to be upset that my child cant read and nobody cares?

[staydazzling]

had a heartbreaking conversation inthe bath earlier with youngest child 6 yrs old. Ive always known that he has significant reading difficulties and have spent 2 years trying to bring up with the teachers he could benefit from help but i get dismissive replies ranging from he'll get there eventually to hes not the most severe in the class. He was telling me he feels self conscious because he can hardly read at all and is embarrassed to tell anyone, children already whisper when he asks other kids to read a word for him , i empathised and said that must be so frustrating for you. and that people in our family have dyslexia hes not alone. he also gets sounds confuses, another symptom of dyslexia. another complaint he had was they just tell him to sound the word out, but he cant because he gets sounds wrong that broke my heart hes being so badly failed. hes on a low book band at least 5 behind where he should be. i know austerity has desimated our education but, it cannot be right to just abandon a child like that can it? its making me quite teary now, AIBU to be annoyed noone seems to care that my son can barely read?

My child has verbal dsypraxia, I also think he has dsypraxia as well and like you was convinced with out helped he wouldn't be able to read and was dismissed so I took action at home and taught him to split the word so 6 letter word into 3 letters, one lot blue one lot red, and kept doing it at home. In space of 1 year he went from 0/10 spelling saying he's thick an stupid to getting 10/10.lowest he gets is 8/10. That tends to be when there's hidden letters or a word where you say it as he pronounces his letters differently and also struggles with phonics. I'd try this and then you can also go to your doctor and explain your worries they also can help. When schools don't listen. Hope this helps.

Hi OP. I was in the bottom for reading in year 2.

I left school with A in English and I’m a writer now.

If I remember rightly, I spent a lot of time reading at home in the evenings. It wasn’t long before I was reading harder books, and by aged 12 I’d already read 1,000 page novels, including a few Stephen King epics (my dad’s . I’d have a pile on the go and would read a chapter of each at a time).

Don’t lose heart. Do lots of practising at home if you can.

OP can I ask, what input did you put in with him and when? Have you been teaching him to read from very small or have you put in input more recently?

With dyslexia you could put on hours and hours of reading and input each week and
still they cannot read.

I sat down with Ds and we read a first level book.

If he didn’t know a word (in the beginning he didn’t know any words) I listed it on a card. Then at the end I cut up the card and used the words as flash cards.

Going through them all till he recognised all the words. Then the following day going through them again until he knew them

It took 2 years of doing this every single day for him to be able to work out individual words. It took another 3 for him to read confidently

We also did handwriting practice each day.

His writing is still illegible

My DD didn't get on with phonics and still essentially reads by pattern recognition, comprehension rather than understanding how words are put together.

What's strange about this is the way that long words are so much easier for her to read than short. She struggled so much with all the short phonically easy words for years, but once we let her just read older books she became fluent very quickly.

We are still in a situation at 8 yo where she can read a whole book in a few hours, but can't tell the difference between 'saw and 'was' in isolation.

Not sure what to do next tbh!

Reading didn’t click for my DS until year 4.

In year 1 the SENCO started him on a program called reading recovery, he did it for 5 terms (think it’s supposed to be for 20 weeks). He progressed through the levels. It didn’t actually help him at all! The books followed a pattern and DS was able to memorise them very easily - the home to school book was basically full of comments from me saying it wasn’t working and the TA saying it was! DS was tested by a dyslexia specialist at the end of the five terms and was on exactly the same level he started at!

You really need to push for your DS to get help and the right help. Do speak up for him if you feel it’s not working.

We read with DS everyday, he was allocated an amazing 1-1 and she worked hard reading with him everyday. At times it felt like it would never happen and then it all suddenly seemed to click into place. DS is in year 7 now and still struggles but he can read well enough to keep up with his classes.

I haven’t RTFT yet so apologies if anyone has posted this already
Both of mine a dyslexic and DS2 didn’t get the sounds right (had some speech therapy)
This helped
m.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLpffbMNXo

ive done handwriting books, and reading with him since toddler age like i did with his brother. Both me and his older brother are good readers, my eldest was reading Harry Potter at 7, its in the last year that youngest has started to refuse activities and homework refuse, i was in the works over summer and b
tried to pick a book with him there, he became distressed and said there babyish i pointed out books aimed at 10-11 yrs and said look older kids do them too. it was no use the embarrassment triggered a meltdowns so it was unwise to persue that further.

*activity, work book with stickers. in the works i should clarify.

What are you doing to help him, OP? Instead of relying on the school to be the one that teaches him. Did you try teaching him phonics as a toddler? Have you bought phonics flashcards and taught him the alphabet that way? Got him to write the words properly and then phonetically? Did you read to him every night? Have you tried starting from the beginning all over again to see if that helps him? Have you pushed for a referral through your GP for a dyslexia assessment?

For some comfort. My son could not read at all. Then aged 8 he just picked up Alice in Wonderland and read through it in his head. He now has Masters degree and after being headhunted is in database coding. Yes he had dyslexia certificate which gave him extra time in GCSEs. Still has not passed English nor French well....

Write from the start is a brilliant program to help with handwriting.

Andysbestadventure, a GP won’t make a referral for a dyslexia assessment - either school make a referral or parents seek someone privately. It sounds to me you are blaming stay for not doing enough which doesn’t seem to be the case at all and even if it was a child without any difficulties would have learnt to read at school.

With my DC I got them audiobooks to listen to. This was recommended in a talk I went to on reading issues. It allows them to understand how narrative and plot works without the battle of trying to decode. It also means they enjoy the same books as their friends.
www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?categoryId=141710&catalogId=10051

Also check out Barrington Stoke for dyslexia friendly books.
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/

Another recommending Dancing Bears. Start with the “slower” version on book A (you can do the A and B combined or fast track) - even if the initial pages seem “easy” this will build his confidence. I’d do a straight deal - ten mins of dancing beats every night earns 10 mins screen time (or whatever). There’s “Apples and Pears” as well which focuses on spelling for when he’s ready to do a bit more.

My oldest is severely dyslexic and we only discovered dancing bears when he was about 8, but it didn’t help. It was a slow road though and he only reached decent reading fluency at about 12/13. But he can now read reasonably - although he qualifies for a reader and scribe for his GCSEs. If I could go back I would keep positive myself, and focus on all his extracurricular strengths too, because ultimately you need to keep his confidence intact in order for him to keep learning.

If you can afford it, i’d pay for a private Ed psych - it really helped my son, because while it didn’t inspire his school into doing a right lot, him knowing he was not stupid (and he really isn’t, IQ puts him in top 3%) but he effectively had a disability preventing him learning to read easily, really helped.

I hate how dismissive some of the replies to this thread have been - it shows exactly what is wrong with our education system. Labour are talking about bringing state schools into the private sector, but how about they spend those billions making the state sector fit for purpose for the thousands of dyslexic children who are locked out of adequately accessing their education?!

Massive typo in my post - it DID help!

Second massive error 🤦🏻‍♀️ *bringing private schools into the state sector...

And for all the people suggesting this is somehow OPs fault - we did ALL the things people are suggesting (and carried on reading to him for an hour a night time until he was a teenager). Dyslexia is probably caused by a lack of elasticity in parts of the brain required for reading - it is NOT caused by poor parenting.

Gingerbread ...noone is saying dyslexia is caused by poor parenting. Until the last couple of posts on the thread it was hard to establish just what the op had or hadn't done to help him. It wasnt clear to me whether she had done anything early days to help him learn to read. She then said she had read to him, so another person asked if she had done flash cards, phonics etc . I dont think he has been diagnosed with dyslexia yet?

Have you read the post by Andysbestadventure TabbyMumz ?

Yes I have gingerbread. That person is asking the op questions, because it is not clear what the op's intervention has been. It also asks her if she has asked for a dyslexia assessment . It does not say the child has dyslexia or that dyslexia is caused by bad parenting. Read it again Gingerbread.

what are you doing to help him OP...instead of relying on school...

God forbid our education system should be adequate to educate our children without relying on parents (who are not trained) to do all the work of teaching a child who is struggling to read. What about all the children who have parents who can’t help them (maybe severe dyslexia themselves?) is it just tough luck?

A child who is year 2 and cannot read needs additional help with that, diagnosis or no diagnosis.

OP, I sympathise this was one of mine.
I gave up in the end, nobody interested and no money for support.
We did it ourselves in the end, very tiring and time consuming every evening, sometimes straight from school until bedtime, with a break for tea.
I bought all the books and went to college to do a support course.
We got there in the end.
There was no choice, it was do it ourselves or dc not learn to read.

My point being Tabby that yes, there are things she can and should do to help her child to learn to read. But is is she unreasonable to be upset that no one gives a crap?! No, she should be upset, we should all be upset!