Question about 5 year old dd and writing.

[pinkdolly]

You probably know that we are autonomously educating the girls. So for the most part they dont follow any work that I have set them.

But I have some concerns about my 5 year old and hoped you could tell me if they are justified or not.

She is both left and right handed, her pen control is not good at all. She has problems both writing and drawing.

If copying letters she gets all her d's and b's backwards (even tho they are there infront of her). In fact she get's a lot of other letters back to front as well.

Now I know this can happen sometimes as children learn to write, but with the correct letters in front of her i'd think she would be able to do it.

My gut instinct tells me she is just not ready to write yet and that I should leave it until she is.

But there is this little niggle that keeps me wandering if it might be dyslexia and it which case should I focus more on her writing to help her through this.

Has anyone else been through this and got any thoughts?

She was 5 in August (not sure if that makes a difference).
Thanx

[julienoshoes]

I'd go with your gut instinct

We have three dyslexic offspring.
Lots of time spent in school focussing on their weaknesses (once we had battled to get them diagnosed)
Put them off reading and writing completely.

Once we deregistered and got through a long period of deschooling, they began to read and write when the time was right for them.

Our youngest is severely dyslexic. It made me weep when I read one professionals report.
Dyslexia didn't come any worse.

She didn't even start to read until she was 13 ish. She is reading the likes of Oscar Wilde now and is doing an OU course and will probably do her whole degree that way-in her own time.
She writes a diary when it suits and lists of whatever she needs. Anything and everything as she needs to.

Talking to all three of them, focusing/pushing them didn't help at all-just put them off more and more. They hated the Dyslexia Institute classes they attended, before they left school, for just that reason.

Running with their education and allowing the reading and writing to catch up in it's own time, was much more effective according to them.

[bigscaryorangespiderami]

My ds wrote with both his right adn his left
hand until teh age of 6. Because of this he would write his letters and numbers backwards. So for instance with the letter d you move towards your hand to do the top bit of the curve, then down and round away from your hand, then back towards your hand for the bottom bit of the curve, and then up, if writing with the right hand. But it reverses for the left hand (ie away from your hand, then towards, then away and then up) and that is why ds got confused. In fact he did not start getting his letters the right way round until he consistently began writing with the same hand. His teacher (ordinary state primary) said that was nothing to be worried about and that once he was older and had chosen a handwriting hand, he would begin to be consistent and correct in his letter formation.
He is 9 now and is lefthanded - and no more wrong letters

[julienoshoes]

forgot to say youngest has just turned 16.

TBH I am not sure if I would have worried about getting a diagnosis if we had home educated from the beginning.
We have just followed the children's individual learning style. We cast off all of the specialist help we were having before they were deregistered. We chucked thousands of pounds at the dyslexia -and autonomous home ed has been much more effective than anything any of the professionals have been able to suggest.

DD1 helped launch a charity for dyslexic children fairly recently.
She co-chaired the launch party with a well known expert in the field, from the USA and she certainly impressed him

[pinkdolly]

Thanx to both of you.

Rev- How would you go about getting her tested as he is not in school- is it via doctor/health visitor.

Julienoshoes- My main concern always for my girls is that I dont disadvantage them in later life by ignoring problems now.

Do you think that the dyslexia classes helped them in any way or do you think your children would still have got where they are today without them?

I would of course be very happy to let her be if like yours she wouldn't be disadvantaged later on.

She has so many other great qualities, very creative. Makes up her own songs and stories all the time and is hilariously funny for her age.

[pinkdolly]

Sorry crossed posts-

Thanx for that bigscary- was also wandering if it could be down to that.

Julie- You have answered my next question on whether or not I need to get her tested if home-schooled, thank you.

Am very interested in seeing the charity your dd helped set up but the link doesn't seem to be working.

[julienoshoes]

I'll try again with the link
Speaks Volumes aim is primarily to aid children who have dyslexia and who can benefit from technology which aids them in reading and writing.

It is a very new charity and all of the young people who have been helped so far have been in school, sometimes helped by a mass of experts and sometimes sadly not helped at all.

We did have our children tested-before they left school. We had to pay for it privately as the schools hadn't recognised that dyslexia may be the problem at that point. It was useful knowledge when they were there as it showed they were not 'stupid' as they had been led to believe, but had dyslexia-something as real as my short sightedness.
I think that someone autonomously home educated may not have the problem of believing themselves to be stupid-after all they would be following their own learning style and interests and doing things at their own pace.
We have found that the home ed community were very helpful with dd2s dyslexia and would just read anything for her when she needed it, if I wasn't there. Unlike school where she was teased mercilessly and called thick and stupid by the other children.
She had a whole bunch of friends from the dancing class she went to, and as a young teen they invited her out to join them-she would never go as she didn't want them to know she couldn't read at that point as she knew she would be judged accordingly. never minded going out with her home ed peers though.
Now of course she reads well, I find her helping others in the way she was helped.

pinkdolly-have you thought of joining the Home Ed Special Needs email support group? Others there will be able to give you the benefit of their experience too.
It may be that as bigscaryorangespiderami suggest and your daughter may well not have dyslexia, but advice from the list would put your mind at rest regarding disadvantaging your daughter later.