dyslexia

[AuntiePickleBottom]

would a school automatically test for this or do i have to ask for an assessment to be done.

i have my suspitions that ds aged 5 has dyslexia, so do i ask the teacher for an assessment or would they automatically refer a child

What makes you think he has dyslexia?

Is he in Y1?

School will not be interested in testing a 5 year old for dyslexia.

However the school should be doing the right thing wrt teaching him to read (ie synthetic phonics) regardless of whether or not he has dyslexia.

There is nothing different they will do if he does have dyslexia.

he will read a word like cat, sound it out ect then even after an hour he will forget it, he also don't know his numbers and struggles with his phonics.

I agree with Indigobell. 5 is too young to assess properly, but synthetic phonics is the way to go. I have a dyslexia teaching qualification and a dyslexic son.

Can he remember nursery rhymes etc? Name colours quickly?

He might well have dyslexia. But knowing a kid has dyslexia doesn't really help the school.

If they think he is not progressing as he should, they should put him on interventions. They should do this regardless of whether or not he has dyslexia.

If he has really bad dyslexia (like my DD) then nothing school does will help.

If he is not too bad, than school will be able to help.

But a diagnosis won't really change those facts.

DDs dyslexia is really bad. At 3, 4 and 5 what you would have really noticed about her is how bad her memory was. Particularly for words. An astonishingly bad memory. And that is why she can't learn to read. Because she can't remember anything.

Go make an appointment to see the SENCO. Tell her what you're concerned about, and ask her what school can do to help. But don't get hung up on getting a diagnosis of dyslexia, because you won't get it at this age (unless you go privately), and the diagnosis won't help.

And work out what your answer will be to 'let's wait and see,' 'he's a boy', 'he's young','he's not the worst in the class','lots of kids are like that','we're doing everything we can'.......

You might just get an assessment done - after a bit of pushing I got the school to bring in the ed psych for my DS - he was yr1 and just six. People will tell you that you can't diagnose til 7, but don't let them fob you off because they can get a very good idea that something is amiss long before then. My DS came out as "high risk" after his assessment which meant that the school had to recognise that there was a problem, not just that he was stupid - which was what they evidently thought. As Indigo says, there's nothing they should do differently to teach your son whether he's dyslexic or not, but if they are forced to accept that he has an additional need then you are more likely to get a more concentrated effort out of them and extra teaching for your son. I know this won't work for all children, but depending on the reasons for the dyslexia it will work for some. Intensive synthetic phonics has given my DS the tools to start to learn to read, although it's always going to be an uphill struggle.

And also, it is not necessarily the case that a child with dyslexia will have a very poor memory generally - DS has an astoundingly good memory for information, past events etc and seems to have something very close to a photographic memory when it comes to images - but for some reason it doesn't transfer when it comes to letters!

Good luck xx

AuntiePickleBottom

Developmental Dyslexia has a genetic origin, and if you can demonstrate a family history of developmental dyslexia then you may have a case for a child under 7 years old.
The age of maturation is 7 - 8 years when children stop growing out of developmental issues, and any remaining issues can be clinically diagnosed as a disability. Developmental Dyslexia has three cognitive subtypes of developmental dyslexia: Auditory, Visual and Attentional. So an auditory processing disorder (listening disability), a visual processing disorder, an attention disorder, or combination of the three can cause the dyslexic symptom.
Unfortunately here in the UK we are not sufficiently scientitically advanced in our understanding of developmental dyslexia to assess those at familial risk dyslexia from about the age of 6 months to access for potential dyslexic issues.