I'm dyslexic and so is DH - I wasn't dx till I was in Uni and he wasn't till he was 26. There are some things that still fill both of us with absoulte gut churning dread and I've learnt many coping strategies - but it doesn't stop the baseline fear and hatred of certain types of problem, exercise or task, more than likley they are the ones that seem silly to everyone else. I had a full on toddler tantrum over a game called boggle when I was about 14, you shake up the 'dice' and they all have letters on - then you make as many words as you can out of the letters. My mum thought it was a fun way to help me with my spelling. I just saw horror, nightmares, my stupidilty being unveilled for all the world to see - and just couldn't explain how it made me feel, I refused to play and i think it may still be in the bottom of her wardrobe now. I knew there were words there but I couldn't find them, just panic and fear and your brain locks, you can't get away. Not my finest moment - and my mum still doesn't get why I was so upset - but trust me, it's a horrible, horrible position to be put in - but we didn't know I was dyslexic at the time.
Imagine everyone else finds quantum physics easy - the calculations are a part of everyday life and it's just you who stares at the algebra and it moves - nevermind being abel to read the damn thing - you can't even keep it all in a line in your head, it actually shifts around the page. Your hand tries to copy it out but your fingers won't obey properly, maybe you play guitar or piano, maybe you can draw the best landscape in your class, but this - you may as well be holding a giant jelly pen with a nib that works like a broken pencil tip.
Everyone else has already done the first three calculations - you are stupid, your hand is stupid and you know you are very stupid becasue you understand the whole thing you just can't actually do it, utterly worthless and everyone is going to know it soon. What is the point.
No one wants to relive that, no one wants to feel like that, dyslexic children don't want to have to find it so hard. I'm sure each of your children will have something they can do, I've yet to meet a dyslexic who isn't very good at something, DH is amazing on guitar - can't read a note of music, BIL can fix any problem on any bike, I'm good at patterns - music, knitting, chemical equations and bonds during my GCSE's were like little visual puzzels that just fit together in my head. Got a flat pack? You want us lot on the job, usually don't need the instructions and we don't have bits left over at the end :P
Reading and writing is one of the most basic nessessites in out culture, it's understandable that we need to have those skills. It just takes a little longer and requires a lot more hard work, especially with the attention difficulties. I used to day dream out of the window at school - I ended up with 1 on 1 teaching in my year 4 class to bring me up to the level I should have been at. Once I could understand what was going on (like being abel to read the blackboard helped) I stopped day dreaming becasue I could grasp where everyone else was.
Working memory is often a problem too - if you can't grasp what it was you were thinking about halfway through the problem you forget what you were doing and off you wander. That bit is just lots of prompting I'm afraid - and lots and lots of writing everything down. I have had to learn if I am going to do something it has to be done NOW!!! or I just forget. So if I come in with a pint of milk in my hand and need the loo, the milk must go in the fridge first or I will simply not remember there was any milk by the time I've flushed the toilet.
I'm sorry this is so long - but dyslexia often effects so much more than just reading and writing - and working on those areas is what helps the reading and writing come along too. Like a holistic approach I suppose.
Is there any way of teaching your LO's using things they are interested in? One of the ways I learnt to read and do maths was baking, I also used to be given directions when we went somewhere in the car. I had to follow where we were going and look out for signs or street names. Dh was obsessed with wildlife, so his mum bought huge great books on animals and he just used to sit with them and work out what was written and occasionally asked for words. Neither of us finished our school reading books because they were too boring - it takes so long to learn that you end up too far ahead intellecutally to be interested in jack going up a hill - even if you can't read it. Everyone has a different style of learning and it really helps to know how you learn (this is some of the stuff from the coping strategies at Uni). I'm a kinetic learner - which means I learn by doing, if I can't realate it to something grounded in the physical then I tend to loose the information even if I've understood it. Most of the dyslexics I know learn like this - though that may be a coincidence.
I hope this isn't too patronising or irrlevant - you do not want to know how long it took me but I have morning sickness and it was a good distraction :)