. That's not dyslexia.

Thank you for saying this. It is absolutely true -- the fundamental basis of dyslexia is a difficulty segmenting and blending sound and associated sound chunks with letter combinations.

Do you teach in public school? Where did you get your qualifications as a "reading specialist"?

At our public school the "reading specialists" are just general ed teacher who are rotated into a "reading specialist position". They have no special training in reading, know no special reading programs like OG, Wilson or Phonographix and as a result are completely unqualified to recognize reading disabilities or remediate them.

You, however, seem to know what you are talking about. Please help us understand what pathway created you and where we can find more teachers like you.

[Anonymous]

You absolutely CAN assess a very young child for dyslexia, and what's more you should, if there are concerns. As PPs have said, dyslexia is more/different than just reading late. Reading late is fine! No biggie. But for dyslexics, not reading (or at least making good progress) when they've had good teaching for a year or two means something is up. A dyslexic brain needs to be taught to read in a different way than the typical brain. The earlier your kid gets that special teaching, the less likely it is that he or she will struggle will reading the rest of his or her life. Its not a panacea, but it helps.

My dyslexic son was diagnosed mid 1st grade, but it easily could have slipped by. His school told us yes, he was struggling, it was unexpected because he is so bright, but still "normal." We got him tested anyway, and he is clearly dyslexic - many cognitive strengths in the 99th percentile, and many cognitive weaknesses below the 20th percentile. He has gotten OG tutoring 2 x week, even through the summer, for the past year and a half and he is at grade level now.

I'm quite sure I am dyslexic, too. I grew up believing I was stupid and lazy, because I couldn't memorize math or history facts, can't spell (I've had 15-20 words spell checked in this post alone) and tend not to remember what I read in text books. Try to imagine what it does to your self image to believe you are stupid for your first 20 years. And I am not stupid, I'm actually quite bright. I just didn't know it till graduate school.

But my son won't deal with all that - he knows he has fabulous strengths, and some weaknesses that mean he has to work harder than other kids. But he knows that if he works hard, he can achieve what he wants to achieve, for the most part. Probably winning a spelling bee is out, I suppose.

That is what early testing and tutoring can do - prevent them from experiencing what I did.

[Anonymous]

No, but I kept hearing the same thing - wait for a speech delay. Glad I did not as its been a serious issue.

I'd get a private evaluation and do what ever you can. You do not want your child struggling if it is something they can get help with.

[Anonymous]

Ds has a significant speech delay, and so we've been on the lookout for possible dyslexia. We had a great evaluation done when he was 5. As a PP said, she did a lot of sound segmenting and blending testing. Not once was he asked to write b or d to see if he reverses letters. The evaluator stressed that he was young so she couldn't say anything definitive, but at that age should would be able to see if there are any real red flags and start working with him if needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ds has a significant speech delay, and so we've been on the lookout for possible dyslexia. We had a great evaluation done when he was 5. As a PP said, she did a lot of sound segmenting and blending testing. Not once was he asked to write b or d to see if he reverses letters. The evaluator stressed that he was young so she couldn't say anything definitive, but at that age should would be able to see if there are any real red flags and start working with him if needed.

By age 5, our dyslexic dysgraphic child showed significant discrepancies in testing on phonics, segmentation and blending and auditory processing. It was too early to assess reading, because it is not expected that kids will read by age 5. And, our bright DS could compensate in other ways to make it appear as if he was reading. But, the high variability in the tests, especially when read against a 99.5%ile IQ, showed clear problems.

The school insisted on waiting to do anything until 3rd grade.

In retrospect, I wish I had paid for a private tutor OG or Wilson tutor to work with DC 1-2x a week (with us as parents "practicing" on other days). I think if we had done this, DC would have developed language and reading more normally and we could have mitigated the other problems that developed (spelling/encoding).

Fortunately, by 3rd grade, I realized the school had no idea what needed to be done, and we pulled DC and put him in private SN school in 4th grade where he got daily 1hr plus reading instruction w/ OG, Wilson, Lindamood Bell, Phonographix, etc. He responded very well. In only a couple of years, he is reading above grade level.

I really think we caught him at the edge of a window that was about to close. If we had waited much longer, (like middle school) or not done it as intensively, I think he would have still ended up being able to read, but never with the automaticity that one needs to read with ease.

So, I hope our story encourages you to give your child a different kind of instruction early on, even if the school doesn't agree with it and refuses to provide it.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have an example of "wait and see" that worked without interventions?

[Anonymous]

PP, you might not get many examples because this is the special needs section - we end up here because things didn't work out without intervention! But honestly, of course lots of late readers learn to read perfectly without intervention! But they probably didn't have dyslexia. A dyslexic kid isn't going to stop being dyslexic (even after they've learned to read. Its a brain-structure issue). So the question is how to tell kids who are just late readers from those with dyslexia. And the answer is with an assessment, done as early as possible. If there are no deficits causing the slowness in learning to read, all is good and the kid can take as much time as he/she needs. But if there are deficits the assessment will identify them and the learning can begin.

You might call me a "wait and see" that worked. I didn't learn to read until late second grade, and I somehow learned by memorizing the shapes of words. I actually was a speed reader by high school because I could take it the shape of whole chunks of text at once. But I couldn't spell even simple words and couldn't do rote memorization. But I'm still dyslexic, and my options for careers would have been wider if I had gotten help as a child to teach me some skills for dealing with my deficits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have an example of "wait and see" that worked without interventions?

Wait and see works for those children who are later readers and do not have trouble reading once it clicks. However, it harms those that will have trouble. Early intervention doesn't hurt a future reader (and may help too), but early intervention helps a reader with dyslexia immensely. Mainly, "wait and see" helps school budgets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. If people with degrees in the subject are telling you this, why would you not believe them? Many kids at that age have difficulty reading, confuse and reverse letters, and it settles down.

I used to believe them. Then, I learned they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. I'm still amazed at how little some of these so called 'experts' know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. If people with degrees in the subject are telling you this, why would you not believe them? Many kids at that age have difficulty reading, confuse and reverse letters, and it settles down.

I used to believe them. Then, I learned they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. I'm still amazed at how little some of these so called 'experts' know.

Teachers are not experts.