How do people afford dyslexia?

[Anonymous]

It's a terrible situation. I did the Barton method with my child. Luckily he is only mildly dyslexic, he needs extra reading and writing practice. But it's time off work/my personal time and who knows, we may need tutors later on. Insurance did not help. He didn't qualify for the school evaluation so we just moved on without them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t spend $5k on the evaluation for one thing.

and how do you do that? Different poster but would love to hear the alternatives.

you get the free evals the school will give you adn that's it

lol what planet?

What are you talking about? PP asked about alternatives if you don't have money. I said there are basically no alternatives, except anything free offered by the school. How am I wrong? I *know* the school offerings aren't good/enough - but that's the whole point of this thread. If you don't have money, you're SOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t spend $5k on the evaluation for one thing.

and how do you do that? Different poster but would love to hear the alternatives.

you get the free evals the school will give you adn that's it

If I had waited for that to happen back in 1st grade when I had suspicions, I’d still be waiting. There are a million reasons they won’t test, especially if the kid’s IQ is high.

DP - IME, it's the opposite, since most public school systems still use the discrepancy model. It's the kids who are otherwise very smart and who struggle with reading who get attention in public schools without much advocacy from parents. That describes my dyslexic kid to a T. Our public ES was fully onboard with Tier 2 intervention, then testing, and now a behemoth of an IEP (we'll see how well it's implemented).

The kids who truly fall through the cracks are the ones with average-ish IQ, because the system doesn't see much of a discrepancy between that and struggling to read. That's a failure of the system, but it's very common. They just keep getting promoted and everyone thinks they're just "average," not, hey, this kid really can't read and gee, maybe that's impacting their academic performance.

There are also free and low-cost programs based on Phono-Graphix with strong evidence (the Reading Reflex book and also materials through EBLI and Reading Simplified). As a parent, they've been a good supplement to the other services DS has.

That's interesting because my 2E kid was being passed over because he was so sweet and paid attention and had a good vocabulary. I got "things will click soon!" for a year before I just paid for the testing myself and found out he's extremely dyslexic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t spend $5k on the evaluation for one thing.

You do if you need a neuropsych to confirm diagnosis, get admission to an OG school, and sue the school district for tuition reimbursement.

To answer OPs question I think about this all the time. It’s an upsetting topic. I will say I live in a diverse school district where there’s reverse discrimination - they screw the kids whose parents they assume can pay privately, which is deplorable (and illegal.)

… and you don’t have any of that money if you are not relatively wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Low-income kids don't suffer quite as much as middle-class kids, though. Almost all low-income kids have Medicaid which provides PT, OT, speech therapy, etc. Are those services provided the best available? No, but it is something.

What really hurts the low-income kids is not having support at home. I used to work in a VA school system with a large population of low-income families. The kids who thrived the most were those who had supportive parents to also go over therapies with the kids at home and do extra work.

It's pathetic that not all kids are eligible for Medicaid in the US. Private insurance that so many middle-class moms and dads have through their jobs either covers no extra services or very few sessions, like under 10.

You are seriously delusional if you think Medicaid gives you easy access to such services. No. My youngest kid is on Medicaid. Anything that's not strictly a medical procedure or drug for same, is extremely difficult to obtain. This means anything in the psychological or learning disabilities category. They give you a number to call, then an outdated list of providers, and hardly any of the providers on the list happen to still partner with Medicaid for the services (because it's not commercially viable), so you can't book them, and you have to spend hours and hours of your time to find a provider who will take a Medicaid patient. Sometimes they are very far away from your location, which means you struggle to find transportation and time to get there and back... because usually, families with kids on Medicaid aren't swimming in vehicles and free time.

NOTHING is easy for low-income families, PP. Yes, it can be done by a dedicated caregiver. I have done it. But I can easily see that families who struggle more than mine would not be able to access services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t spend $5k on the evaluation for one thing.

Well sure if you knew what the One Thing was in advance, you wouldn’t need the testing.

the $5k evaluation is a recent and very local invention and can often be a massive and unjustifiable drain on normal families’ finances. I would never recommend it. Put that money towards therapy. a skilled clinician works on the basis of symptoms shown. For IEP coverage get the school to test. But if the belief is school will never provide the services then throwing money away to get the IEP makes even less sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Low-income kids don't suffer quite as much as middle-class kids, though. Almost all low-income kids have Medicaid which provides PT, OT, speech therapy, etc. Are those services provided the best available? No, but it is something.

What really hurts the low-income kids is not having support at home. I used to work in a VA school system with a large population of low-income families. The kids who thrived the most were those who had supportive parents to also go over therapies with the kids at home and do extra work.

It's pathetic that not all kids are eligible for Medicaid in the US. Private insurance that so many middle-class moms and dads have through their jobs either covers no extra services or very few sessions, like under 10.

You are seriously delusional if you think Medicaid gives you easy access to such services. No. My youngest kid is on Medicaid. Anything that's not strictly a medical procedure or drug for same, is extremely difficult to obtain. This means anything in the psychological or learning disabilities category. They give you a number to call, then an outdated list of providers, and hardly any of the providers on the list happen to still partner with Medicaid for the services (because it's not commercially viable), so you can't book them, and you have to spend hours and hours of your time to find a provider who will take a Medicaid patient. Sometimes they are very far away from your location, which means you struggle to find transportation and time to get there and back... because usually, families with kids on Medicaid aren't swimming in vehicles and free time.

NOTHING is easy for low-income families, PP. Yes, it can be done by a dedicated caregiver. I have done it. But I can easily see that families who struggle more than mine would not be able to access services.

This is true. Yet, 10 years ago I had the experience of a very nice lady handing me a flyer for a medicaid child behavior clinic in the neighborhood when she saw me practically in tears over my 6 yr old’s aggression in public. I was like “ma’am, if only you knew how I’ve been searching everywhere for evidence based behavioral support covered by insurance and not an hour-long drive away.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much does it cost to get certified as a OG tutor? If I was starting in early elementary or had more than 1 kid that needed help, I’d at least do the math to figure out if there was a positive ROI there.

It's $1500 for the initial 30 hour training and then $2350 to get certified, which includes a practicum. I just did the training and say "OG Trained" on my resume and for tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you choose not to pay for, or cannot afford, intervention for learning disabilities, you severely curtail the earning potential of the child in question.

The families who cannot afford evaluations and therapies can teach their own child how to read if they're intelligent and have the time and energy. It's all based on phonemes, and from there, identifying where exactly your kid has issues. It takes a LOT of time to work on it by yourself.

The families who could afford to remediate their children's LDs but choose not to (usually because they're too proud to admit their kid has issues) don't realize how badly they're impacting their children's future. My best friend did this. Her kid is college-age now but is not college material. The parents are having serious regrets.

This question haunts me. My DD was fortunate to be diagnosed in K and did OG and then dyslexia school. It was breathtakingly expensive.

For some families curricula like Barton, Wilson, or Toe by Toe can be delivered at home.

But dyslexia is highly heritable and there is a good chance the parents of a dyslexic child may not be able to teach those curricula since they were not appropriately taught to read either. And they may also be underemployed/ working multiple jobs which take a lot of energy and doesn’t leave much time or energy for after school tutoring.

I eventually got trained as an OG tutor myself. I learned that many people who do this work keep at least 1 student spot for pro bono students. This is my retirement job plan.

I wish there was a way to create some sort of “savings and loan” where parents of dyslexic kids could borrow to pay for intervention and then when they are successful, make a donation later to support future students.

In my professional work I coach a lot of neurodiverse executives and they all talk about the sacrifices their families made to help them be successful.

[Anonymous]

My child’s dyslexia isn’t extremely severe, so 2x/week worked well; we did a Lindamood-Bell program with a speech pathologist. Our insurance picked up most of the cost (I think we paid $30/session after insurance), and we used our flex med to cover the remainder.

[Anonymous]

They don’t. My kid was “diagnosed” through the school. Still couldn’t read in second grade. Diagnosed as the end of 3rd. Zero cost to us. I pay for a tutor once a week for $80. She passed her SOL’s this year so a huge improvement.

[Anonymous]

You don’t have to do that stuff. My father and siblings all have dyslexia. No tutoring was ever done for any of them. They are all successful engineers.

[Anonymous]

It is estimated that 50% of our prison population is dyslexic. It’s a shame and also a huge waste of resources that we don’t invest in these kids and end up paying down the road.

[Anonymous]

I’m OP, my oldest was so severe ADHD inattentive the teacher needed to prompt him 100 times a day they actually requested to test him by first grade to get the IEP so he could get an aide in the class to take the heat off the teacher. Free full workup of all the educational tests, found speed processing issue and dysgraphia as well. Got insurance paid ADHD diagnosis thru Kaiser. So the “system” has “worked” for this child and I’m grateful for how little we’ve spent despite all the academic supports the kid requires.

Then comes my youngest child who has barely been hanging on to grade level for reading and just failed the reading SOL and the school tells us they don’t test for dyslexia nor offer a reading specialist for it, we are on our own.

The difference has been stark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t spend $5k on the evaluation for one thing.

and how do you do that? Different poster but would love to hear the alternatives.

Many of the procedure codes that make up a neuropsych exam should be eligible for some form of insurance reimbursement. In our case it was abt 70%. YMMV of course.