optician recommended dyslexia testing for my son

[fatcatsmaw]

My six year old son went for an eye test and was prescribed glasses.
The optician said he was showing signs of dyslexia and should be tested.
He has coeliac disease and was a bit under the weather that day.
I had hoped to discuss the possible link with his consultant but the appointment has been put back 5 months. The school is reluctant to put him forward for tests as he is not falling behind and they say he is too young to be tested. Should I be more pushy?

I wouldn't have expected an optician to be in any position to make any assessment of possible dyslexia.

Did s/he say what exactly had given rise to the concerns?

Yes, he was mistaking letters for other letters eg. F for A with the corrective lenses.

I'm dyslexic and I do this at the opticians...F's and E's for example there isn't a hope in hell of me distinguishing...I have to explain otherwise they think I need stronger glasses than I do. There might be other reasons he does it that your consultant would know about, but dyslexia is definitely one possible reason.

Is your son very bright? Very bright dyslexics are good at coming up with coping mechanisms to disguise their difficulty with letters etc. Eg I would guess words easily when reading even if I couldn't read them. This was not something my teacher had picked up on and so I didn't get tested till I was 9.

perhaps the optician noticed your dc muddling up where on the screen to start reading off the letters. eg not starting at the top left and reading towards the right or perhaps muddling the d and b, p and q. Both these however are traits and not definitive symptoms

Would agree that an optician would not normally be the person who would be in a position to offer any sort of assessment although presumably that is where you go for irlen lenses.

iirc any signs of dyslexia are very difficult to pick up before 6 or 7. I would not push school at this stage but instead monitor at home and perhaps use some specific strategies when doing homework tasks and see if they enhance the quality of the work done

Armadale, yes my son is very bright, he taught himself to read before he started school. I have noticed that he reads word shapes and will guess the whole word without breaking it down. This works well for him as he has a good vocabulary. However he struggles to build words because he doesn't give the vowels and sounds any importance. His written work can appear like text speak. He also has no memory for spellings and will write familiar words in different ways. Capital letters are where he struggles most as the word shapes no longer apply.
Eatyourveg, the optician is dyslexic so maybe recognised traits. I have been trying to help him with skipping lines, and pages when reading, or making up words that aren't there, but I don't really know how to help him with his sounds, he can't seem to grasp the rules.

I have 2 dyslexic dc and from your last post I would say have him tested. One of my dc was diagnosed at 6, got really intensive help and has made great progress at school. The other wasn't diagnosed until 9 and is really struggling. A good educational psychologist will be able to test him at 6.

Fatcatsmaw, that all sounds very familiar, I'm afraid.... bright dyslexics use verbal memory and vocabulary to compensate in this way- it is a lot harder to guess a word from the context than simply to read it, but if you struggle to read then you learn to do it so it doesn't hold your reading back.

Capital letters throw things because if you are memorising the shape of the word it doesn't look like the same word with a capital- Again this is a much harder task (memorising the shape of every word) than just sounding the letters out, unless of course that is something that you can't do....

As to the spelling, building words and written work as text speak, that would all be things noticeable in my work at this age.

This is a bit controversial to say, and I don't mean to offend anyone, but in my honest experience a lot of teachers struggle to pick up on dyslexia in very bright children simply because they aren't behind in the way a teacher would expect- they are taught a model of dyslexia to look out for that includes the child missing targets and visibly struggling, which is not always the case.

I would take him to be tested, if it was me. It might be he needs a bit of directed teaching with understanding of what he can/can not perceive.

This is all really useful feedback, I think I was kind of hoping it would resolve itself but I think I have to get him tested. I am very wary of asking the school to do any thing for him as they have been less than cooperative in the past. The assistant head teacher gave him a roasting for not being able to finish his work in a noisy classroom, and my complaint was met with a denial of events, even though many other mums said their child had been upset by the "scary teacher"(not their class teacher) too.

This is very similar to my DD's form of dyslexia. Intervention from a specialist tutor after Ed Psych from age 6 and special lenses from the behavioural optometrist made a huge difference. Your DS may not be struggling now but when he comes up against words that are not in his vocab, his compensations may not work. Have a look at your DS- Is he ambidextrous? Doesn't understand left and right? Is a non-linear thinker?There are no limits to what dyslexics can do with the right help and all the stuff that makes learning a bit more challenging will advantage him later. Thank your optometrist profusely!

My DD1 is dyslexic and optician's naming of single capitals throws her (and her eyesight passes every time). She goes every two years because DD2 and I are both short sighted.

Even at 15 she has to warn them that if she's slow or makes daft errors it's not because she can't see.

She was really obviously dyslexic at 6, but it took to March Y6 for school, panicking about SATs, to act.

By then I'd booked a private Ed psy to have a massive go at the senior school.

I've never needed too, they are massively better.

So, yes get your DS tested and sadly it will cost, but don't expect school to be much use. If your DS can read you'll have an uphill battle, DD1 couldn't (actually didn't really learn until Christmas of Y6). Yet school assumed because she is very bright and her comprehension is amazing that her difficulties would disappear in a puff of smoke.

Of course they haven't and she is still struggling to get a sodding B for English GCSE for her chosen 6th form.

6 is young to test but my DD2 had intensive intervention in Year 2 to address her weaknesses in letter formation, spelling and reading. The intervention to address her weaknesses would have been the same even if the underlying problem was not dyslexia. She says she uses the tools she was taught then every single day at school. It was so effective that subsequent schools refused to believe she was dyslexic (and dyspraxic) in spite of a diagnosis, and all the classic manifestations.

Your son sounds like my DD1 who though she has working memory and processing problems has a photographic memory and learnt to read very quickly using look /see. As others have said whilst Specific Learning Difficulties present in diverse ways, teachers tend to focus on the traditional perceptions of dyslexia. I am not in the least worried about offending because the level of training that teachers get on SpLDs is, unless they are at a switched on school, inadequate. There may be a oerception of a link between pushy parents and a diagnosis of SpLDs but that is because you really do have to be pushy, hopefully in a tactful way, on your DCs behalf if you are going to ensure they are enabled to meet their potential.

I will speak to the school to see if they are willing to do anything at all to help him, but it is good to know there are other options even if they are expensive. I am glad I posted now, I have been worrying about/ignoring the situation for a while. It was good to talk.

my Yr1 DD shows a lot of signs of dyslexia but can read chapter books. She is quite good with blending now as we have done a lot of work on it but she definitely has Irlen syndrome. I am struggling to get school to take me seriously about it because she is doing so well but she is very bright and she is compensating for her problems. Looking back I honestly believe I did the same. I looked into getting an Ed Psych to test her privately but apparently we don't have any near us who will work with children her age so will have to leave it a bit.

I am working on the principle at the moment though that whether she is or she isn't she needs to learn to cope with it so we are just working hard to come up with things that help her.

I have to admit I have never heard of Irlen syndrome but I just looked it up and would say all of these things applied to my son before he got his glasses and less so now. I feel like I just don't know what to do to help him, perhaps if I could pinpoint exactly what his problems were then I could begin to address them. I suppose that means he needs to be tested.

School did some tests with him and he has no problems although they didn't test for coloured overlays as he is too young. They have given him a piece of card to help keep his place. Happy ending?