We think my 9 year old ds has dyslexia

[LT76]

we are really concerned about our ds. he is going into year 5 this year and following contact with the school at the end of the last term as we had concerns regarding how he has coped that year. We have been having private tuition during the holidays to help prepare him for this term. The feedback from the teacher helping him is that he is a clever child but struggles to convey his thought to writting and feels that he has dyslexia. we already feel let down by the school who have never recognised any problems until we spoke to them. does anyone know where we go from here i just want the best for my ds.

We also pay for our own interventions just not for the SEN teacher

Some LEA's don't provide any SEN teaching any more and schools either pay for an intervention from their own budget or provide it themselves by training up a member of staff. I suppose that way if you're not happy with what you're getting you can change it.

Fortunately our full time staff are willing and able to meet the needs of all our pupils.

And pupils on the SEN register round here were certainly able to access input via the 1-to-1 tuition scheme. Intially they were excluded (when the scheme first launched) but my understanding is that then the criteria were relaxed?

GloriaVanderbilt

Dyslexia is a man made problem a social construct, dyslexia is about have a cognitive deficit that causes problems with the decoding and recoding the visual notation of speech, or the graphic symbols society chooses to represent the sound of speech.
Children for the most part have Developmental Dyslexia, which has a genetic origin, and is language dependent. There are currently three cognitive subtypes of developmental dyslexia: auditory, visual, and attentional. which really means that a subjective diagnosis of dyslexia is a screen process for one of the underlying cognitive deficits / disorders which are clinically diagnosed, as the cause of the dyslexic symptom.
An Educational Psychologist is not qualified to assess or diagnose any of the underlying cognitive causes of the dyslexic symptom, for this you will need an Audiologist, Optometrist, or Psychiatrist. There will be a role for a Psychologist as some stage when assessing the effects of living with one or more of these disabilities. My online PubMed Dyslexia research paper collections are listed by related topic, by year of publication, and my favourite leading researchers. You might find the Dyslexia and: attention, auditory processing, visual processing and working memory research paper collections of some interest. The "Dyslexia : Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia" collection really shows how far behind we are in the UK regarding these issues.

I really like your site Indigo.

thankyou Dolfrog but I'm really not sure what I'm meant to do with this information.

Even if I understand ds better how can I get, or give him the help he needs?

I know he has trouble processing instructions and auditory information. I can see he has trouble writing. I know he can't understand time.

but what do I do about it?

cornsylk - thanks.

Gloria if you want more practical advice than Dolfrog's research collection, you can look at my site -

www.dyslexiaadvice.co.uk/

Everything on that site is practical stuff that I've tried with at least one of my 3 kids.

What I haven't done is paid for an EP report, or paid for tutoring. What I have never done is asked school to make allowances for her. I've fought school to stop them giving her a scribe.

I'm well on the way to curing my DDs severe dyslexia. Over half way there. And her problems were / are really bad.

The thing which happened to be the most useful for DDs problems was Auditory Integration Training

I think the reason DD was severe was because she had all of the problems I listed on my site. I think kids with 'mild dyslexia' probably just have one or two of the problems that DD has/had.

Be proactive. Don't expect school to solve your DSs problems. Solve them yourself. School can't correct underlying physical problems, only you can.

Good luck!

Many thanks Indigo, I will have a look.

indigo can you give me a ball-park figure for costs for AIT?

MrsB - I think this place in Reading charges about £300. I think you only have to go to them once, then they give you a CD to take home....

I went to the Sound Learning Centre in London and paid £1200. You have to go to them every day for 10 days.

10 days, and then it's done.

Obv I think the 1200 was worth every penny. So much so that I've done it with both DS and DD. And both of them have had amazing results.

I have before and after audiograms for both of them, and both of their hearing was awful before, and is almost perfect now. That has done amazing things for both of them. DD has learnt to read and DS can now stay in the classroom.

What an encouraging story :) Ballpark what I was expecting too. ....

GloriaVanderbilt

Before you can begin to understand the type of support your DS needs you have to have a full understanding of the cognitive issues that are causing his problems.
There are no magic cure programs, as some would like to claim, there are no cures for any of the underlying cognitive disabilities that can cause the dyslexic symptom. Each dyslexic is different, as there are various cognitive issues which can cause the dyslexic symptom, add to which you need to have some understanding of your DSs existing coping strategies which he as developed since birth, and then work out how best to help him both understand his own alternative compensating abilities, so that both he and all others are best able to provide the support he needs.

There are no quick fixes, as dyslexia and the underlying cognitive issues are a life long set of genetically based issues. I only found out about my own dyslexia when i was in my mid 40s when trying to help my son with his educational problems, since then I have been diagnosed as being dyslexic, and clinically diagnosed as having Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) as the cause of my dyslexic symptom. All three of our DSs have APD as the cause of their dyslexic symptom. APD has more serious issues than just the dyslexic symptom.

The only cure for any of these issues can only result from Genetic Engineering when research has made the required advances , which has its own ethical concerns.

Thankyou...Indigo I really enjoyed looking at your site and dolfrog, yours looks brilliant too.

I suspected APD in ds1 for a while I will take another look at it and see if he still fits.

I think I just don't want him to be left behind and feel like an idiot when all his friends are steaming ahead and he's still wondering what the teacher said the other day.

GloriaVanderbilt

Just for clarification regarding my links.
the Medical Research Councils APD pages
I designed (and authored some of the content of) the
Auditory Processing Disorder in the UK (APDUK)
my own web sites home page is
Living with an Invisible Disability
and my recent research paper collections web site is at
Dolfrog's Research and Information Web Site.

GloriaVanderbilt

"I know he has trouble processing instructions and auditory information. I can see he has trouble writing. I know he can't understand time."

APD is about not being able to process athast you hear, a listening disability, all sound based information, which includes speech. Those who have APD have problems following conversations and following multiple verbal instructions. Due to our poor auditory memories we have word recall problems both when talking and when writing. We have problems processing the gaps between sounds the sounds that can make up a word, and even the gaps between words in rapid speech, so for me and my family of APDs phonics is an abstract concept we can understand but cognitively we can never use.
thsoe who have cognitive deficits / disabilities such APD have to develop alternative cognitive abilities to compensate for our sensory information processing disabilities. These coping strategies have to be run in our working memories. Working memory (short term memory) is like the RAM of a computer where we run the programs we need to perform all our daily tasks, and also like the RAM of a computer it has limited capacity. We control how we prioritise how we use our working memories subconsciously, and if we have to run a coping strategy then something else has to make way to prevent a working memory crash, this is usually our self organisational skills and sense of time. And when we are stressed or ill, coping with these issues takes priority over our coping strategies. due toe subconscious control of our working memories we are not able to switch our coping strategies ON and OFF when we need them

"I suspected APD in ds1 for a while I will take another look at it and see if he still fits."

Currently you will require a GP referral to Great Ormond Street Hospital (hopefully there will be more regional APD assessment centres soon) for a Multi - Discipline (multi professional) assessment and diagnosis. An Audiologist to diagnose the APD issues, Speech and Language Pathologist to assess the speech and language problems APD can cause, and a Psychologist to assess the problems of living with APD.
You will also need the results fro ma recent Hearing Test so that they can make the required allowances for any hearing impairment.

Thankyou very much for giving me this info. It does sound like ds. He definitely has coping strategies already which makes me feel sad for him but also fairly impressed

I know his father has many coping strategies some of which I'd rather ds didn't adopt (hiding paperwork under the sofa, lying and being very hard to pin down on anything being among them) but there is little contact between them these days so I'm hoping we can avoid that happening to ds.

I will read up more about it, thankyou again very much and for all the links.

Thanks Indigo and MRZ
Dont worry I am not relying on school I am very realistic if not negative on what to expect but the IQ report has still made a huge difference to us. At least now they have identified that he is not achieving what he should be and is in top 1% of IQ. We have no diagnosis and have not requested this and I think he may be too young for many to want to test as still not 7. Before this result I felt like I was the only person seeing a problem and I found it very hard to deal with it as I was made to feel that I was imagining my concerns. Now no one can deny there is a huge discrepancy and I can feel sane and can work towards appropriate help which I couldnt when no one else accepted there was a problem. I will get private help or home educate if necessary.

I was told by the first EP that I was an anxious mother ... my son was in Y6 and didn't write

Dread - I agree, the only thing useful in the EP report school eventually had done for DD was that magic number saying she was very bright.

I did enjoy seeing the look on her teachers face when she read the report :)

Sorry your school is so bad. Good luck for your continued battle.