Parents and teachers of dyslexic children out there: how to approach schoolwork for a young child?

[muttleydosomething]

I have a 6yo son. He shows many of the classic dyslexia signs, there is a massive discrepancy between his reading and writing skills and his general IQ as judged by his nursery and school at every level, and there is a family history of dyslexia. Where we live now, 6 is too young to be formally assessed for dyslexia, and my family are against formally assessing him, so I haven't planned for paying for the test yet.

Though he is a very positive and mature boy he cannot help feeling really disheartened by school work (TAs and teachers constantly telling him he is slow with his writing and has to catch up, when he really cannot manage to write any faster, affecting his self confidence) and this has actually caused us to change schools from one which is very pushy - and packed with nice children he's got tons in common with, in our view - to one with no streaming.

The approach we have taken over Y1 has been that, whether or not he turns out to be dyslexic, there is no avoiding the need to be literate. Therefore we make him do quite a lot of extra homework and reading (which other children are doing for pleasure in their own time, but which is an ordeal for him). However, we also let him spend lots of time doing things he enjoys: lots of playing outside with his friends after school, and lego filling up every other space in his life.
Are we doing the right thing? I have no special knowledge about dyslexia, but it seems to me that some websites say phonics gets in the way of their learning to read, while others say you have to push phonics even more with dyslexics. Is there a magic formula that will help him with his literacy and self confidence? I'd love to help him learn in a relaxed way - but two days with no reading practice and we're back to reading half his sentences backwards.

Have a look at using dyslexia reading aids. Sometimes reading through a piece of coloured plastic makes it easier to read.

Wow, streaming at 6 sounds like an awfully hothoused environment. I think you have done the best thing for his self esteem in moving him, even if it's not your first choice environment.

My son attended a specialist dyslexia school. They focus on phonics, and also use lots of variety of learning styles - visual, kinaesthetic. They deliberately do not set homework until the children are much older than this - as the effort and often visual stress involved for the child is exhausting enough from school. Making him do extra risks feeling like a punishment.

Instead read to him, take him to museums, engage him in discussions about the world etc. I am sure you are doing this already, but focusing on supporting his education in a broad sense I think is better than compounding the pressure. I am sure he has lots of talents - making sure he is praised for these will help counter any despondency he feels when struggling with literacy.

With my summer born, not quite neurotypical DS who was still struggling to spell his own name at the end of Y1 we addressed it through home intervention.

Between Y1 and 2 (10 weeks for him) we used Apples and Pears, Nessy and Toe by Toe to build a programme to address his weaknesses. He did about 90 mins a day for those 10 weeks and I can honestly say it changed his experience of school. He went back in on a much more level playing field as he'd come on by about a term and his peers had mostly had 10 weeks doing nothing. It boosted his flagging confidence and that was what he needed to get him going again. The rest of Y2 has been fine, some continued adjustments for spelling but otherwise he's been doing the main class work successfully.

I am a specialist SEN teacher so that helped, but all the programmes we used are totally self-explanatory. DS didn't enjoy the extra work, but he is so much happier at school as a result of having done it.

I honestly wouldn't push him too much. You risk putting him off reading altogether. My son couldn't really read or write until he was end of year 2. We backed off as it was stressing him, so decided just to read to him a lot. We talked about the stories, the pictures and asked him to interpret it that way. He wasn't stressed as we weren't pushing it, but sitting curled up together he picked up loads and he loved reading again. All of a sudden in year 2 he clicked and weirdly once he'd got it he zoomed and became one of the best readers in his class. He is dyslexic, but he's still a really good reader (he's 13 now). I would never have predicted that when he was your son's age. The important thing is just to keep his enthusiasm going. Hard I know!

Wanted to add, but try comic books to get him to read. The pictures tell him the story, but he might read a few words and grow in confidence that way. My son loved Tintin. We read the stories with him first, then he read and re-read them. He picked up so many words and confidence from that.

Also this is worth asking your son - but when he looks at a page of text, what happens? Ask him if the words stay still. Do they move or blur? I had no idea this could happen as our son had 20:20 vision. Eye tests don't test for this though. My son now wears tinted glasses and the words don't move anymore. It's made a huge difference to him. The condition's more common in dyslexics, but anyone can have it.

My dd was diagnosed just before she was 7 privately. The massive difference it made was the teachers got off her case and stopped telling her off for what she didn't do and praised her for what she did which hugely boosted her confidence and almost unlocked her again,. Also rather than putting her down groups they could see hard evidence of how bright she was and supported her to stay in the top groups with work that matched her intrinsic ability.

Oh and visual stress testing made a huge difference her coloured lenses have literally translated books into something she can read !

Just to say thank you to everyone who helped me on this. I didn't get back on this thread straight away because we suddenly had a very stressful week, but I have taken all these suggestions on board, and have ordered a set of coloured rulers to see whether it makes a difference (thanks Tinty, Tralalla and Didi!).

Merlottime, I would love your approach if we weren't in the mainstream system, where his achievement through most of the day is adversely affected by his poor literacy, and where he gets mocked from time to time for not being able to read well by his BF (I know...). Fortunately, we have moved to a school which has a broader artier curriculum, so he can do things that don't require reading or writing, but the school day is so long that it kills off any desire he might have had to go to a museum or gallery (he loved them before Reception). It sounds as though you are doing fabulously by being out of the mainstream.

Tralala, we were almost at that stage before we moved schools, but that had an impact in regaining his trust and encouraging him to get back into schoolwork. It's shown him we are willing to respond to his needs over his education. I absolutely believe in carrying on reading to him without expecting him to read the text, and I am actively looking for cartoon books like Tintin but with larger text and fewer words like coelacanth! (See Captain Haddock...)

Lowdoorinthewal1: I had already landed Nessy on a google search. Your advice has made me decide to get registered with the site for the summer.

Re diagnosis: Didiplanthis, I will keep trying! I also think that just being able to tell him there's a reason behind his difficulties will help massively with his self-confidence, and also help motivate his school to stay on his side. Fortunately I know his class teacher for next year will be highly informed and understanding, and we have been really lucky in that respect.

muttley, if you like Hergé, search for 'Mr Pump's Legacy' & 'Destination New York'. They're different characters, bigger print and simpler story telling. I totally get what you mean on Captain Haddock, but weirdly my DS loved the fact mad complicated words. We read the books to him first, so it didn't matter, then once he was starting to read them himself he adored the big words as they made him feel clever. Bashi-bazouks is still used sometimes in our house!

Hi OP

It sounds like you are a great parent who is really motivated to help your son with the areas where he currently has weaknesses.

Please, please don't get suckered into things like tinted glasses or pieces of colored plastic. These things are not evidence-based and do not help children with reading difficulties. Blurry vision/"jumping-about" words are not the cause of reading difficulties--they are the result of reading difficulties.

www.spelfabet.com.au/2016/10/controversial-dyslexia-therapies/

Is your son seeing a specialist? The most important thing you can do is to get him into some one-on-one tutoring sessions with a tutor who is trained properly in synthetic phonics. Try the Reading Reform Foundation or Phonics International/Phonics Intervention sites to get leads on tutors. A really good tutor will make more progress with him in one hour, than several hours of struggling with him yourself or hiring a tutor who doesn't know what they are doing--and if you can telescope learning into shorter, high-quality sessions, it will free up more time for play and relaxation, which will alleviate stress for all of you.

rrf.org.uk
phonicsintervention.org

You have already done the right thing by moving him from a school that streams at age sixwhat a terrible idea for such small children! Now the summer holidays are coming up, and this is your chance to work on his reading with a really good tutor and "crack" the areas he has difficulty with (most likely, difficulties with breaking down words into sounds and then putting them together again). Your son is not stupidhe needs help with one or two particular areas.

Good luck!

Hi OP your first post could have been written by me 12 years ago (although there is no way I could have got my ds to do extra work at home, it was a massive struggle with the homework he was set by school). We took a mix of merlottime and MarytheCanary's advice. Took a serious step back on trying to get him to read (for example we pretty much stopped with learning spellings or getting him to attempt to read school books) and found a specialist synthetic phonics tutor after getting a private Ed Psych assessment so we knew his difficulties were mainly in processing.

I think it's actually counterproductive to force a child to do work that they can't cope with, more likely to contribute to them losing confidence than to help them keep up as it's not really practice they need but help at a more fundamental level.

It is also worth getting both hearing and sight checked out as dyslexia is a bundle diagnosis and different children have different issues.

For us the tutoring worked wonders, especially as until then he'd been taught using mixed methods and just didn't understand how reading worked at all. Once he picked up that there was a code he could understand he flew with it (and we only had a few sessions over one summer holiday). He's just graduated school in the top ten and is off to a very well regarded university (not in the UK) so while he still works a bit harder to read and has terrible handwriting it's not held him back.

MarytheCanary, with respect, YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG, about tints not helping. (Apologies for shouting, but it makes me furious when people declare such rot).

They don't work for everyone, but for some they make a huge difference. For my son, without his tinted glasses, words move, blur, etc. With the tints they simply don't. He can't see a words on a white board without them. Working out that he needed tints made a genuinely enormous difference to him. He can read because he has them. Think about it, how easy would it be for any of us to read if the words keep bloody moving..!

To explain in a bit more depth, DS's year 3 teacher realised he had a visual problem as he couldn't copy from the white board. We'd had his eyes tested already, but a normal eye test won't pick it up. DS thought words moving/ blurring, etc was what everyone saw, so he hadn't mentioned it until the teacher asked him.

At the clinic they sorted a tint that he found helpful, then got him to read random words against the clock for a minute. With the tint he read 98% with just a couple of mistakes. Without the tints, same words, he read 65 % (can't remember the exact %, but it was around that) and made lots of mistakes, including skipping several whole lines of text. Now obviously I am not a specialist, just a parent with a child who it has made a massive difference to, but surely this is evidence?!