My son got into all colleges with a language waiver and no FL, but will have to take a language in college to graduate.

My child with apraxia takes ASL. Our backup plan if he didn’t get into the class was Latin. The school system advised a waiver but DS is college bound and almost every 4 year college wants to see some language. While some colleges won’t be satisfied with ASL, we know many will accept it.

My child with dysgraphia and phonological disorder (not MERLD) tried Spanish in middle school and it was a disaster. The teacher was very patient and adjusted expectations to help him pass. I worked with him everyday. Finally, the school waived the language requirement. When he went to HS he took ASL.

MY DC had MERLD early on and was diagnosed with ADHD and dysgraphia later. He had reading issues but was never formally diagnosed with dyslexia maybe because he hog a lot of reading support and speech therapy even before K and he went for a few years to a dyslexia SN school.

DC later mainstreamed back to public and took French. His sister and I both speak French, and so we figured it would be easier to support him. He took FR I and II and then repeated Fr II in 9th grade, even though he had a B the year before because, he himself knew he couldn't do French III.

TBH, he has a very hard time separating out different sounds and associating them with different letter combinations. Language teaching is awful in public school and there was no sound/symbol reading instruction at all (even though, legally, there should be - but the public school can't even pull this together in English).

It's also very hard for DC to learn grammar structures without explicit teaching Plus, languages are extremely boring for DC. TBH, I don't think there's any language DC could learn that would be easy except, maybe, ASL.

DC quit after Fr II and took a rigorous load of science and math instead. It worked out fine - he went to a good college and is happy.

In MCPS you can substitute some kind of "advanced technology education" for the 2 years of language requirement. Some kids do 1 year of 2 different languages because the first year is easier.

Jemicy ( school
For dyslexic children) offers Spanish or Latin. So I would say those two would be first choices. They state colleges want to see a language on the transcript ( as in not ASL). Obviously if it is all
memorization and your child struggles with that, the method of instruction matters. I would pick Latin because of the benefit in other areas ( vocabulary).

Asked my spouse who speaks all these but of course isn’t a specialist in language disorders…

Said he would not do Latin or French. Mandarin is actually not as challenging as people think because the grammar is close to nonexistent/easier to learn. Spanish can be easy to learn because there are a lot of free and easy to find resources.

Anonymous wrote:My son took Latin.

He could not easily learn something that needed verbal fluency. Actually, he's already bilingual English/native language, but that took years and being exposed to both at once at birth led to a significant language delay when he was young. We knew he wouldn't be able to pick up a third language easily. Latin is entirely text-based, so it went much better. He's also motor-challenged, so ASL was a no-go.

Me again.
Maybe not if your kid has dyslexia, though? My kid was diagnosed with MERLD, then autism/ADHD - he's never had problems decoding text.
The two disorders are quite different, OP. Why the confusion? MERLD is usually a placeholder for autism spectrum disorders. It could be your kid is mildly on the spectrum and also has dyslexia, or that his assessment was not specific enough, or that he was assessed when he was too young.

Can you get a waiver on language? Many kids with dyslexia do. Is there an interest?