Dyslexia ?

[Alyssa80]

Hi all,

My 6 year old is in year 2. She's having a hard time learning to read and do basic math; for the first 2 months, she seemed in sink with her classmates. Learning to read simple syllables, working with numbers up to 10 ( adding, ranking, completing collections etc...)

Now they're moving to small sentences and numbers up to 20 and she struggles a lot.
Ex: Daddy has nice trousers.
She will be fine reading "Daddy has", then read "nice" slower then expected but she'll say "ter-s-our-s" or something like that.
She just can't read double consonants and every new word is a struggle.

Also, she has a very hard time counting to 20. She always skips 16, like every single time. I noticed that last year when she was in first year but thought it was just a matter of time and "training".
So we kept working on it, playing games etc...
Nothing seems to work. I can correct her 10 times in a row but she'll start over and skip 16 again.
Worst of all, she can't recognize these numbers. She recognizes them up to 12. Beyond that, all hell breaks loose... She'll see 14 and say 24 or 34.
I'm trying to help her at home but progresses are dismal. We can work on reading or numbers for 45mn, she seems to finally get it but the next day, we're back to square one.
She has an appointment with a speech therapist in a few days. She seems to tick quite a few boxes on the dyslexia/dyscalculia check list.

Can anyone relate and tell me how they dealt with this ?

Your DD sounds so similar to my DD who is 7 and now Y3. We suspected dyslexia for quite a while though initially didn't trust my intuition and told myself that 'all children are different & she will catch up'. We did 2 x dyslexia screening assessments and both came back with a high probability of dyslexia and in those moments I felt it confirmed what we already knew.
To be totally honest, we are 4 months from her screening tests and I still feel like I don't have a clue but I have learnt to be a lot more patient with her. We do lots of reading - simple things like reading signs when we go out and finding numbers. We have downloaded lots of resources from twinkl & on many occasions refer back to EYFS or Y1 work and go from there. She is struggling a lot at school at the moment & I feel I am having to really fight for her but lots of support elsewhere which you will most certainly need. Hope that helps a little. Feel free to reach out if you need a chat. Take care. x

Hi MamaBee23 and Alyssa80,
Well done for taking advantage of lots of opportunities to read with your children. When you read at home try to keep it informal and fun, choose books with lots of pictures and talk about the pictures trying to predict what the story is about. Read the title and excerpt and discuss what you already know about the subject. When you do start to read you can take turns reading a page each or a few sentences each. Alternatively, you can ask your child to read while you read alongside him (in a lower voice), helping him along if he gets stuck. Identify one key/tricky spelling pattern or sound in the book (I.e. all words with -ck spelling), talk about the position of the spelling in the word and try to think of other words that have that spelling.
A dyslexia diagnostic assessment is recommended from the age of 8 and it can help you and your child understand why he is having difficulty with some things at school. The aim of the assessment is to present a profile of strengths and challenges to help your child understand how he learns best and recommend specific strategies for school and home support. However, a diagnostic report is not necessary for the school to put support in place. Talk to your class teacher and the school sendco about the support they provide and how your child has responded to the support.
I hope this helps. I am a dyslexia specialist and happy to give free advice, if you need more information send me a private message. Good luck!

What things can school put in place? My DS is diagnosed now ( age 9) and is struggling at school. He has one to one once a week but it's not enough. I want to ask for a laptop as he struggles to write all his ideas down - he writes slowly and can't spell so it's tricky to decipher). He can't type yet though either so not sure what other technology may work. We are starting to teach him to type but every lesson he is falling behind because he can't finish the work in the time.