Dyslexic children reading music.

[sunnydelight]

I've held off teaching my dyslexic children the piano as I've always assumed that they would struggle to read music (neither of them could read properly until 10/11). It just occured to me that maybe this is a totally wrong assumption! I would love to try with my 11 year old but don't want to set him up to fail - can anyone share their experience, good or bad? Thanks.

My ds seems very good at music to my surprise, and my brother was specifically given piano lessons to help with his dyslexia, so I would have thought it was worth a try? NB my brother is properly rhythm/tone deaf, but I'm not sure that is related to his dyslexia, and he apparently enjoyed the lessons!

I am dyslexic and did a lot of music when I was a child/teenager. I always found sight reading difficult, but (completely unscientifically) I would say learning to read music might help rather than hinder- the flow of the music might help with the sequencing problems that dyslexics often suffer from.

Give it ago, but be aware that sightreading might be very frustrating. Also, try putting the music in different coloured plastic sleeves. I found it much easier to read it when it was on blue paper/ in a blue sleeve.

No two dyslexic children are alike and dyslexia isn't just about difficulty reading, so I would say go for it, there is no harm in intriducing them to reading music and no reason why they won't be able to.

I would find the contrast of black on white the hard thing to deal with, so agree with thistledew too, put it in a coloured sleeve or print it on coloured paper.

DS started learning the piano when he was 6 and although he could read music ie if you pointed at a note he could name it, he found it difficult and couldn't do it fast enough to play from reading.
However he did learn to play pieces by memory/ear and fooled his teacher into thinking he was reading the music.
I am convinced the years of playing the piano did nothing but good for him.

my dyslexic child can read pretty well. But He struggled with musdic lessons (guitar) at school though because he was much slower than everyone else. He was 9 then, I couldn't asfford the 1-1 lesons for him so regretfully we gave it up before his self-esteem could be damamgaed any further. (the other kids were all way ahead of him and each week he was back to square one)
Having said that, he is now desperate to give it another go - he is trying bass guitar, he is much better now at hand eye coordination thingy (thansk Guiatar hero and has learned a bit of music reading at school.
AND most importantly, he is going to be learing with just one other child, so fingers crossed.

I think it is good to have a go

I would not call my ds dyslexic but he has a particular problem with spellings ( that's another discussion) He started learning piano and violin at the start of Y3. Both teachers are amazed at his progress and he did exams in both instruments within the same year. Got a merit in violin and distinction in piano

He is appalling at sightreading but gets a lot of enjoyment creating beautiful music. I would say go for it. Both the teachers know he has problems with sightreading but music teachers can be quite creative in their teaching methods if you are not too hung up on taking exams. There is the Suzuki method which is great.

Thanks for the replies. They have definitely convinced me to give it a go!