Anyone living in Germany with a dyslexic child?

[ilovespinach]

Hi,

We are living in Germany ( in BW). I strongly suspect that my 9 yo ds is dyslexic. The school just talk about practising etcbut this is not helping. I'd be interested to hear what your experiences with a dyslexic child are in the German school system.

How exactly do we get a diagnosis - is this via school or a Legasthenia centre (there is one just down the road!)? More importantly, what exactly does a diagnosis bring here? FWIW he is already in a Sonderschule for kids with language problems.

Thanks

Hi ilovespinach. I have a dyslexic dd now going in to year 11 gymnasium. She was diagnosed in year 5 or 6 can't quite remember but we had similar to you in that the teacher just gave us dictations to do over and over again at home.

We got our diagnosis from a child psychologist. Took almost 3 months to get an appointment but that was on AOK health insurance, maybe private would be quicker, but they then did a series of tests over 3 weeks then wrote up an official diagnosis that we payed around 30€ for. Once you have that the school should become active in helping your son and also implement the 'Nachteilsausgleich' meaning that his written work shouldn't be marked down because of his spelling mistakes. dd had extra time in exams too and I think she was allowed a dictionary in German to use in that extra time.

I am in Germany too and find that provision for reading problems / dyslexia is quite lacking. There doesn't seem to be any learning support in our school. Kids with real difficulties get bundled off to the Sonderschule which seems to be a catch all for learning difficulties and behavioural issues.

Yesterday I heard about a Year 1 boy being diagnosed with dyslexia and he will move to another class after the holidays because his current teacher 'doesn't deal with dylexia because she has never had a pupil with it before'. . I find this approach quite baffling and also quite German.

Thanks for the replies. Sadly this is what I feared.

My dd's school also didn't want anything to do with dyslexia and even said we don't want pupils to lean back and not try harder if we give them the Ausgleich!

We had to convince them with the help of the psychologist and the therapist that dd was not lazy. We got the school to agree in the end (extra time in exams and not being marked down for spelling mistakes) but the actual help for the problem takes place out of school.

We had to apply to the Jugendamt with the statement from the psychologist and they agreed on a certain number of therapy lessons (Lese-Rechtschreib Therapie) that they would pay for then we were given a list of places in our region and we had to arrange the therapy ourselves.

The therapy really helped dd alot, her spelling improved and she felt alot happier in school because of it.