Interestingly my now nineteen year old daughter has a lot to say on this subject.
She left school aged nearly nine after masses of 'active teaching and extra help', completely unable to read or spell -even her own name. Her diagnosis was of severe dyseidetic and dysphonetic dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia. She had no word attack skills at all. None.
When we de registered her, we believed all of the experts who were telling us we had to actively teach her, she had to work extra hard to combat her severe difficulties, and we tried all of the reading schemes and methods available.
This resulted in a hysterically upset child. Reading was an absolute hated chore, she would run away screaming and scared.
Eventually we listened to experienced autonomous home educators and backed off. We stopped actively teaching her, stopped making her trying to sound words out or to try work out the shape etc. Instead we read everything and anything to her, if she asked what something said, we read it out without making a fuss at all. We watched DVDs, TV and talked and talked and talked. She listened to audio tapes of stories that she wanted to hear. Her choice of story completely, not mine.
It's not the same as being able to read to yourself, you are right exoticfruit-but it's a hell of a lot better to encourage a love of novels and stories likes this-than to make reading a hated chore for a severely dyslexic child IMO.
We just allowed her education to run ahead, whilst her reading and spelling caught up in their own time.
She finally began to 'get' reading aged about 13+. She says it was like somebody tripped a switch and suddenly things began to make sense. By 14 she was beginning to use MSN-and that was a Godsend. No fourteen year old wants her mother to be reading what her friends are typing -nor to have to ask me how to spell every word. Her motivation to do it was huge!
By 15 she had begun an OU starter course, which she completed by the age of 16, 'achieving all of the outcomes'. She used this to get into FE college, where she did a Nat BTEC. She has been assessed in college for her dyslexia and is now classed as an 'average' reader-how we danced and cried with joy when we got that result.
She got straight distinctions overall for the course and finished at the top of the class. [hgrin]
She is now doing Level 4 qualifications.
She is an avid reader for pleasure, often not able to get her head out of a book, she blogs on line and has become self employed and is independent and
self confident.
We still know several of the young people that DD left behind in the remedial groups at school-the same cannot be said for them.
At about 16 she went to stay at an older sisters place. Waking early in the morning she put on a DVD quietly. She wasn't paying much attention until she saw the subtitles-and panicked completely because she couldn't read the words. She cried bitterly because she thought she'd lost the ability to read again, overnight-a terrifying prospect for her. She says she could recognise all of the letters but could not make them into recognisable shapes or sounds-exactly how her dyslexia had been for her. The only thing was, this time the words weren't shooting off the line, nor the letters spinning as they apparently used to.
Eventually she calmed down and realised she had hit the wrong language for the subtitles, and went back and started all over, finding 'English' and all was well. She still speaks movingly of her relief.
I completely agree with SDeauchars-even for my severely dyslexic child I:
- facilitated my children learning to read.
- modelled reading to my children.
- demonstrated that reading has purpose.
I did not teach them to read-Dd learned to read in her own time, from the environment, when she was ready.
All of my children intend to facilitate their children in learning to read in this way.