Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fortysomething year old who has dyslexia. I didn't have all the care and attention you all put into helping your children and back in the day they didn't know as much about how to help kids too. (FYI - I did well through school, went to Ivies and am a professional writer). Just my two cents, by I find that when I'm tired I have trouble reading and 'mess up' when writing (which can manifest as mixing up my "p" "b" and "d" letters) when I'm tired.

Thanks for the supportive "success story"!

I'm not the OP, BTW. We think my daughter's dyslexia comes from my FIL's side. He also went to an Ivy League school and got a PhD in Engineering (more common for dyslexics than writing, obviously ). He also had no support and mixes letters and reads slowly. He believes that if he were born now he still would not have been diagnosed because it didn't actually effect his school progress. I also have a friend who says that the diagnosis "hits home" because she also has some symptoms of dyslexia. However, I'm pretty sure my daughter would have just been thought to be stupid if she were going to school in the 1950s. The problem with it is....she's NOT doing well. I mean, she is, but only because the school is aware of her problems and is working with her and assessing her accordingly. Dyslexia, as PPs have stated, is such a HUGE umbrella. Did you have issues with math? When did you realize you were dyslexic?

I'm hoping that, like you, my daughter will excel in College. I think for the people I grew up with it seemed to get a little easier once they were able to have more of an option as to which classes they took and College was a lot better than grade school.

I'm also hopeful that spell check and things will make some past issues dyslexics faced a thing of the past.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fortysomething year old who has dyslexia. I didn't have all the care and attention you all put into helping your children and back in the day they didn't know as much about how to help kids too. (FYI - I did well through school, went to Ivies and am a professional writer). Just my two cents, by I find that when I'm tired I have trouble reading and 'mess up' when writing (which can manifest as mixing up my "p" "b" and "d" letters) when I'm tired.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thank you all so much for all this great information -- so much to think about! Camp is a very long day and gives her too much pleasure to cut it short, but now I have lots of ideas for next month when it's over. In the meantime, I've signed her up for learning ally; everything new is good for at least a while, but for now it's a huge hit.

Reading this thread also reminds me not to get frustrated when she doesn't "remember" something she "knew" yesterday, so thank you for that too.

Anonymous wrote:There are several different ways that children have trouble reading. Some researchers combine some and others separate them into different types. It is important to figure out what type your DD has and then pick a reading program that best fits that type. O-G programs use multi-sensory things to help the brain recognize words. For example, Wilson has the student "tap" words. Orton-Gillingham and the Orton-Gillingham types of reading programs are the Gold Standard. Program like Wilson, Barton and Orton Gillingham have been proven to be effective. Wilson has been generally aimed toward teachers and has a certification program. Barton has been aimed toward parents and you can buy the program to use at home.

Your daughter may have trouble decoding. Phoneme awareness (how the words sound) and orthographic ability (what they look like) play into the decoding issues. All of the above programs work well with decoding.

Your daughter may also have trouble with Rapid Automized Naming (RAN). This is the ability to pull out the correct word from her brain. The only program I know that tries to address this is RAV-O by Maryanne Wolf at Tufts. This has shown to be somewhat successful prior to grade 3, not so much afterwards.

If your daughter has both problems, decoding and RAN issues, then that is sometimes called "dual type". My DC is dual type.

Other issues that impact reading ability are ADHD, background knowledge (vocabulary and general knowledge), and comprehension issues. There are some programs that address Comprehension. I believe Read123 or 123Read tries to address comprehension. Other posters may know other programs. Sally Shaywitz at Yale is currently studying Strattera and dyslexia -I do not know if she has posted any results from that. I do know, anecdotally, my DC's reading ability didi take a leap forward when he started taking Strattera for his ADHD.

fMRI's have shown that in NT brains there are three locations that are active when reading. The fMRI in a dyslexic brain has shown that there are active spots all over.

Depending on the severity of your DC's dyslexia, it will be a long slow slog. It isn't something that can be addressed and cured. It is there to stay. Here the tortoise wins the race.

In addition to bookshare.org and Learning Ally, I recommend wrightslaw.com. It is a website that will explain the IEP and 504 process and what is within your rights and what isn't.

Two books I recommend reading are Sally Shaywitz's "Overcoming Dyslexia" and Maryanne Wolf's "Proust and the Squid". "Overcoming Dyslexia" is an easier read. "Proust and the Squid" is denser but I learned quite a bit from it. I didn't like "The Gift of Dyslexia", it was too sunshiny, rainbow and unicorns for me.

My DC is now in HS and this spring we were able to secure accommodations for his PSATs, SATs, AP... anything from the College Board taken in HS. He also has dysgraphia- so he will get a scribe, reader and extra time. We were told to expect it to take 6 months, but we heard within 2 weeks. It is important to have the IEP/504 accommodations in school for several years to get the accommodations with the standardized tests.

Again, and I can't stress this enough audio books audio books audio books. They will increase background knowledge, love of "reading", put the fun back into it, reduce stress. There are reading games to play that are not just reading a book.

Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You could also try listening to audio books while following along with a written version. Kindle does "active immersion audio" which highlights the text while it is being read.

My kid with dyslexia really enjoyed doing that and I think it helped a lot.

I thought the new Kindle (Fire) did away with that and it was only available on the older versions.

The newest Fire at our house is less than 6 months old and it does that. Audible is supplying the audio. It's not cheap, but it works like a dream.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You could also try listening to audio books while following along with a written version. Kindle does "active immersion audio" which highlights the text while it is being read.

My kid with dyslexia really enjoyed doing that and I think it helped a lot.

I thought the new Kindle (Fire) did away with that and it was only available on the older versions.

Anonymous wrote:Even if she doesn't appear tired, I would try earlier in the day - I learned from my friends, that was their biggest redo if they had to do it over again. After a long school day, we often underestimate how mentally tired they are - especially if processing takes more work than a normal kid. Summer maybe a time that you can switch when you do that. Weekends are great. Agree that you need far more then 5 to 10 minutes a day, so you may need to chunk it up during the day.

I'm a huge fan of whisper sync on Kindle - though my DC is older. Its audio but highlights each wordand you can adjust font to be bigger. The school and I saw a huge improvement in DC's reading - as well as comprehension and vocabulary. For the kindle time, we had her read at least one grade level above, sometimes 2 grade levels. DC was proud to "read" the books that other kids were into and would "read" hours. It was a real confidence boost and brought back the love of reading. It can get pricey, especially if you are doing a lot of shorter books. You can buy the previous Fire Kindle version which amazon often runs on sale. I don't think it works on the print only kindle or iPad.

Other things to try to "extend time", in slightly harder books, you read one page, she reads the next (with your help). Or in a early chapter book, you pick out the easy pages for her to read in a chapter (shorter pages/ pages with dialougue), and you read the harder ones. Magic tree house (thru book 28) is a good series for that and also is a series, where the author repeats the same words over and over and over. (tedious to listen to , but works).

good luck

Anonymous wrote:My 7 year old DS is also dyslexic, also diagnosed this past school year, and can also only read for 5 to 10 minutes. And he does not have ADHD, so I think it is part and parcel of the dyslexia, and reading being so hard. My son can sustain longer periods of work and concentration with his tutor, but they mix up what they do, it isn't just reading a book out loud the whole time, and that probably is part of why. When my son is having a day when he simply isn't recognizing words - the old name for dyslexia was word blindness, and sometimes that feels like what it is, though it has nothing to do with the eyes - we do just cut the reading short. I add on to my normal reading out loud to him time. Some other things that seem to be working are: have DS video himself reading something he knows and likes and replay it to himself. He thinks its cool. Re-read books again and again. Elephant and Piggie books are a big hit for that, since they are easy but still funny enough for a 7 year old. So are poems - some Shel Silverstein poems are easy enough, once read through a few times. If you haven't already, you might read some books on dyslexia. Overcoming Dyslexia is, I think, the best book for parents. And, I hate to say it, but I'd cut camp short for tutoring if need be. I guess that is only true if your daughter is suffering because of the problems with reading. My son was miserable for most of last year because he felt stupid and ashamed, even though he is clearly very very bright. His pain about it was coloring everything in his life, so making addressing the dyslexia the first priority has helped him feel better pretty quickly. Good luck, OP!