dyslexia? Visual sequencing problem? second guessing myself.

[HattiFattner]

I had DS2s parent/teacher assessment this week. A very lovely and experienced teacher, who has taught both his siblings, and so knows our family.

SHe (and I) has concerns about DS2s reading, writing, spelling and numeracy.

On reading, he has not progressed from Y2 Sats level. He is in Y4. He is very hesitant, still does not really see the difference between "what" and "that" or "Where" and "There", but can pick up on very long words and decode them. Still hits a major block with certain sound blends - ai / ay in particular. Reads words from the middle - so last night, the word "rudely" became "Druley?" He was in reading recovery in infants.

His handwriting is a mess, which I have put down to him being a left hander. Teacher implied theres more to it than that - letters are transposed, badly formed letters, writes everything in very big letters (about 2 lines deep for each letter). He has done a writing/coordination scheme through the school last year, to try and get him better hand control.

Spelling he is 2 years behind his age. ALthough he gets 10/10 for every spelling test, he forgets the spelling when he has to write them in stories.

In numeracy, he also transposes numbers - so 315 becomes 351. He also writes numbers back to front P for 9 for example.

Teacher says she will now keep him on her radar. But im wondering (and second guessing) if DS has some form of dyslexia or visual processing issue.

And if so, what ....and how can I help him?

His confidence is taking a big knock because he is not moving on to the later books, he hates reading out loud and now avoids doing so ("I left my book at school" and "I finished it in class".)

He is otherwise a bright boy, funny, articulate. Just falling behind.

Thanks for the responses dolfrog and Indigo. I'm in Canada, hence my posting at strange times. Thanks for the info on the OG program, I've heard of programs like that, and whilst I can kind of see the point they did seem very wooly to me (I am also a believer in taking an evidence based approach) and at the time when ds was really struggling the first trials were coming through on synthetic phonics so that's the route I took. ds's issue was that the squiggles on the page made no sense to him, he is highly verbally literate and has good spacial awareness, so a program that was about understanding and breaking the code was what he needed at that point.

I am I am afraid very skeptical about the possibility of truly correcting brain differences, having seen all the therapies for autism that are around many many of which do seem like snake oil for parents who are desperately looking for answers. I am sure that some of them do have possibilities, but how on earth can you tell as a parent which are likely to help in any way, which may do some damage and which are just throwing your time and money away?

It's amusing (in a way) to read such a torrent of material. I'll try starting a new thread specifically on my comments & based around McNee & Coleman, who put a lot of effort into their book, though admittedly not quite enough.

But - a plea to the original poster. It looks at though your child may simply not know that words read right-to-left in English, usually, ditto for numbers; and he/she may not know that letters are printed in different shapes and sizes and 'fonts' etc. Why not point it out, just to be on the safe side? I know it sounds absurd, but then, you've learnt to read, so you know the conventions.

There's also an issue here over 'whole words' - some people teach them as pure shapes, as a sort of outline, while others include the letters. There's of course a difference.

The first reading ELG on the EYFS profile is Knows that, in English, print is read from left to right and top to bottom so it is unlikely that the OPs child doesn't know or he wouldn't have reached Y2 level

Apologies if this has been mentioned before - I dont think that it has but I haven't read all the contributions to this interesting thread.

The notched card, devised by Tom Burkard of the Promethian Trust, is about as simple as you can get. It trains directionality,eliminates guessing and needs to be used for a very limited time - also it can be resurrented if the temptation to guess ever becomes a temptation again.

www.piperbooks.co.uk/documents/Notched_Card_Technique_000.pdf

Dolfrog

Do you have an explanation for the 200+ schools who reach Level 4 in both English and maths? And the hundreds of schools with a score well into the 90s in spite of many of these schools catering to some of the most deprived children in the country.

It beggars belief that you have actually found schools for your children that teach rigorous synthetic phonics. It is none of my business but it is more than a little surprising that you have subjected them to this 'torture'. Did you ever consider spending a little less time gratuituously and distastefully insulting others on various message boards and use that time to home school your children -this is what most parents in the US with children whose specific needs are not met in mainstream school do.

Alternatively were you to devote time to ensuring a specialist education for your children and one-tenth of the energy in trying for grants maybe that could have been a solution.

Indigobell sorry your ophthalmologist missed a CI, seems very odd as its really obvious.

It is the "bread and butter" of an orthoptist, i really feel sad you had to pay for treatment.

In my experience the private sector is a minefield , a lot of what you talk about sounds to me as if you have beeen told by someone you pay, if these treatments worked they would be available on the NHS.

Things like the nintendo sight trainer , train concentration nothing else.

Your eyes are constantly tracking, and saccading, if you didnt do that you couldnt funtion visually in the day to day world, therefore if a child had tracking difficulties they wouldnt be able to read any word, it simply doesnt exist.

People in the NHS have nothing to gain by not treating people but people in the private sector have a huge amount to gain by inventing phrases like directionality and giving false hope, very sad.

But behaviour optometry is available on the NHS. Just not in many areas.

I can't believe you don't think tracking difficulties exist. It's no harder to test for than CI - why dont you test for it? You watch kids try to track an object smoothly, and you'll notice that some, probably the ones with CI, can't do it.

I can see for myself that my 3 all have CI and eye tracking difficulties.

That is why they read 'saw' for 'was' and even 'b' for 'd'.

A visiograph shows exactly what a child looks at when reading. View the virtual tour in www.readingplus.com to see an example.

The NHS has nothing to gain by treating my kids or not. The staggering level of ignorance you're displaying though goes some way to explain why my kids were so badly failed by the NHS.

@mrz - no doubt children are told English reads left to right, some of the time at least. However, incredible though it sounds, some teaching shemes specifically prohibited it. A 1982 book by Margaret Meek, 'Learning to Read', firmly stated.. must not have instruction in deciphering letters, sounds, or words

allchildrenreading

The choice of school has been out side of my control, but in the control of the local authority.
The schools have been following the guidelines of the headteachers and LEA, which in many instances leave a lot to be desired.
living in the UK, and not the USA, homeschooling was not really an options especially wit my own communication disabilities, which I have spent most of my time learning about as I share my my childrens disabilities.

The only people who may feel insulted by my comments are those whose continued ignorance insults my disability, and you are correct in observing that these ignorant people populate a wide range of forums. So I am only returning the insults that they send to me first.

And you are probably hiding behind a new forum name to conceal you true identity, or even participate in name changing to hide your track record so that others have little idea of your true intentions.

I would suggest visiting Reading Reform Foundation HQ and getting a new spin doctor to create a new sales pitch.

Rerevisionist Margaret Meek was a proponent of learning with Real Books and a researcher nothing to do with reading schemes. Standard recommended reading when I did my degree

dolfrog I don't know who you think allchildrenreading is but they have been a poster on this forum for many years (with that user name)

^The notched card, devised by Tom Burkard of the Promethian Trust, is about as simple as you can get. It trains directionality,eliminates guessing and needs to be used for a very limited time - also it can be resurrented if the temptation to guess ever becomes a temptation again.
www.piperbooks.co.uk/documents/Notched_Card_Technique_000.pdf^

That certainly sounds like a useful tool to get beginners to concentrate, but I get the feeling that OP's DS is not really a beginner, and still misreads words like 'what' and 'that' - words that he has read hundreds of times before. He could use the card to help him really concentrate but this may be at the expense of him developing any kind of fluency.

dolfrog
you sound a bit like me, but i was only diagnosed as being dyslexic late in life, and then a few years later with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

Could well be a part of my problem but look and say teaching probably did not help and as I have always had an aversion to word searches and where is wally type activities so sight issues may well once have been an issue.

Suspect the same for DC - mixed teaching methods not helping them , some probably minor sight issues, possibly memory issues thought that more DS and then on top possibly some auditory oddities. DD1 is very over sensitive to sound. This was noticed by her first two teachers at school as well as us and DS we have been concern enough about DS hearing and speech to get them checked though we are told he is within normal range.

Can defiantly recommend notched card or cursor developed by Tom Burkard of the Promethian Trust as used in their dancing bear series which is proving very good at getting our DC to read what on the page and not guess ? a tactic the school encourages. Their apples and pears series looks like it is helping DD1 with spelling ? filling in a lot of blanks for her.

dolfrog - I've told you before - my name is geraldine carter. main career in children's book publishing (general trade) while running a v. small London campaign about rising illiteracy rates, low expectations, general dumbing down - this latter was in the 1980s. On moving to the country I changed career, trained part-time on a year long dyslexia course which presented every known disability under the sun but finally did not help struggling children to learn to read. Very shortly after this I retrained with Phono-Graphix, then with Sound Reading System, did a short training with Jolly Phonics.
Of the 100+ children referred to me on a one to one basis only one had an inability to read or write that may have resulted from APD.Unfortunately I only saw her 12 times as the travelling distance was too great and during those weeks her large family was under a huge amount of pressure - depression, job loss, heart attack, sister in and out of hospital with severe asthma and it was impossible to take things further. A second child slipped the net. He was an absolulte charmer, but had severe memory problems - his father was illiterate and he was such a laid back child and so popular and good at sport - that lack of reading skillls did not appear to bother him too much.
I've put this down as my experience chimes so closely with other colleagues who work with struggling children. And I would only see a child for one hour a week.
Where synthetic phonics is taught rigorously and 'mixed methods' are avoided, the results are spectacular. There are some very, very effective SP programmes and if you had any interest in the 99%+ who benefit from learning by this means perhaps there would be more willingness to learn more about the minute percentage with AP disorders that are so crippling that knowledge of our alphabetic code and the skills necessary to learn to read via our sound-symbol code are impossible.

Indigo,

I think 7 + years training and 15 + years of experience does not mean ignorance.

Every child I see has their smooth pursuits, saccades and convergence checked, as every child in every ophthalmolgy dept will have checked.

how have you gained your knowledge, how many childrens eyes do you test to know so much about it all?

From what i know of the private practioners in this field if they are qualified in anything at all it is in dispensing, they may use DBO after their name, it means they have a diploma in measuring people to fit their glasses in an opticians.Nothing else, they have found a niche in the market and are exploiting parents who are desperate for an answer , sometimes that includes telling parents the NHS has failed them but they can "help". I dont blame parents for this at all.

how many children with reading difficulties have you taught tumble8?

www.rcophth.ac.uk/core/core_picker/download.asp?id=361

Tumble - So what do you do for kids who don't have smooth pursuits, and saccades?

All the NHS has ever done for me is tell me to come back in 6 months.

The NHS is run on the principle of spending the least money possible - not on helping kids to learn to read.

Private practicioners are helping my kids. Luckily. Because the NHS refuses to.

Rather than thinking about 'blaming' parents or not, think about how much you help kids.

If you saw my kids, and did notice they had poor eye tracking and convergence insufficiency - what exactly would you have done to correct these problems?

I have not been exploited by anyone - I have however been badly let done by Opticians, Opthalomogists, Orthoptists, Paedetricians, Audiologists, GPs, Health Visitors, Educational Psychologists, Teachers and SENCOs. Very badly let down.

Given I have 3 children with SEN, I've had the misfortune to see a lot of rubbish health professionals.

Luckily, by not giving up, and not being poor, I'm gradually managing to solve all their problems, including their vision problems.

I don't regret spending money to help my kids one bit. I utterly and totally regret seeing the NHS health 'professionals' who let me down so badly and cost me years in my quest to help my kids.

Years I can't get back.

you are paying someone to tell you what you want to hear simple.

I run a specialist paediatric reading difficulties clinic.

If you have no smooth pursuits or saccades it either means you have catastrophic brain damage or you are dead.

All you are doing is trying your hardest to help your children but unless you have the insight people in my position have , you will not realise what you are paying for , Im not angry at you for what you believe but Im angry at the exploitation.

CI is improved with simple exercises, it is caused by muscle weakness and is very common.

Im guessing your children are going to see someone who gives them forms of exercises too.

tuble8 I'm a SENCO and I'm not paying anyone but my local NHStrust provides the type of service Indigo has paid for and regularly recommends the type of exercises you have dismissed ... am I wasting my time and effort following hospital programmes for these children?

what exercises have I dismissed?

do the exercises you use work , and in what way do they work,?

thanks

Your very first post on this thread contradicts everything I'm being told by my NHStrust experts now do I believe them or you?

Dolfrog: can you explain a bit more about APD ? You say:
"Some like me and others who share my disability are cognitively not able to sound out new words and have to go straight to matching the whole sound of a word to the whole visual representation of the word"

So if I spoke a "word" which sounded like "apple" but started with a "B" you would not be able to spell it?
Or if I gave you the word "stinkup" to read, you would have no idea how to pronounce it?

Or did that only apply while you were learning to read and it would be OK now that you are a competent reader?

If it is the former, I just cannot get my head around how you can type such complex posts, with no obvious spelling mistakes, not even homophones.

And if it is the latter then phonics must play a part somewhere?

went back there to check what Id posted!

I have read back, the exercises Indigo mentions are mainly useless in terms of treating these visual difficulties, the eyes do not work independently of each other so covering one eye is useless. A lot of them assume a child is not using their eyes at all, the eyes are constantly using saccadic and smooth movements, do these children struggle to walk, watch tv!?

The exercises that are standard and do work, for smooth pursuit issues are simply training your eye muscles to converge and must be done in short sharp bursts 5 or 6 times a day.

doing things like swingball as a treatment is sadly pointless.

My point is that things like wordsearches train concentrationwhich improves a childs ability but there is no scientific, medical basis that they improve dyslexia.

If a child is helped by a "treatment" then why not, but there is no way it is ethical for an unqualified person to dish out daft exercises at a huge cost which also puts pressure on children.

Just to expland a bit on my questions:
"If it is the former, I just cannot get my head around how you can type such complex posts, with no obvious spelling mistakes, not even homophones."
What I am getting at here, is you must have a phenomenal memory bank of ALL THE WORDS you have ever read, which I can understand for READING; but for typing them, surely you have to split them into letters...but are you doing that purely by the LOOK of every word?