I’m a dyslexia assessor AMA

[Yawnyyawny]

Maybe interesting, maybe not. Often people have ‘ooh my child does this, could it be dyslexia’ type questions…if so, ask away!

My husband was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child and some words I've noticed he mispronounces. Mainly it's an intrusive t/d sound on the end. Usually you don't notice because it's a word where another form of it has that pronunciation. For example (when playing a game)

"Make sure you equipt that one"
"Now just combind those two"

Is this related to dyslexia?

Our 5yo also has some speech niggles, he will start speech therapy for this in January. It seems to be related to him not quite hearing the difference in certain sounds, especially in the middle of words. (There are also some missing letters e.g. s, sh, r, c, j) We are abroad so he is not at school nor has he started any reading/writing education yet. Examples of his mispronunciations are:

Weestabix (weirdly, he pronounces this perfectly fine in German)
Plobrem

Sometimes similar-sounding words will get mixed up or one of the words used for every instance that sounds sort of the same as well. I can't think of an actual example for this but something like express / impress might trigger it.

Weirdly he is astonishingly good at recognising sometimes very long and obscure words e.g. names of tram stops. He occasionally gets this wrong but has an accuracy of I would say around 95%, even when the font and capitalisation are different. He's memorised probably about ten different tram stop names and can point them out. Other than this, he can only read his own name and isn't even particularly consistent at recognising individual letters.

Lastly, he prefers to follow lego instructions with the model reversed compared to the diagram, which made me have a totally random "Is that dyslexia?" moment.

It doesn't matter and I am not in a rush as it looks like he is likely to go through assessment for various things anyway, I am mainly curious about the pronunciation thing and the others are total wild leaps that I've wondered about.

He sounds like my DS. I might send you a PM once we've been for the speech assessment, if that's OK?

Clearly I'm not the OP, but two of mine (summer borns with ADHD) were very slow to grasp reading and aspects of phonics. They could learn phase one and 2 sounds but absolutely could not blend, didn't seem to hear the sounds. Reversed letters, slow to learn to write their names. Both started reading fluently at 7, and are definitely not dyslexic. 12 and 16 now and both been strong readers since 7 and no issues with spelling. It was almost overnight the ability at 7. So I agree that dyslexia shouldn't be diagnosed before 7, just from my own personal experience.

Thanks for doing this.

My daughter (8) had the dyslexia screening at school and came out as mild risk. Her profile was quite spiky though with deficits in phonemic segmentation, rapid naming and backwards digit span.
She reads well but struggles with spelling and reading comprehension tests. Her maths retention is poor too.
She had a speech sound disorder prior to starting school which has largely resolved itself although when spelling doesn't seem to 'hear' the sounds the way others do, although has passed hearing tests.

She has an older autistic sister who also struggled with speech and another sister who is an avid reader but still can't spell despite being able at other subjects.

Would you suggest it's worth getting my 8 year old a dyslexia assessment or an educational psychologist to do a general assessment?

Many thanks for giving up your time to do this.

What do you think about local authorities who will not refer children to be assessed for dyslexia/tendencies? Our authority (N Wales) refuses to entertain assessing pupils for this in any shape or form, and any assessments are done privately.

Why do so many dyslexia reports use the phrase 'dyslexic tendencies' rather than just dyslexia?
Should a year 7 pupil who had a report with 'dyslexic tendencies' (report from Year 4) and clearly struggles with spellings be looking at requesting extra time in exams even when they don't get support in the classroom on a daily basis (because they manage without it ok)?

I work in education and this has been the case for at least the last ten years.

Her reading comprehension is ok I'd say but we've hugely stepped back from reading at home because it was too much for her after school. We would have a lot of resistance and meltdowns. So she mostly does her reading at school. She loves to listen to stories and comprehends stories she hears well. She's listened to all the narnias and is now having the hobbit read to her.

She did ok with the sound manipulation after practice but my 5 year old was instantly jumping in with the answer first so she can but perhaps slower than she should be.

The 4 number backwards was a challenge for all the family 😆. But she found it difficult. Could manage 3 numbers fine.

Her spelling is the main concern. Picture attached.

School have done the nessy screener which is low risk but they say take that with a pinch of salt.

She's 7 and wrote that? My 8 year old is even more behind than I thought. We're in Scotland so he started formal education at 5 rather than 4 but he is so far off being able to write anything like that. I'd say he can only confidently write his name and maybe 50 simple words, and they will all be huge and meandering. I try not to compare so don't really look at what other children are doing (he does have an older sibling but they have ASD and words are their area of expertise, so not "average" either) so this really brought it home.

Sure! I was thinking your son sounded similar to mine, too.

Thank you so much @Yawnyyawny that's really helpful to know.

My daughter goes to a small school and the teachers suggested we monitor her due to the way she sat (I can’t remember the exact tendency but it was something about tucking legs under) and because she was a left-handed female. Have you heard of this link?

Fortunately we were able to get a private assessment at a specialist Neurodevelopment unit attached to a university and she was diagnosed as severely dyslexic and dyscalculaic at the age of 7.

Her teachers have suggested she will be able to have accommodations when it is time to take GCSEs but haven’t explained what these will be. She is incredibly intelligent (more than me and my IQ is 146) but not very academic so we have no hopes other than sufficient GCSEs to go to art college.

So my questions are:

Have you heard anything more scientific about certain behaviours or female left-handedness being linked to dyslexia? (No link seen with male left-handedness though!)

what sort of accommodations can we expect for exams?

Thanks.

Toe by Toe is full of phonics practice and it seems to be helping, but very slowly. Thanks for the advice, I will read up on these points and try to work them in!
Thank you.

Toe by Toe is old fashioned, but it's methodical, thorough and it does work. I've used it with a few children including one of my own DCs.

I'm not a dyslexia specialist, just a teacher and private tutor.

Do you find that dyslexic children generally get the support they need at school or does it need to come from an external tutor.

My DS is severely dyslexic and is fortunate enough to attend a school for dyslexic children. His mainstream school said that all lessons were dyslexia friendly but we didn’t find that at all.

My DS is 15. He was one of the latest in his class at school to learn to read and write (despite being one of the oldest). He very quickly started to love reading and from junior school onwards has always had a reading age higher than his chronological age. However, he has always struggled with writing. He could not get his head around the difference between 'b' and 'd' until about Y7 (despite lots of discussion and ways to remember etc) and still makes mistakes now. His spelling is terrible- and he often spells words in a way that sort of makes sense if you sound it out but is not in line with accepted phonetics. It's almost like although he has been taught the rules of spelling, he hasn't really taken it onboard and spells words his own way. It is getting better every year but his writing is still difficult to follow, and his handwriting is terrible. Any written work takes him a really long time.

I don't know if it is related, but he also struggles to remember nouns. He can remember the names of friends that he sees every day but. for example, cannot remember which of his cousins has which name (he knows the 2 names, but can't remember which is which) and can't remember which name we use for each of his grans. He gets round this issue with names by giving family members nicknames that he can remember eg. gran with a dog. He often struggles for other sorts of nouns too and describes what he means (eg. he forgot the word for trousers so he called them leg sleeves).

I have spoken to school about this lots of times. They did some sort of dyslexia test in junior school but this seemed to focus on reading comprehension which he is actually pretty good at. Senior school seem to take the view that he can read well and is not behind in his studies (he is around middle set in most subjects) it is not something that requires any action.

Do you think this could be a form of dyslexia (or something else) and what would you recommend we do from here?

Hi, OP, fantastic offer for an AMA and I hope the volume of questions hadn't swamped you!

My question is about behaviour associated with dyslexia.

My DS13 was privately assessed and diagnosed with dyslexia age 8. From a very young age he's really struggled to play independently. Contrast with my DD who can play for hours on her own, with toys and projects.

DS requires a playmate or a screen to engage. He'll literally lie face-down on the sofa not doing anything if he hasn't got access to either of the above. He doesn't have projects or follow interests. He point blank refused to carry on learning a musical instrument and now wants to give up his martial art that he's almost black belt in.

For clarity, I've always made sure he has plenty of dyslexia-friendly non-reading based activities available; art, cool boy crafts like a 3-D pen, models and lego, jigsaws, junk modelling, cooking, remote control car etc etc.

I can see how this might now be linked to lack of confidence in his abilities after having been held back by dyslexia. But this has always been there- unless I was playing with the hot wheels with him at 4, they didn't get played with.

Is this associated with dyslexia? How do I best support him to engage with all the good stuff that life has to offer away from screens?

Thanks OP!

Have you ever heard of a situation where a full dyslexia test was done on a seven year old in their home environment (but not at school) and it came back as clear for dyslexia, but it was found later on (say, nine years later) that the person does have dyslexia?

my seven year old was tested and wasn’t found to have dyslexia. He was later diagnosed with dyspraxia and ASD though. I still have concerns - his spelling is very poor (despite being predicted 7/8/9 in all GCSEs, he spells some three letter words wrong) and he does things like spell words backwards or upside down in scrabble. He’s now nearly 16.

Fascinating OP! Thanks for doing this. I'm from a long line of dyslexics and we all regularly come across people who say you can just "buy a diagnosis these days".

How many assessments do you do that don't diagnose dyslexia?

So good to see this, thanks for doing it. Is APD connected to Dyslexia? My son has both diagnoses. Could you share any advice/tips on how to help him with the compulsory learning of another language at secondary, it's really stressing him out. Thank you.

I have another question.
How do feel about the fact that some areas don’t recognise dyslexia. For example in my LA they use the term specific learning difficulties- does it matter?

Gosh so many questions!! I’ll go back to the last one I answered and work my way through…might take me a day or two though.

@Tryingtohelp12 hi, 5 is very young, but memory difficulty and struggling with phonics would be indicators. Speech delay can cause difficulty with phonics (I’m guessing he’s had his ears tested)? It’s really going to be a case of watch and wait for you. How is he at remembering things like instructions? Would he be able to remember and pass on a message?
As I say, if a gap between him and his peers seems to grow when it comes to phonics and spelling, then that would be the time to think about testing.

@Choice4567 Hi, spelling is often the biggest issue for dyslexic people. Did they test her processing speed? How is she if you ask her to swap a letter in a word to make a new word, like change ‘o’ in ‘pot’ to ‘a’. Can she do that kind of thing without having to think about the spelling? Can she take sounds out of words like “say scale without saying ‘c’”? Those kind of things are good tests of phonological awareness. Is she generally quick off the mark with things? Can she read a list of numbers or letters as quickly as her friends/siblings? How’s her writing speed?

if all those things are presenting as difficulties then an assessment might be a good way to go. She may also be messy, disorganised, losing things a lot, needing support to pack her school bag, those kinds of things.

@parlayvoo auditory processing and poor working memory often go along with ADHD. It would be unusual for you to have no issue at all with reading or spelling and be dyslexic. Did they test your phonological processing?