Outside of School Resources and IEP for newly diagnosed dyslexia

[Anonymous]

The difference between diagnosing a young child with a lifelong condition, and providing early assistance to a child who may be at risk of developing a condition isn’t semantics. CALT’s can’t diagnose. It is unethical for them to imply that what they can do is substantially the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difference between diagnosing a young child with a lifelong condition, and providing early assistance to a child who may be at risk of developing a condition isn’t semantics. CALT’s can’t diagnose. It is unethical for them to imply that what they can do is substantially the same.

You are absolutely right, CALTs do not diagnose and I hope I didn’t imply that we can or do. Families come to us after they have been identified or diagnosed either through school or a psychologist. We provide therapy-level instruction in reading, writing, and spelling.

And I agree that the difference between identification and diagnosis is more than semantics and I’m sorry I used that term.

What I was trying to get at, and I think the psychologist and I clarified, is that early identification should be followed by intervention. My own child was known to have poor phonological skills at 5 but not diagnosed until 7. He didn’t receive services until 7 because of that. This was years ago, I didn’t yet know what the assessment results meant, and school didn’t flag it. I’m hopeful things have changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to the club, OP! Your daughter is going to do fine, and it’s going to take some hard work on both of your parts.

Have you read any books about dyslexia yet? The classic is Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shawitz and it is still accurate and supportive and a best first step.

You almost certainly are going to need outside tutoring. The most effective is known as academic language therapy, and you can either search for one (search Google for academic language therapist or CALT or go to ALTAread.org) or you can contact ASDEC, our local resource for academic language therapy.

Your school may also have a list of dyslexia providers. You’ll want to check credentials, though, and knowing what to look for can be confusing.

What did the neuropsych report specifically recommend/refer you to?

Thank you. Extremely helpful.

She recommended text to speech, reading intervention programs, such as ortho gillingham, as well as learning to type asap

NP here. Orton-Gillingham is a method, and several programs follow the method: ASDEC's Sounds in Syllables, Wilson, Lindamood Bell, Barton, and IMSE. If you want to learn more, you can read about Orton-Gillingham, and also search the phrase "structured literacy".

+1 read Shaywitz's Overcoming Dyslexia and check what the neuropsychologist recommended. Also +1 to PP who said don't jump to text-to-speech yet. In the early elementary years, I'd focus more heavily on remediation (helping your DD learn skills) rather than accommodations (working around whatever skills she doesn't have).