if your child turned out to be dyslexic were there early signs?

I think my son might be dyslexic. He's struggled since reception with concentrating on the more formal parts of learning - copying, writing, reading. We changed schools last christmas to a school that had more of an emphasis on practical learning, and learning outside, etc, which he was really helpful for him last year. Since he's been in year two though, his old problems are starting to return, since they are starting to do more writing, sitting down and concentrating. His issues at age seven are :

• struggling to concentrate.
• If he has to copy text, he will painstakingly do it letter by letter, frequently going back to cross out/erase bits and still end up with missing letters and words, incomplete sentences and bits that dont make sense. If he goes back and checks, he will likely miss most of these mistakes.
• according to his teacher, he hasn't really moved on ability wise since y1
• quite a few letters and numbers still frequently written back to front
• very disorganised and forgetful. Would never remember to give a message/hand in dinner money/ask the teacher something without many reminders just before he has to do it.
• reading is getting much better and fluent but he frequently will stop to sound out a word and sound it out backwards/with the first letter totally wrong, quite often reads words backwards.
• if he doesn't have lined paper, one sentence could take up a whole page of a4, crazily snaking accross the page. His letters are different sizes, there's often a big one in the middle of little ones.
• sometimes he just refuses to try at school. Often when he's been off on a half term, and then he goes back. Last time this happened he was in a support group for writing andthey had to copy sentences. His teacher got cross with him because he only did about two in half an hour. then he refused to do any more, so we took it home to do. It took him two hours to do six sentences, with lots of mistakes, coppying letter by letter. But he did it!
• really struggles with complicated instructions
• talking to him though he is really interested in things, his teacher frequently says that the work he has made a "poor effort" with is well within his capabilities.

His teacher is going to set the wheels in motion to get him assessed now he has just turned seven. I have no idea how long this will take but she said we will have to "shout very loudly" to get it done

Sorry to hijack your thread rhetorican, just that a lot of the things others have listed on here ring true for ds, and I hope that we can soon figure out what's making him tick so we can work with him to help him manage a bit easier!!

Niceweather my dd is really flying at science too - it's her favourite subject

I am loving hearing about how many dyslexic kids take off in secondary school having had a rough ride of primary

This thread is quite a revelation. It's great to hear about all the other kids that have taken off in secondary school. Totally agree Buffin - what my ds is good at was also not measurable at primary... creativity and originality etc. Those silly writing SATS tests don't give out high marks for originality. Primary did not get him at all but Secondary seemed to get him from Day One! I've been in honeymoon period since September. Have to add that this is not the case for my friend's son who has very severe dyslexia.

Interesting Startail, my DS is just mildly dyslexic but displays many of the traits you describe with the exception that he was bilingual when younger (we lived abroad).

Another trait is highly technical drawings (currently halo characters) but completely without background. I have heard that this is quite a typical trait (something to do with tunnel vision).

Yeh, dd has really taken off in secondary too (now in Y8)

• in fact she's just brought her very good report home today - so proud

Really nice that she had great comments in English and other essay subjects - so they must be looking at the content and all her great ideas, and not getting too hung up/over critical about spellings (which remain idiosynchratic) like I fear they would have done in my day.

(Though I've always struggled more with organisational aspects and not so much with spellings - though spell checker has a few complaints with this post )

Ds took off at secondary, he did have a lot of one to one help with spelling in primary, but I dont think what Ds is good at is not measurable in primary ie thinking outside the box and the ability to analyse history or Shakespeare.

I'm paying £400 to get my ten year old tested. He's such a nice boy and doing okay, has developed lots of strategies, and si not disruptive so noone wnats to part with the schools budget.

Your dd sounds like a very interesting mixture of my dd and me startail

• beginning to recognise more and more that I have dyslexic and/or ADD characteristics too. (As well as DD having them, which has been recognised by her schools, and as I mentioned she's been taking part in a research project for several years)

As I said no-one paid much attention to NNT traits in our day did they ?!

Essential Fatty Acid, Totally agree with all your advice and totally agree with your experiences of primary and secondary. My son is in Year 7 and I cannot believe how much better it is. He is taking off too!!! Primary School was not good - they couldn't see beyond the spelling mistakes to the content beneath! This is so unlike secondary where there is so much more emphasis on creativity, knowledge and content. He's doing really well in science where almost every answer is correct despite every answer being wrongly spelt!

Sorry I copied that part way through because I'm on my iPod and my wireless sometimes fails to post.
No idea how paste got pressed

DD1 Late to talk and hardly bothered crawling.
Hopeless at putting names to faces and connecting facts to people. From nursery up wards found making friends difficult.
Doesn't pick up social clues and does her own thing.
Yet is very empathetic, instantly recognised if any one was hurt or upset. Hated arguments on TV.

Always getting in a muddle and fussing. Loosing track of which instruction was the important one.

Totally disinterested in toys, loved to fiddle with anything she shouldn't have.

Learnt her very basic letter sounds and then it all went pear shaped. Found learning to read and spell incredibly frustrating.

Wild guesses at words and forgetting them next time they appeared. Total inability to apply phonic knowledge to reading or spelling. Writes sentences that change tense in the middle.

In context substitutions like hedge for fence or stream for river. As if she's read the word right, but the brain sends the wrong word to her mouth.

(I tend to do this too, loved paraphrasing text and loath reading out load)

Huge gap between her reading writing ability and the impression you'd get talking to her. Very chatty, large vocab. very quick to understand anything that isn't just remembering isolated facts. Good and science and maths, but still doesn't know her tables. Useless at MFL.

Finally learnt to read in the January of Y6 as she turned 11!

At 14 still can't easily tell left from right or read an analogue clock.
Never has her head out of a book, has a reading age of 16 on a comprehension test but is still full of errors out loud.
Still has a spelling age of about 9. DD1 Late to talk and hardly bothered crawling.
Hopeless at putting names to faces and connecting facts to people. From nursery up wards found making friends difficult.
Doesn't pick up social clues and does her own thing.
Yet is very empathetic, instantly recognised if any one was hurt or upset. Hated arguments on TV.

Always getting in a muddle and fussing. Loosing track of which instruction was the important one.

Totally disinterested in toys, loved to fiddle with anything she shouldn't have.

Learnt her very basic letter sounds and then it all went pear shaped. Found learning to read and spell incredibly frustrating.

Wild guesses at words and forgetting them next time they appeared. Total inability to apply phonic knowledge to reading or spelling. Writes sentences that change tense in the middle.

In context substitutions like hedge for fence or stream for river. As if she's read the word right, but the brain sends the wrong word to her mouth.

(I tend to do this too, loved paraphrasing text and loath reading out load)

At 14 still can't easily tell left from right or read an analogue clock.

Her written work is still a mess and because she can't think how to write the the word she needs. Spelling age of 9, but a reading age of 16 in a comprehension test. Reading out load is still very inaccurate, but somehow she extracts meaning, always has.

Sorry insanely long

My dd has mild dyslexia (taking part in some research about auditory processing, but otherwise not officially diagnosed)

Some characteristics of hers I feel could be related are that she is very untidy, finds it hard to do two things at once eg listen if she has her head in a book !
She loves art and has been recognised as talented in design (by school)
She was an early and sophisticated talker - but I don't know how related that is to her dyslexia. She is very bright - again not sure how that relates to the way her mind works !

I think I have related traits though sadly not the gifted artist that both my children seem to be. Feel I have attention deficit traits too - Though never recognised as don't think they bothered with such subtle diagnosis of NNT traits in my day ! Sink or swim in them days !

For those of you with young children looking for early signs, I think you will know yourselves in Reception or Y1 if you think there are real problems for your child.

My best advice that I wish someone had given me is as follows:
do not rely on the school to help your child - our school very much failed our child
do not rely on the school to identify a problem or even to agree once you have raised concerns - it will probably not be agreed until the problem has become unecessarily big and has existed for several years.
get your child extra help on a weekly basis if possible as soon as you suspect a problem - my child would not let me help her myself so I had to pay for this help. I left it until Y3 to get help for my dd and she absolutely suffered for this delay.

expect that your child will probably need a lot of extra help over several years

don't be suprised though if your child does very very well at secondary school without still needing any extra support by this age

As I said earlier in the thread dyslexics are not alike and dyslexia takes many forms - this is really my own experience and yours may be very different.

Dyslexia did blight many of my child's primary years - with earlier support things would have been better. She is really flourishing in the secondary school environment though - it has been better then I ever dared to hope for.

DS 16 didn't learn to crawl properly, just comando then walked at 10 months.
Speach behind understanding by quite a lot. At 5 tested as an adult in receptive language but
Obviously very bright but slow to read, didn't really click until 7.
He can read well now but spelling and writing still not that good in comparison to the "rest of him"
He does have poor short term memory, can never remember what day of the week it is, or where he has just put something.

rhetorician, another very common problem, once the do start reading is the mixing up of small words, so:
as / at
in / on
on / no
the / then / there

Also, very common is correctly identifying a common well used word, such as cat on one line & then being completely unable to read it again a few lines further down the page.

Yes, we are just north of london so the Helen Arkell centre is accessible. Thank you for the link! I am going to have a good look at their website.

dd - slow to talk, mispronounced words for ages (which we thought cute at the time..) ie ds and the dog were both called "dodo" till she was around 4. "Music" was "munix" - still has difficulty with some words.
Started to muddle up colours at nursery - green and yellow / black and white
WOuld say "down" when she meant "up" etc (although had a fantastic vocabulary)
Could not learn her numbers. Hated jigsaws
Forgot nursery rhymes
No real dominant hand until 4 ish - and even then used her left hand for some stuff
Poor gross coordination

DS is very organised and tidy.
NigellasGuest, if you really think your DD may come under the term dyslexic, you should try and get a diagnosis. If she has cognitive impairments, there will be teaching methods that can be used to help her. I don't know where in the country you are, but if you are in the south of the UK, consider talking to the Helen Arkell centre www.arkellcentre.org.uk

But she is obsessively tidy and relatively organised

DD2 is 13. I think she is sort of dyslexic but have never had a diagnosis - I seem to draw blanks when trying to get her officially diagnosed! Here are a few points about her:

Was late walking and talking (but not worryingly so - just much later than older DD1).

Wanted stories as a younger child but couldn't concentrate on listening, kept grabbing book, trying to turn pages before I'd finished reeading them. As an older child, sort of enjoyed being read to (longer chapter books etc) but could never follow the plot and always asked questions like "what happened last time?" "who's he?" (referring to main character)! and generally did not have much of a clue as to what was happening.

No grasp of phonics (or limited grasp). DD1 would sound out c-a-t = cat. DD2: C-a-t - kite? Kate? cart? (wild guessing based on initial letter/certain other letters in the word).

However, physically she's fantastic! Amazing balance, very agile, talented dancer, remembers sequences of dance steps almost immediately. This was evident from around 3 yrs old, and she was always more physically active.

Oh, and she has unusual looking handwriting, bad spelling (and the spelling mistakes are bizarre, IYSWIM, rather than obvious mistakes like "seperate" instead of "separate", say.)

Learnt to talk early and with extensive and sophisticated vocabulary which was always remarked upon
Loathed all drawing, scribbling type activities - no interest at all
Loathed learning to read
Very awkward pencil grip
Uninterested in doing puzzles or learning letters
Poor sense of balance
Poor hand eye coordination
Very poor sequencing
Poor short term memory

DS is 12 now. He was diagnosed as ASD at 7 and his multiple cognitive impairments (which give him an umbrella diagnosis of Dyslexia) were diagnosed at 8.
He is at a school that specialises in teaching dyslexic kids & it has made a huge difference. I think he will always struggle to some degree with the written word, but he will be literate and should be able to take GCSE English. He is flying in maths, music & science - so am hoping that these will all give him a path forward.

This is so interesting - I'm mildly dyslexic so have wondered about DS mainly due to really poor pencil grip and reluctance to learn to reading/write. But it's hard to tell what is bog standard 5yr old boy stuff and what might be an indicator.
Just reading through all these posts shows the differences. Doesn't answer the questions re DS but really an eye opener

Niceweather my dd is now in Y7 and is flying high at secondary - suddenly top or near top of the class which she never was in primary school, and enjoying school a lot more too. How old is your son?