When Child Is Too Dyslexic for Dyslexia School?!? Help!

[Anonymous]

We have a kid like that. Finding a school placement was terrible, especially for middle school. Eventually we went with a very small non-dyslexic school that would meet my son where he was at. We supplement with a reading/writing tutor and now a math tutor. The school also held him a back a year (he will graduate high school at 19 this spring). My sister also has a kid like this and found a similar placement -- a school that operates out of the basement of a church but with only a few kids. These are not academically rigorous school but they keep our kids' self-esteem intact as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would consider making a new post asking for advice specifically about your district's services and accommodations for dyslexia. Then you can have a bit more information. MoCo offered text to speech and speech to text accommodations but they were sometimes hard for DS to use, especially if they required multiple steps to access (like the PDF version of the math workbook). The reading pullouts in his IEP often didn't happen due to not enough staff .

Your current school sounds like it's not providing access to a grade level curriculum by continuing to hold your child back instead of teaching subjects other than reading in a way your child can access them.

I hope something works out.

Not OP but have a student with dyslexia. Has anyone had experience with school pull-outs that have had any degree of success?
Just curious. I would say the pull outs my DS had were actually detrimental.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you. DCs overall IQ based on covid-limited testing was low average 85.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, if his IQ is low average - like 85? - remediation may take a very very long time. This is my son. It took about three-four years. We did asdec. Your son likely needs one on one instruction.

OP here. Yes my DC’s IQ was 85 as well. But this was also with testing done in the midst of Covid, so I question the reliability. Some was done virtually and/or masked behind a plexiglass screen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted somewhere above about my child with severe dyslexia. One other thing I wanted to add, she started ASDEC at the end of 5th grade after attending a sn school and it really improved her reading/ spelling. I do believe there was overall “ cognitive growth” at the time for her. I don’t completely know how to describe it, but I do feel she is usually a little later to absorb things but her mind has continued to grow and her maturity as a person helped. That being said, I still think she has developed her own way to decode and it’s not syllable division, etc but she is completely functionally literate now.

OP here. Thank you. I have reached out to ASDEC but all their programs have waiting lists. Will keep trying.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:^^ Be nice. She's tried smething, it didn't wrk and nw she's frustrated. (I"m giving up 0s fr lent)

Didn't mean to be rude, tho I could have softened it possibly. It seems to me that some parents try to cure their kid, so that was why i commented that. Not sure if that's OP's expectation or not. I know several people who are highly dyslexic and highly successful - to this day they prefer to listen to everything: news, books, training for work, you name it. They still don't read well, but they are rock stars in their fields

OP here and I’m not “trying to cure my kid.” What you’ve implied is insulting. I’m not an idiot. I have three kids with varying learning disabilities and all three have IEPs. I also have a dyslexic husband who went to a special Ed private school and now is a well-educated and gainfully employed individual. However our DC is not just confounding us but also a school that specializes in language based learning disabilities. Because their dyslexia is that severe. I know I cannot “cure” them, but it is deeply concerning to have a functionally illiterate child who is 10 and has has this many interventions at this point in public and private school. Cure? No. But I do have expectations for them to graduate high school and college because they are very bright and engaged with learning. They just can’t learn to read.

And no we are not in the position for one of us to just quit our jobs to tutor DC. That would be bad for them socially and emotionally. They like school. They make friends easily. And someone has to pay for the $50k private school!

Appreciate those who responded with productive and helpful suggestions.

No one said you are an idiot. At the same time, adjusting expectations when you have a child with a disability is important, as you know. If your child's dyslexia is so severe that it may not be remediated, then it might be helpful to shift to accommodating for it (e.g., audiobooks at school and home). You state that you have college expectations for a "functionally illiterate" 10 year old - depending on your child's interests, you may need to adjust this expectation. If your child wants to go to college, this is definitely possible with assistive technology.

Why are you being so hostile and nasty? its reasonable to want to do everything to help your child learn to read. Everything in school is based off reading. It's not the time to give up on this child and yes, there are options to help them but as a parent most of us would try anything to help our kids (except you). OP sounds like a great parent trying everything and good for them.

I’m sorry but there is a huge disconnect here. How was your kid admitted to a private SN school with no neuropsych test? How did you get the dyslexia diagnosis? How are you doing anything and everything possible if he doesn’t even have a diagnosis you have not tested properly, so you don’t know what you are helping, and you won’t do of/asdec? I don’t get what’s happening here.

Not sure what your problem is. I don’t see a disconnect at all. The OP said the public school district tested her kid during Covid when kid was probably 7-8. Like many LD kids like mine, I presume virtual was a disaster for OP’s kid and it prompted the testing. The kid got an IEP and then moved to private after testing showed Specific Learning Disability and testing showed low scores in phonological processing scores. Private school based admissions on the testing and IEP. What isn’t clear about that? And OP said there’s also a family history of dyslexia or LD (she said husband and other kids). So it seems pretty clear why they would treat like dyslexia. Nothing seems confusing about this.

I agree that OP needs to do more comprehensive psychoeducational testing done by a private group for her kid. Especially since the testing was done in school during Covid and sounds incomplete.

I can also see how OP would feel blindsided by how the private school is responding. They reviewed the testing and IEP. They also presumably met the child before admission if it’s Lab/Sienna/Oakwood/McLean (OP said she’s in NOVA) which all require visits with their reading specialists and teachers before admission. The kid has been there for at least a year and now school is saying sorry not sorry we can’t help your kid. That’s kind of a cop out.

Truth be told. For kids with severe dyslexia private school alone isn’t enough. You need OG tutoring at least 4x a week in addition. Which is why we decided to keep our DC in public and push the money into tutoring. We knew that private would be a $45k+ cost and we would need one on one tutoring anyway.

While this is good advice, I wouldn't bother with testing and put that money into tutoring instead. They know the issues. THey've had testing done and no matter how hard this child tries, they are still struggling.

They're considering switching to a different dyslexia school and will need updated testing for that. It's hard to know if it will further sharpen the picture of what's going on with OP's child until they get the results. Sometimes subsequent testing shows a different/fuller picture, sometimes not. Sounds like getting it is a good idea. Hang in there, OP.

Op here. Thank you. Current SN school is requesting updated testing bc the initial testing was done during the height of Covid. Was delayed nearly a year bc of pandemic and was then done partially virtually and partially through a plexiglass screen with both DC and tester masked. They think it is incomplete and insufficient. I have requested another round of testing and an IEE from school district.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, if his IQ is low average - like 85? - remediation may take a very very long time. This is my son. It took about three-four years. We did asdec. Your son likely needs one on one instruction.

Dyslexia is hard! My son has an IQ of 118 and it took him three years of twice or thrice weekly one-on-one tutoring, with intensive work in summer, to go through his OG program. He reads at grade level now in high school, but he was below grade level until recently.

Yes, amazing, good for your son, but for children like mine and OP’s, who said her child had low average iq, there are also other iq issues at play. It will take longer. Your child has a high iq. That’s great.

I’m sorry, my message wasn’t helpful the way I wrote it. What I wanted to communicate is that the level of intensity of tutoring needs to be so much higher than OP is being offered now. I was trying to illustrate that the threshold of what effective remediation looks like is way higher than what schools want to offer, and sometimes we parents don’t know that until we hear from other parents what they are doing.

For what it is worth, my kid has working memory in the single digit percentile, so he has less ability to learn than kids with much lower IQ but solid working memory. IQ is only one part of ability to learn. I wish you and OP (and your kids) the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would consider making a new post asking for advice specifically about your district's services and accommodations for dyslexia. Then you can have a bit more information. MoCo offered text to speech and speech to text accommodations but they were sometimes hard for DS to use, especially if they required multiple steps to access (like the PDF version of the math workbook). The reading pullouts in his IEP often didn't happen due to not enough staff .

Your current school sounds like it's not providing access to a grade level curriculum by continuing to hold your child back instead of teaching subjects other than reading in a way your child can access them.

I hope something works out.

Not OP but have a student with dyslexia. Has anyone had experience with school pull-outs that have had any degree of success?
Just curious. I would say the pull outs my DS had were actually detrimental.

The pull out for my DD got were very good. However, we were lucky because it was 1-1 for a long time and with an OG trained teacher for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. I will add that we also did outside tutoring. Child is now at grade level for reading and 1 grade below for writing/spelling.

[Anonymous]

My kid's pullout at a Title 1 school was helpful, I believe, five days a week for 45 minutes and mostly Wilson focused. But only got through step 4 across two full years of this.
Current charter school pullout, I don't know, it's a paraprofessional who manages it, which I don't like. And they use a different program, but still OG based. I did see my child's work on prefixes and it wasn't bad.
I wish I could find an in-person tutor at the frequency y'all recommend. But maybe Lab is what we should do.

I am the PP who said the kid had moderate dyslexia and was instructional level a year behind... McLean is not an option given our location in D.C.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, if his IQ is low average - like 85? - remediation may take a very very long time. This is my son. It took about three-four years. We did asdec. Your son likely needs one on one instruction.

OP here. Yes my DC’s IQ was 85 as well. But this was also with testing done in the midst of Covid, so I question the reliability. Some was done virtually and/or masked behind a plexiglass screen.

you should definitely get your child tested again. that said, my child did testing like that during covid as well - we recently retested 3 years later, fully in person/normal, no masking, and the overall IQ score was, surprisingly, almost exactly the same. the overall IQ seems lower than what i would have expected, but it is because some of the sub scores were quite low and brought down the overall score quite a bit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, if his IQ is low average - like 85? - remediation may take a very very long time. This is my son. It took about three-four years. We did asdec. Your son likely needs one on one instruction.

OP here. Yes my DC’s IQ was 85 as well. But this was also with testing done in the midst of Covid, so I question the reliability. Some was done virtually and/or masked behind a plexiglass screen.

Iq is pretty static.
you should definitely get your child tested again. that said, my child did testing like that during covid as well - we recently retested 3 years later, fully in person/normal, no masking, and the overall IQ score was, surprisingly, almost exactly the same. the overall IQ seems lower than what i would have expected, but it is because some of the sub scores were quite low and brought down the overall score quite a bit.