Reply to I think my five year old is Dyslexic

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "I think my five year old is Dyslexic - I want to get him tested. "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]This is 16:00 again.  While it may be the case that diagnosis is typically made at an older age (our DD was a young 8 year old when diagnosed), the red flag was waving in our face for years before we had her tested.  Even in K, her performance was noticably behind that of her peers (e.g., the writings that are posted up outside the classroom for all to see) and reading was painfully slow.

OP, if your DS is too young for diagnosis, you wouldn't want to lose traction in helping to address his weaknesses.  The fact that he is othewise bright and curious is a red flag.  For example, our DD LOVED stories but hated reading.  She always wanted us to read to her, but would cry when she had to do the reading, because her reading ability was so out of line with her reading comprehension.  (By third grade, she figured it out and is now a voracious reader.)

One thing you could do at this stage is call ASDEC, explain your situation, and see if they would do an assessment and possibly tutoring at this stage.  The tutors there are experienced in working with dyslexics and likely can provide advice.  I woudn't expect your school to provide any assistance at this point, but you could ask your teacher what she thinks.  Is she suprised that your DS is having trouble remembering letters and numbers, given his other abilities?  What would she recommend to help in this area?

Some things that might be useful to try at home are:

- Continue to read a lot to your child.  Make sure he's accustomed to the look, feel and sound of books, even if reading is not comfortable for him.  Help to make books a habit for him.

- Figure out how your DS learns best and apply that method to memorizing letters and numbers.  If your DS is more auditory or tactile, rather than visual, you could form letters with clay and make sure you verbally repeat the name and sound of each letter, and talk about workds that start with that letter sound.

- Practice memorizing numbers by using concrete objects, such as buttons or poker chips, etc. and count out how much is 5, how much is 10, etc.  Given your son's strong reasoning skills, explaining what the number means is likely to resonate with him.

You might also want to call the Lindamood Bell center in NW DC and get their thoughts on your DS' situation.  They have fantastic summer programs for remediating dyslexia.  Your DS may be on the young side for this, but if he is like our DD, he is mature for age and highly "teachable."  I'm sure you can tell from my posts that I really wish we'd done this for DD much earlier than we did, to spare her several years of feeling lost at sea until we knew what was going on.  
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics