Great Reader - v. poor speller - Dyslexic??

[berries]

I am hoping for some advice about my dd1, who will be 8 soon (yr 3). She reads very well (ahead of age group) but is very poor on her spelling. She still reverses 'b' and 'd' regularly (she has a little way of remembering & I can still see her do it every time she has to write one or the other), she is very clumsy (always has been), and slow to pick up certain things - cycling, buttons, tieing shoe-laces etc. Some things she does 'backwards' (like doing up her laces). My 'gut' feeling is that she has steadily 'slipped down' the class since she has started school. She has always had an excellent memory, and this has helped her reading. Her teacher accepts that her spelling and writing is not as you would expect given her reading ability, but suggests she's possibly just a slow starter in that area. We currently spend 30 - 45 minutes learning her spellings every Sunday, and then 10 minutes 'revising' them during the week (per night) for a test on Friday, but she still gets 2 - 3 wrong every week, and it's often because she has all the right letters in the wrong order. My problem is that I don't know whether to get her assessed for dyslexia or not. I'm not sure whether they would even do it, given her reading ability and the fact that she is keeping up at school. Would it help if I did get her assessed and they said she was mildly dyslexic? Or should I just continue as I am, giving extra help and not making an issue of it. She doesn't seem to think anything is wrong, other than that she is v. bad at sport, but she now goes riding and is doing v. well so that has helped that issue.
Sorry this is long, but I have been thinking about it for some time.
TIA

Sounds more like dyspraxia to me.

have a look here or search the web for dyspraxia or Madelaine Portwood.

If she was assessed and found to have dyspraxia then depending on the degree she could have help. You may also be able to get input from an OT with a diagnosis. I say may ebcause in some areas paediatric OT's for all intents and purposes do not exist. Have a dyspraxia search on the web and see what you think.

Also worth considering fish oils - there's a thread going on at the moment about them in special needs.

Hi Berries, someone in my family is very dyslexic and I'm sure there is an association (can't think of the name bu I'll try and find out) that should be able to help you.

I think there are some simple tests that can be done so it might be worth asking.

Thanks for that, ladies. I had a look at that link, Jimjams, and I think you may be right. There was a comment on there about sitting on a chair, the number of times dd has been sitting at the table at mealtimes & next minute is sprawled on the floor is uncountable. She also hates having to do more than 1 thing at once, eg, she won't let me brush her hair while she is putting on her socks. My problem is that if she has a problem, it is (at the moment) mild. She is coping and she doesn't think she has any problems, even though she knows she is clumsy, and she can't write as much as her friends. Would a diagnosis make any difference? If it wouldn't, I'm tempted to leave it, and just build up her esteem and skills in the things she is good at and ignore the rest. Is there anyone else who has gone through this route & could tell me whether the problems get worse as they progress at school?

ds1 is dyspraxic (amongst other things). In his case though his fine motor dyspraxia is pretty severe so I think he may well need laptops and stuff later on at school. (He also can't so two things at once- he couldn't walk and carry something- even something like one sweet- until a year ago- when he was three and a half).

if I was you I would buy or borrow from the library Madelaine Portwood's book developmental dyspraxia. it is very good. You could also buy some brain gym books and have a browse at exercises, or if you can maybe pay for one session with a private OT to get exercises. Exercises do help. If it isn't a problem for her atm then I wouldn't worry too much about an official diagnosis, but you wouldn't need that to access a private OT and it might help prevent future problems arising iyswim.

We have an OT's appointment on Wednesday (that made me fall off my chair) so I'll let you know what advice she gives. I'm hoping she'll provide a programme for the school to do.

Berries - no experience of dyslexia or dyspraxia, so can't help you there ... just wondered if a "spelling trick" ds was taught at school would help your dd at all. Basically they learn the "shape" of the word - so "lean" and "beam" have the same shape, as do dog and boy - as well as doing whatever you do with spellings, you can cut out coloured shapes of each word. Then if she writes a word, but gets the letters in the wrong order, then this mental memory might trigger to realise that it's wrong.

HTH

THanks everyone. Had a long talk with Dh last night. He thinks she is just not trying hard enough & needs to put more effort in, hadn't really thought there may be anything else wrong. It wasn't until I pointed out all the things she was doing were actually symptoms of either dyslexia/dyspraxia that he accepted I wasn't just paranoid (& I'm not sure I'm not iyswim) Anyway, after a long discussion we have decided to work specifically on general spelling, and also balance (brain gym?) without going for tests just yet. If we don't see an improvement in 6 months, we will probably take it further.
Have looked on the internet & noticed a book 'stareway to spelling' which is part of a run of books (toe to toe) for dyslexics. Anyone had any experience of this?
Also thanks for that tip kmg. I will remember that and use it when we do our spelling revision tonight.
It doesn't help that we have 7 or 8 words which have 'rules' followed by 2 or 3 which are just remembering (because was one she got wrong, e,a,u all mixed up)

My brother has Dyslexia and he was also able to "read" brilliantly, until my mum discovered that he had a fanastic memory and had learnt the books by heart , he struggled with proper reading, writing, spelling etc. He had 1-2-1 help at school, and in secondary school he used a laptop and a dicaphone to help in class. He still struggles with words but is so much better. He doesn't blame everything on his dyslexia, unlike DH who has it mildly. I believe that I have a very very mild form of dyslexia, and so do my sisters.
Hope your daughter gets the help she needs, the teachers are more aware of dyslexia now

Berries
yes, she's dyslexic. Her general intelligence level is probably much higher than you think, which is why she is coping with reading but struggling with spelling - she is working really hard to do as well as she is but spelling is a huge problem for her.
My ds1 also has a fantastic memory for facts and speech, and could read pretty well (though he was slow to learn) but could not spell at all, inverted letters etc - everything your dd does. When we eventually took him to the Dyslexia Institute aged 10 (January) they found he had an IQ of 136 (top 5%), and that his intelligence was pulling up his performance on everything except spelling so that he appeared just below normal at school.
The boost to his self confidence when we told him that he was very intelligent but with a specific learning difficulty was enormous. He still can't spell but got level 5s in English and science SATS (with 15 minutes extra time for dyslexia) and a 4 for maths (refused the extra time, silly boy, and didn't try one of the questions. He's just started secondary school: all his teachers know he is dyslexic and so far he has been doing so well that I am incredibly proud of him.

We got extra spelling tuition from school, with homework 5 nights a week - didn't make any difference. We did think about continuing down this route with a specialist teacher, but in the end we decided to go down the DDAT route (cerebellar development), as I couldn't see that more work on spellings was going to help. He's an intelligent boy: if he could have done it, he would have done it.
We have been doing the DDAT exercises since April, twice a day for about 8 minutes. Some improvement in the spelling,although not great, but they do say that spelling is the last thing to be affected. In general I would say he is a lot more confident than he used to be, a lot more organised and a lot happier. He was picked for the local authority's gifted and talented programme this summer - which again boosted his self-esteem.
I just wish I had intervened earlier. Like your dd, he was obviously bright in the infants, and slipped down the class ladder in early juniors when written work was so much more important. He was very unhappy in juniors until the mismatch between his intelligence and his performance was picked up at the beginning of year 6 by his excellent year 6 teacher. For a long time we just thought he was lazy, but in fact he was trying as hard as he could.

ks tell me more. Some of the SN home edders I've been in contact with recomended toe to toe. I've always had it stored away as a maybe if needed.

dorry ks that sounds a bit bossy- I'm typing with ds2 asleep on me but am interested to know more....

Thanks again for all your messages. It's good to hear from others about kids who are v good readers but poor spellers. I think that it was it causing us problems. In Sats in May (KS1) She got 3 for reading, 2a for maths & science and 2b for writing, which is actually at the level she should be at, but doesn't tally with the reading performance. Copper, you mentioned your son 'slipped down' the class as he went up the school, and this is what is happening with my dd, but it seems a bit 'pushy' to say that we are not happy with the results iyswim.
After deciding to leave it for 6 months, I think I changed my mind last night when reading. She read 'cautiously' right without even thinking about it (so it must have been memorised) but spent 5 minutes trying to work out 'burdened' as she kept getting 'burneded', but she could read each syllable if I covered up the rest of the word.
BTW she also spells her sisters name wrong even now (transposes the a & e in the middle)
KS, thanks for the tip about the toe to toe, will see if I can get a copy of the spelling book from the library but won;t bother buying it unless I can see it first.