I'm trying to learn more about Dyslexia

[mamaley]

My son is 5.5 and his Montessori teacher suspects that he has dyslexia. I posted in Special Needs but only one person responded so I am trying here.

I have so many questions. His teacher loaned me the book "The Gift of Dyslexia" and I've looked through it. I've also read some things online. He has not been tested yet but based off what I have read, i wouldn't be surprised if does have it.

I'm interested in opening up dialogue on this so that I can learn more, and maybe others can too.

Some questions I have:
1) If your child has dyslexia, or if you do, how did you find out? What syptoms did you/they experience?
2) I keep reading about curing dyslexia. While I think it's important for people to learn ways to help them to read, etc, is it possible to actually "cure" it? Do we want to cure it? Isn't it just a different way of thinking, but one that has a lot of good things about it as well?

[LindaCl]

The term "dyslexia" has getting more precise, but there is still a lot of confusion about what it is and how you recognize it.

The most current and accepted idea of what dyslexia is, is that in dyslexia sounds are processed in the brain differently, and the students learning to read can't use the phonetics of the spoken word and attach them to written words efficiently. English is a phonetic language, and dyslexics aren't able process sound phonemes well and associate them to the phonetic "code".

If your child has had reading instruction, then these might be some indicators I'd look for. Dyslexics can often memorize easy words like "cat". But if they can't also say isolated words like "tat" or "cot", then it may be a sign they aren't able to process phonetic clues to read. If the reader can guess the first sound of a word accurately but the rest of the word is completely wrong, such as reading "sit" as "stamp" or "star", then this may suggest dyslexia in an early reader. I think that watching children try to spell can give clues too, but this isn't a good indicator for a new beginning reader usually.

The first step in correcting the problem is to work with phoneme awareness. The earlier this is attended to, the better the odds it can be corrected. In more profound dyslexia, it seems that the students do not improve even with that kind of skill building with phonemes. The best approach I know of for these children who can't develop phoneme skills is Lindamood-Bell's LIPS program.

Opinions on this may differ, because dyslexics do often seem to develop superior skills in other ways, but I don't know that helping correct the dyslexia would significantly change this. I just don't know. I do know that dyslexia is a very serious impediment in education today. Dyslexics can succeed, but they're at an enormous disadvantage in a traditional classroom. Though I've known many dyslexics who do learn to read fairly well without help, most weren't able to do except after many many years of struggling, hating school, feeling they were stupid, etc. Most tell me they still don't like to read.

The best thing is to have your child tested for the phoneme processing, and not judge it based on how well they're reading. Especially at 5 years old, reading problems aren't very good measures, I don't think.

[mamaley]

Just wanted to say a little bit more about why she thinks that he might have it. If anyone has any thoughts on this please share!

1) His speech has always been in issue for him, and I've been reading there there are connections between things I see in his speech and dyslexia. He has 1.5 years ofl speech therapy when she told us that everything else was just developmentally normal for him and that if he didn't improve by age 6 to come back and see her. He can't say L or R sounds, and he will leave off the beginnings of words (pretend is a-tend, for example) and ambulance is ambyance, spaghetti is bas-ketti, etc. He also stutters a lot, always has, and it can take him so long to articulate his thoughts.

2) When ds reads Bob Books, he was easily able to read anything he could picture in his head but it was very difficult for him to read words like as, this, has, and the. I told his teacher about this and says that this is exactly what they describe in The Gift of Dyslexia, which she loaned me.

3) He has a difficult time with his handwriting, even though he practices it so much. His writing is very weak and kind of shaky.

4). I've always said that he's a 3-D thinker. He can build amazing things with any type of building toy. He's also very curious, constantly asking questions. He enjoys art too but he rarely draws--don't know if this has anything to do with dyslexia, if he does have it.

He's still so young, so I don't know. But we've always suspected that there is something. Even when he was 2.5-3, is toddler Montessori teacher talked to us about how she suspected that there was something beyond speech but that she did not know what.

There's more, but I need to go...

Thanks for reading and for any input.

[mamaley]

Thanks Linda, we cross posted.

[LindaCl]

Hello again. I don't think handwriting issues ordinarily associate with dyslexia--it might fall into what is now called "dyspraxia", but I don't believe the dyslexia and dyspraxia are linked necessarily.

My children were much older than five before they stopped saying "bah-sketti" etc. (My thirteen year old still has some, like "thum" for "them"). I don't know , but if the speech specialist believes your child's speech is age appropriate I don't know if I'd worry about it.

The word skipping isn't a strong indicator in my mind. I'd try techniques that forced him to slow down and read each word, such as taking an index card and cutting a 'keyhole' that you could slide over the text, stopping-on-one-word-at-a-time. The inability to read simple words in isolation is a better sign of dyslexia than the tendency to skip 'filler' type words. If your child knows those words in isolation, then you might slow him down in reading by having him turn the bookmarker under the text and read as he 'scans' with the marker below the words. Maybe you could draw a diamond shape in the middle of the bookmarker as a 'pointer' of sorts, and teach him to consciously read each word in sequence. I find that students find it a little 'jerky' to read aloud this way the first couple of times, but after they get a little pace going after a few run throughs, they actually like the sound better since they're reading with less mistakes.

These are just my thoughts anyway. If your child can't read words without picture clues, that's more significant of dyslexia I think than would be the skipped words. Can he read text well in the Bob books without the picture clues?

Linda

[mamaley]

Hi, thanks for responding. Good to know that other kids still do that speech stuff at this age or even older. We know over 20 kids his age and none of the other kids still do this (and before someone gets on to me about comparing my child to other children, it's just an observation). The speech therapist didn't think it was developmentally appropriate, but basically that he must just be a late bloomer...this was last May and he's still doing it, and I guess I got concerned because I saw a web site on Dyslexia that said that many kids with dyslexia can't pronounce L or R.
The reason why I listed the speech stuff in my post above was because several sites list speech issues as signs of dyslexia, and the issues that they list are exactly what ds does.

As for the reading, he always looks at the pictures and make up what the sentance says based off of that. I always thought that was probably typical though. When I cover up the picture, he will slowly read the words, and again he reads Mat, sat, Sam just fine, but has, and + the are challenging.

He is young, and so much of this could be typical/late-bloomer/too early to tell stuff, or something else all together.