Do people with dyslexia get phonics?

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My DH has dyslexia, as well as his sisters and I suspect a lot of his extended family.
He doesn't get phonics at all and his spelling is appaling. He is an avid reader though and has an amazing general knowledge and an amazing memory.

Our DD (5) is reading, but her progress is not as fast as I would have expected her to. She absolutely gets phonics, knows all the digraphs and trigraphs and this is the way she learned to read. I'm always looking for signs of dyslexia and apart from her slow progress with reading she shows none. I'm more concerned about her eyes as she rubs them all the time when trying to read.

I've heard that generally people with dyslexia don't get phonics and they learn to read by memorising whole words and that's certainly true in DH's family. I know dyslexia is a spectrum and affects people in different ways, but can a person with dyslexia understand and learn to read through phonics?

DS is dyslexic, no issues with reading but it was described to me that we “see” a word in our head to write it down, but he doesn’t see it. He has to sound everything out to write it

My DS is like your DH , couldn’t do phonics but when he was assessed they said there are different types , auditory & visual - with phonics being auditory processing related .

can you have your daughter assessed ? We had to have private assessments but they are £500.

It just varies a lot. I'm dyslexic and when I was a child, 'look and say' was the fashion (ie., learning whole words by sight recognition). I just couldn't do it. My mum had to teach me using phonics, at home. Same with my dyslexic brother.

I agree with you that her rubbing her eyes sounds a bit more of a worry - is her sight ok?

Have you had her eyes tested?

My dd did not (diagnosed at 6) at that point we realised my elder dd (excellent reader and spelling) and myself (also good speller) do not use phonics, elder dd learned like me, from having a near photographic memory. It's hard to explain unless it's you!

My dad has dyslexia as does one of my brothers but my mum has the memory skills. My dd2 didn't get the memory gene if that's a thing

My moderately dyslexic daughter couldn't make sense of phonics, but learnt to read fluently at a relatively young age through word recognition and prediction based on context. I am dyslexic and was apparently the same, but phonics were less of a thing then. I was slow to learn to read and kept back a year at school but ended up reading English at Oxford (I sound like an arrogant twat saying that, but I am trying to make a point so forgive me) so it doesn't necessarily need to be limiting. Many different types of dyslexia out there tho. For some people (my daughter included) it seems to come with lots of strengths as well, such as high creativity, problem solving and emotional intelligence.

Ime as a y1 teacher, some children with dyslexic traits do seem to find phonics harder. But for others, it works really well for them. So it’s hard to generalise.

www.dyslexics.org.uk/dyslexia-myths-and-facts/

I’m dyslexic and don’t get phonics - I think I read like gogohmm explained upthread.

Luckily I read early (before school) and phonics wasn’t such a thing then.

I do wonder how children like me are handled at school these days - fluent reader but couldn’t pass a phonics test to save my life - would I have to try anyway?

For the 1000's time, English isn't a phonological language!!!
So, like everything else, "English Style" phonics are helpful for some pupils and difficult for others. I wouldn't put difficulty with phonics exclusively down to dyslexia.

Are you referring to an optometry or dyslexia assessment? Can they assess her at at age of 5? She's only in Reception.

My DD was in the first cohort to have the national phonics screening in year 1, she couldn’t do it to save her life, she was diagnosed as dyslexic a few years later.

Phonics can be the devils work for those who are dyslexic.

Daughter has severe dyslexia and can spell better than I and she was an early reader. She had no issues with phonics and reading at that stage

How it affects a child varies and it tends to be a processing, ordering issue. What goes on in the head may be difficult to get down on paper in the right order or to do simple tasks like washing up/tidying up in a logical way.
For my daughter, it was how to approach and plan a task in a logical way.
She would do the easiest task first as she was overwhelmed with the order of the task. This often meant when she got to the main part of the task all the smaller bits didn't fit and had to be redone. It had nothing to do with intelligence but we spent a long time learning the logical approach to simple tasks.

I think most people posting on here are aware that English is not a (totally) phonological language.

No

I was hyperlexic and learned to read by sight. I strangely got a dyslexia diagnosis in my teens which I still feel is wrong but I fit all the other criteria for dyslexia so probably is right

Anyway. I can't do phonics for love nor money. I had to hand over the reading work to other people when my children were little.

Dyslexic DS passed the phonics test and was a good reader. His spelling was
appalling. He struggled at maths.

He wasn’t diagnosed until Yr 4 as I assumed all dyslexic children struggled with reading but that’s not true. He has a poor working memory hence maths being a struggle.

My late diagnosed dyslexic DD learned to read with phonics. We did no guessing from context or start letter and really pushed sounding out.

DS has diagnoses of auditory and visual processing disorders, not dyslexia. He cannot do phonics as by the time he has worked out where he is in the sounds of the word, he’s forgotten what the rest of the word sounded like.

I'm dyslexia among other things - and my issues do vary even between me and my DC.

I was never taught phonics and I really think I'd have manged better if I had been even though I do struggle to hear sounds in word.

DS learnt phonics sounds - which like may things took way more practise than other children - but couldn't blend especially triple phonic letters.

We went with dancing bears - with their then lowest - Bear Necessities Book A1 10 minutes a day usually morning with DS - the tip they had that seemed to make a big difference was to shout out the blended sounds.

The cards sounds also helped because the practise help all our children get instant recognition of the phonics sounds.

It didn't help their first primary insisted they were doing phonics but were actually doing mixed methods - which meant DD1 was like me struggling and relying on half worked out system and memory.

Spelling was another issue - it was all emergent and spelling list and tests -actually Ds is probably best but DD1 and DD2 are probably better than they would have been due to sound foundations and some other spelling programs we ran though at home.

So I'd suggest some phonic support at home with more practise than available than at school - www.teachyourmonster.org/ and reading chest might also help with that.

If that doesn't help and even if it does I'd make sure you keep talking to the school and asking for her to be tested for dyslexia. Though at 5 she may just improve with age anyway.

All languages are phonological. I suspect what the pp means is that English is complex and one sound can be spelt many different ways. But that doesn’t mean it’s phonologically opaque - the alphabetic code needs to be explicitly taught.

How could it not be phonological?

My dd wasn't diagnosed until later in primary school, but she never really got phonics. She learnt to read fairly easily but by memorising the words as whole words. The problems came with spelling or the phonics tests.

Very common misconception from untrained people. Unfortunately, that often includes some primary school teachers.....

I'm dyslexic and can't do phonics at all. I can't remember how I learnt ti read all those years ago, I've always loved reading though