signs of dyslexia? or normal?

[Anomaly]

DS1 has just finished year 1. His teacher has told us she thinks verbally he seems very able and his reading and writing are at a much lower level than she would expect.

I've been told diagnosis of dyslexia is not done before age 7. My mum is sure he is dyslexic because he confuses b and d, he writes a number of letters and numbers as a mirror image and because he forms letters incorrectly. I've been reassured by friends their kids do this too and that it's normal at age 6.

Can anyone reassure me that he might not be dyslexic? Is it possible that his reading and writing could vastly improve over the next year?

ooh thats interesting Starballbunny. my daughter often reads very fluently but replaces words with ones which mean the same but look completely different. At times I have wondered how she even manages to do it!

I have long wondered if my dd (11) could be mildly dyslexic, though her school have not had any real concerns. She has made good progress this year, and achieved 5b for reading (up from 4a at end of yr 5) and 4a in Maths up from 3a ( she worked really hard on her maths with a weekly session with a tutor). Her writing however is still at level 4 from her teacher assessment and she was 4c for the new spelling, grammar and punctuation test. The gap between her reading and writing scores seems odd to me?

At 13 DD1 got age 16 for reading and 9 for spelling, which seemed about right given how much better her 10y sisters spelling was.

No way would DD1 get a decent reading age if it was for accurate reading out loud, rather than, what she thought was a very easy comprehension test, but there would still be a fair difference.

DD1 has always been good at comprehensions, she has to be. Keeping track of the meaning of a passage is how she gets round the words she reads wildly wrong or simply doesn't read at all. Also, I think she sometimes subconsciously reads words right, but says them wrong.

Me? I just don't see the insides of words, it's taken five attempts to get subconsciously because I've never taken note of all those internal s's.

I've just copied "signs of dyslexia" from a random dyslexia support site

"The following is a list of common signs of dyslexia. If someone has some or all of these symptoms they may have dyslexia.

Dislikes reading out loud
Reads very slowly
Doesn?t read for pleasure
Confuses little words, or similar words (was/saw, it/in, for/of)
Misses out words when reading
Loses place when reading
Needs to sound out words
Doesn?t use expression when reading
Has good ideas but can?t get them down on paper
Mixes up letters and numbers ? p/q, b/d, 6/9
Problems copying from the board
Slow at writing
Bizarre spellings
Poor handwriting
Can?t put things in order
Struggles with left and right
Difficulty telling the time
Difficulty learning times tables
Disorganised and forgetful
Poor self-esteem"

the problem is that nearly everything on that list applies to young beginner readers who will go on to become fluent readers and writers,

A better sign of dyslexia in my experience for a young reader is: struggles with words like "the" but not with ones with meaning like "football".

Signs they may have a sight issue, which is common with dyslexics but not picked by a sight test are: missing the words in the centre of the page,
Frequently loosing their place,
Complaining the words or pictures move,
Finding it easier to read older books (on yellower paper) than new ones,
Find reading in bright light hard,
Can't copy from a black or white board (maybe able to copy from a sheet just in front of them).

Dyslexia means difficulty with the written word. It is a descriptive, not a diagnostic term and covers a whole spectrum of difficulties so isn't a particularly helpful diagnosis surrounded by myths that have somehow become accepted as truth.

Anomaly try not to worry my son just turn 5yrs old July. He was doing the same and I was really worried as his teacher told me he writing is not good,but his reading is fair. As for maths his not interested at all. The more i try the more he doesn't want to do it. I have all the reading, writing and phonics book also all the apps for the ipad to help him. Every day we have 20 minutes just to learn,do arts and crafts. I think as parents we want our children to be the best at everything they do but we also forget to let them be" children".

my daughter was doing exactly the same when she was 7-8yrs old in year 3 at school. I approached the teacher and was advised that she was not showing the signs of Dyslexia. I then spoke to the head mistress and was told exactly the same. I got in touch with Dyslexia action and they done the test (£450) and I got a report to show that my daughter did suffer from Dyslexia. Keep at it and you will get through. Its taken nearly 3 yrs for me to get my daughter on the SEN and the school to admit that they were wrong. Hope this helps xx

Do dyslexia action ever say a child doesn't have dyslexia ?

And does a report from dyslexia action ever help the child in school?

After selling you a diagnosis, did dyslexia action then recommend tutoring with themselves? At £50 per hour?

The trouble is dyslexia is an absolutely meaningless term. There isn't one defn of it - there are many.

There isn't a test for it either. There is no test an EP (or anyone else) does which concludes a child has dyslexia.

Each EP is pretty much free to decide whether or not a child has dyslexia based on whatever they want to.

So 2 EPs won't necessarily agree that a child has dyslexia.

So the DA EP is correct in saying the child has dyslexia. And the LEA EP is also correct in saying they don't have it.

breakdown of the % of children assessed from my ds's dyslexia action report.

11.7% no dyslexia
22.8% few dyslexia signs
31.1% mild dyslexia
18.9% moderate dyslexia
11.1% severe dyslexia
4.1% very severe dyslexia

Exactly Pheonix!

Mrz I see where you are coming from and I know you are trying to protect parents from shelling out a lot of money on reports that mean very little.

but for those of us who's DCs have massive differences between their obvious intelligence if you talk to them and their reading and writing, Dyslexia is the only simple label in town.

For my DD1(15) it is a label she finds immensely useful. It gets the teachers off her back and her put in sets that refect her understanding not her spelling. It explains to people why she gets extra time in exams.

Yes I know that's based on tests that give numbers not labels, but for talking to your peers or their parents that doesn't mean anything.

And because more and more teachers and parents have some understanding of the cross over between dyslexia, dyspraxia, discalsulia (sp) and short term/working memory, some of DDs social quirks, difficulties with names, clocks and times tables, sort of make sense to them.

Also mrz you must be aware that the SN support in most primary schools is absolutely atrocious and parents are desperate to get some kind of help for their DCs.

I do realise that having a name for your difficulties helps a child's self esteem but really it is the only useful thing about having a label of dyslexia. Only parents can decide if that is worth shelling out £450 to DA.
The problem is a label from DA doesn't mean that a school with bad/poor SEN support will make any changes to improve

StarBall - but why do you need to pay £450 for someone to label you? Why can't you just tell everyone your child has dyslexia if they have all the symptoms of it?

Because - the child won't know any different from you telling them or an EP telling them.

And school won't necessarily respect a private EP report either.

Crucially they're no more likely to do what's on the EP report than they are to do what you suggest without it.

ie if you do your research and decide you want your child to do Toe By Toe every day (which lots of EPs recommend) and you decide you want school to do it - go and discuss it with them. Either they'll agree or they won't. But they've heard of Toe By Toe (and all the other things EPs recommend) from previous EP reports the school's read. So either they'll do it or they won't. An DA EP recommending it is unlikely to make any difference.

If however you really think school will listen to a private EP report more than you, and you really think there is more that can be done at school which you can't do at home - get an independent EP report - not a DA one.

The DA EPs are only allowed to recommend stuff that the DA recommends and so they're not independent.

A £1.50 iPhoneApp DyslexiaQuest will tell you what areas your child struggles with.

DyslexiaQuest

I did not shell out £450 for a DA report, but £200 for an independent Ed Phy.

I did it as a last resort, to have some leverage in getting to see the senior school Senco and be listerned to.

DD1 did not need a piece of paper, she could read the dyslexia check list and draw her own conclusions. Just as I had been doing since she was six. She understood the need to patiently work through toe by toe with me. School would not have seen the point at all.

It is a chilling indictment of primary SN training that a nine year old girl has far more idea what's going on than they did.

In the end I may not have needed the report because in the two weeks between ringing the ed Phy and his visit, school, quite independently had a massive panic attack.

Remember, this is very late in Y6.

Suddenly they realised DD was going to mess up their SATs results and decided to scribe for her. (Heaven knows how many rules they bent) and in concequence there was no problem talking to the senior school.

I think an EP report as a last resort if necessary is sensible. Which is exactly what you did. I'm very impressed you found someone for £200 !

But often on this board, and in this thread, an EP report is proposed as the first thing you should do if you think your child has dyslexia, and it really isn't.

It was something like £235, over 4 years ago in rural middle England, a long way from London.

It was absolutely the last resort. The only alternative was to have a massive go at the very young and inexperienced HT about DD1s teachers failiure to spot her difficulties.

Since DDs teacher was lovely and sorted out the pastoral side of school for DD1 way better than anyone else ever had, this was enormously difficult. Also as happens in small schools with long standing staff, how much influence the HT actually had is very questionable. I think he would have had to stall and fudge to keep the peace.

In the absence of decent teacher training and resourcing of schools. What is needed is a research based charity, similar to the NCT, that raises awareness of and collates studies into SLDs rather than mirrad groups trying to make money out of frustrated parents.

"In the absence of decent teacher training and resourcing of schools. What is needed is a research based charity, similar to the NCT, that raises awareness of and collates studies into SLDs"

As a SENCO I'm a member of www.nasen.org.uk/about-nasen/ which does what you say. There is also plenty of government backed research/resources/publications - www.education.gov.uk/lamb/module4/M04U14.html for those who make the effort to find out.

Mrz (thank you for those links)
I had guessed from your posts around MN that you were a SENCO, you are interested in this field and care enough to research the subject. Most teachers do not.

At DDs school, I think the HT was Senco, it was just a tick in a box. I cannot believe they would have had time to study sites like those.

Those links are very teacher specific, I'm a graduate scientist and have read a lot around this subject and will enjoy delving into them.

However, what the OP, other worried parents and most teachers need is site that begins in laypersons terms and gradually links through to processing speed, working memory and the rest.

A site that breaks down the myths and and has no links to selling testing, tuition, expensive glasses or any other product.

A site that talks about how parents can help and the resources available, apples and pares, toe by toe (which is weird but seemed to help DD1), stairway to spelling and the rest.

I said something like the NCT, because I think parents need to feel the information is independent. If a government site states, Ed Phy assessments are unnecessary and the correct support can be put in place by the school without a 'diagnosis' parents are going to feel it is just an attempt to save money.

Most of the dyslexia groups started in much the way you describe, StarBallBunny. They were parent led and most came about as a result of concerns in the 80s about large numbers of MC children failing to learn to read. They all come under a blanket umbrella now; Dyslexia Action. A big problem with these groups is that they are fixated on an old and longwinded phonics based programme which is not as fast and effective as the newer synthetic and linguistic phonics programmes. I suspect that this is so because there is a huge 'industry' grown around it and, like many large organisations, they are slow to change.

FWIW I believe that most children who are labelled as 'dyslexic' suffer from poor initial teaching. This gets me flamed but it is based on several year's experience of working with struggling readers in secondary school. With most of them I was merely teaching them the phonics they could easily have learned in primary school and trying to break poor reading habits (such as guessing) which the old 'mixed methods' teaching (which still prevails) positively taught them. The figures given earlier of 15% of children assessed (N.B.not 'all children) having severe or very severe dyslexia is probably about right for the percentage of all children who have significant difficulties which affect their ability to learn to read (about 3 -5% of children). There is a very low incidence of dyslexia seen in schools where a good phonics programme is properly taught from the start. See this report on the implemetation of one 'modern' SP programme: www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/Matched%20Funding%20Article-august%2011a%20_MG_.pdf

I don't think that it is any coincidence that 'dyslexia' came to the fore very strongly in the last few decades of the 20th cent. as that was when Look & Say was the prevailing teaching method, nor is it any coincidence that the programmes you mention with approval are phonics based. In essence they are just supplying the teaching children didn't get when they should have, in YR/1.

For a site which gives lots of support and information I would suggest you look at www.dyslexics.org.uk I think it would give you a lot of the information you are looking for.

I agree with maizie very few children can't learn to read and write if taught well.

mrz

I understand where you are coming from. However, as a mum with 2 children who are struggling to reach their potential with written work I am looking for guidence as to the real nature of their problems. I am getting them both assessed by an EP later this year because its hard to know the best way to tackle their problems when I don't exactly know what the problem is. We are doing all the usual things like additional phonics work (toe by toe or sound foundations) but I don't know if there is something more that would help.

Even when I know what their range of difficulties are I will probably use the term dyslexia as convenient shorthand to help people understand. One thing that I am hoping the EP's report will also help with is getting more time for my eldest when he sits the entrance exams for senior schools. He knows his stuff but struggles to get it on paper in the time allowed.

As the mother of a child with SEN (5 different EPs) and a SENCO I've actually never had a report that told me anything useful - perhaps I've been unlucky.