Is it too early to worry about dyslexia?

[Sanamarin]

DD turned 5 in Oct and started Reception in Sept. She's been doing phonics since she was 3 and has a great phonic awareness. She loves writing, for instance the other day they learned at school 'we' so she came home and wrote: 'we hav a cat' which I thought was good. She's been writing her name for a long time.

If I ask her how do you spell pond...she'll go: p-o-n-d. And do on.

She is a fast learner usually, she learned all the sight words, about 25 so far (push, pull, put, the, and, I etc.)

HOWEVER, she finds reading very frustrating. She comes home with books that have simple Cvc words ...and all she does is segmenting and blending. We read every day for 10-15 mins and she doesn't seem to get past the segmenting of even the simplest words. I mean she's been writing 'cat' for ages but when it comes in a book she goes c-a-t. Plus half way through the book she gets really frustrated, I suspect the graphemes start jumbling up and she starts mis-reading. Then she says she doesn't want to do it. I feel there is no progress there. She gets very emotional and hates it.

Plus the pace is very slow. It takes her quite a bit to read 'Dad sat in it'.

There is a strong genetic link from her fathers side to dyslexia and I have been worrying about it for quite a while so I guess I might be reading into it a bit too much. Her dad is an avid reader now, but his spelling is very poor.

Can anyone relate to this?

@Mentallyillfrienhomless Thank you so much x

An idea for you to try to see if it helps with her confidence and enjoyment of books: model reading to her. Read one of her books out loud to her. Before you start reading, look at the front cover, say out loud what you notice about the title and the pictures (eg “I can see there’s a cat in the picture”). Read the first couple of pages and then get her to read the same pages, then it’s your turn again. When you’re reading, say out loud how you decode unfamiliar words - eg using the pictures as clues, breaking down into syllables, thinking about what would make sense with what’s already been read etc

@Thurst Thank you for your advice. Can I ask you what signs did your DD show at 18 months that made you think she might be dyslexic?

DD didn't show any, or maybe I wasn't aware of the signs, until she started school.

We do flash cards, she still segments and blends. She does prefer them to reading book tbh.

I have post graduate qualifications in supporting children with dyslexia and many years of experience. Dyslexic children need explicit, multi sensory instruction in phonics.
Op so far your dc sounds normal for her age. Most important thing you can do right now is to foster a love of books and stories.

Op, encourage her to segment in her head and only say the whole word out loud.

So happy to hear about your DD.

That's exactly what I told her for the last few days. But she's very very slow.

Haven't read the whole thread but I was a nanny for a family and the oldest was obviously dyslexic by the age of 5, thankfully she was in a small class and was given support until she was formally tested at age 7.

@Mummyboy1 What were the signs he was dyslexic?

@Sanamarin spelling was very much phonetically, even if she had to copy words she couldn't. She really struggled with reading, not progressing.

I think your expectations are way too high and you are stressing her out.

Dh is dyslexic. He didn’t speak a word until he was 2.5 and had a speech therapist and struggled in school. Actually, he’s a very successful company director now and he still can’t spell for shit. Neither of my dc could do more than cvc anywhere close to this point in the year. She’s so little. We do school reading maybe twice a week. Otherwise mine place outside in the mud until dinner. It sounds like she’s doing great so just give it time and sit on your hand a bit. It sounds like she needs time to absorb and catch up without so much pressure.

It sounds like the are sending home the sound blending books. This is absolutely right for her age. Don’t push her so hard to do more. Read to her. Give her picture books and ask her to tell you a story from the pictures. Go out for walks and create a story together. That’s all you need to be doing. She’s so little yet.

I know that dyslexia can present differently but I am very surprised that her spelling is good especially this young if she’s dyslexic.

I am dyslexic and I have reports/early intervention records from between reception and year two, I think the following were the key points for me -

Very poor spelling, often only phonetically. As I got older I used poor handwriting to mask this. I would get the overall shape of the word right but have no idea what letters were in there.

Flipping letters and number eg, b and d, p and q, writing the number 4 the wrong way round

Very slow at copying off the board or off work sheets, I would loose my place a lot and couldn’t hold the information in my head to copy down. Teachers would often see Thai as me being distracted, but I wasn’t it was just very difficult for me to do and took a long time.

It took me a very long time to process writing down stories or other written work (older than reception obviously) I would always come up with great stories but I wouldn’t have time to finish writing them down if this was a task in class. This would be noticeably less than other pupils wrote despite me being fully engaged with the task.

My reading ability was lower than my general ability; especially when reading out load. I don’t know any of the technical terms for how I did or didn’t blend words but for me overall my reading ability was actually one of the lesser signs. I could read, my parents just had to try harder at it than they did with my siblings. By around year 2 say I could probably read at an average level but I was above average in everything else. My spelling however would have been years behind.

As I got older and had spelling tests these were always terrible, I just could not retain the information no matter how much I practiced or tried to learn them. There I some very normal basic that I only learnt to spell once I was at uni and had a dyslexic tutor. Anyway you can see why I’m surprised that her spelling is good.

Hope that’s helpful to you! Though I had various interventions and help with my learning I wasn’t actually formally diagnosed until I was in 6th form as before then they said my overall ability was too high for me to be dyslexic. We all know that’s rubbish!

Some children don't blend, don't segment and don't get phonics at all.

They need straight forward words, just words!

Some people's brains are very fast and making them slow down and turning straight reading into this science of tricky trigraphs is locking many children out of learning to read.

It's a cult.

@PinkPlantCase would you mind sharing how after all those years your dyslexia tutor helped you spell?

@Mentallyillfrienhomless

She taught me the ‘original’/proper pronunciation of words.

eg. I always used to spell where/there/whether/whether wrong or get the wrong word if it sounded the same as a differently spelt word, she taught me that you can hear the h (or other relevant letters) and that made a big difference.

My DD never passed the phonics tests she took, she doesn't "sound" dyslexic from your description. Both my DDs, (one not dyslexic) struggled with reading alot but something just clicked at around age 8 for both of them. Sounds like alot of kids do and memorise sight words but when you ask them to read a book they try and guess. It's torturous..... But normal.

My non dyslexic 15yr old has only just become an avid reader since the summer and just smashed an A in her exams this year so I really wouldn't worry.

My dd is dyslexic. At 5 she couldn't get phonics at all. She learned to read (eventually) through memorising whole words. This is how my elder dd reads (we didn't realise because she was reading so young until later) and crucially it's how I read. I still can't phonetically sound out as an adult but I have (though I say it myself) a larger than average vocabulary and use fairly sophisticated language, yet spelling is not my forte - I and my elder dd were diagnosed with dyslexia by dd2's specialist teacher!

If at five she has that much phonetic awareness I wouldn't worry unduly but keep at the back of your mind.

My dd2 with severe dyslexia got a 2:1 recently from a top university, please don't worry too much if your child has a form of dyslexia, obviously it varies but most are successful with good teaching

@gogohmm Thank you for sharing that, very helpful. Congrats to your DD2, that's amazing!

I suspected DS1 was dyslexic at 5 and he was diagnosed at 8.5. Classic symptoms of flipping letters/ numbers (still does at 12), poor letter formation, very phonetic spelling, jumbling words like was/ saw, slow progress that didn't match his other skills/ knowledge.

It's taken longer to see with DS2 and he's just been diagnosed at 9.5. School haven't been the slightest bit interested because his literacy skill looks low average, when the detail is that he has some very weak skills, masked by some very strong skills and his more advanced skills hide where he struggles with basics. For me it's been noticing slow verbal reading speed, frequent inaccuarcies including substituting words of a similar structure, not recognising that they don't make sense but still understanding the text, poor letter formation and arrangements. Understanding grammar but not being able to multi-task all the different strands together. He's also very scatty.

With both, I read with them a lot and use audio books now they're getting older. Find texts that interest them (easy reader Star Wars was a game changer for DS1 when he was 6). We had Peter and Jane, which I bought for developing DS1's speech delay for their simple sentence arrangements. With DS2, I read aloud to him, let him read silently then let him paraphrase what the text was about.

Both of mine have Irlens too (use coloured overlays). It can exist without dyslexia but it is common for it to occur in dyslexia and other ND conditions. Our local indepent optician does testing but many chains don't. You can get packs of overlays (crossbow education) which are a cheap way to test the ground. Both of mine say that letters wriggle (and when I told grandma she looked stunned because it never occurred to her that words might stay still for people).

It is common to be fobbed off until at least 7-8, then often have to pay for testing yourself. It's worth keeping it on your radar and using dyslexia friendly strategies.

Family of dyslexics here. As the pp says, the whole word method has worked much better for our boys (both diagnosed) than phonics. We'll all be ever grateful to good old Peter and Jane!

My elder DD is extremely dyslexic. She’s at Uni and gets DSA and so on for it.

I got a private cognitive therapist that specialises in the Linda Mood Bell system for teaching dyslexic children how to read and so on.

They teach phonemic awareness instead of phonics. Phonics did not work for my DD at all. She went to twice weekly two hour sessions for three years.

Thank you for sharing that. It does make me feel a lot less worried.

I personally don't know much about dyslexia as I and my sister were early readers (our language though is a lot more phonetic), plus we started school at the age of 7 so we were more mature a d ready to learn.

I know DD's dad really struggled at school (late summer born plus dyslexic) and so with that genetic link I always worry about DD's progress with reading/writing.

I'll keep an eye on her and I'm keen on checking her eye sight as she squints and rubs her eyes a lot when trying to read.

She could get lost in a puddle and had no co-ordination. She didn’t speak till she was well over one and when she did her speech was very disorganised. She say the same word different every time she said it. She was also very sensory and had a quirky way about her. I’m dyslexic too and so are many members of my family and we are all similar.
She’s 11 now and just got exceeding expectations in the reading part of her SATS. Her spelling is still interesting but other wise you wouldn’t know she had such difficulty in the early years of school.