What does it sound like to hear a dyslexic child read?

[Hannahabbott]

DD1 (yr 2) is progressing through the RWI reading bands, I'm not sure how her progression compares to her classmates. However, she seems overwhelmed by the newest books as they are longer and each page contains a lot of text. She loves to read and write though her spelling is poor and still at a level of simple phonetic blending e.g. nikas for knickers (not that I'd expect her to spell that, just an example she wrote down the other day. She often reads letters that aren't on the page, e.g. the word will became with and even when she tried sounding it out she still included the th rather than the ll. She says she can see the ll but her brain is making her say th iyswim. Some words she retains really well and others she seems to be unable to retain from one page/book to the next.

There is a family history and she also has some dyspraxic tendencies. Wondering whether to ask for an assessment at school or if this is just part of normal learning.

My DD was similar in year 1 and 2, school told me that it was normal at this stage. She would often say was for saw and vice versa. I have a massive family history of dyslexia. They kept saying nothing to worry.
She has just gone into year 6 finally my concerns became overwhelming in the summer and today she had dyslexia assessment and guess what I was right.
I wish I had trusted my instincts 4 or 5 years ago. It turns out that her migraines ( that she has had for 2.5years) are related to her dyslexia as her poor brain is working too hard. Hopefully behavioural optometry is going to help.

Thank you for the reply Lonecat, did you get the assessment through school or privately?

I know that dyslexia has no link to IQ but dd was in set 2 for reading, would it be normal or expected for a dyslexic student to be in a fairly high set?

it is NOT normal at this age to see it in her head right but say it wrong. definitely not.

My eldest has just gone into yr2 and is a very good reader but I have known since she started reading (before she started school so I knew I had taught her phonics properly etc) that something wasn't quite right.

anyway long story short - she managed to pass the dyslexia screening test but it was all words etc she already knew by sight or which were very short. eventually after the test she managed to tell me that it is right in her head but not when she says it. she said that she sees the sounds but the wrong ones come out or she can't get a sound to come out at all etc. She has since been diagnosed with a word finding difficulty but one of the SALTs she saw said this bit of it with the sound substitutions comes under motor planning (unfortunately noone will look at this bit properly for us) and is linked with dyspraxia and dyslexia. now she can pass the dyspraxia and dyslexia tests but I PERSONALLY believe she has both and is compensating, we get told during the tests that there are signs of them but then she tests ok in the ACTUAL test so therefore nothing is reported.

I would suggest trying to speak to a SALT, I found one privately who was extremely helpful, they can test phonological awareness skills (think that is what it is called) which showed my daughter has excellent knowledge of her phonics so her problems aren't that she hasn't learned them properly, just that something goes wrong when she is trying to say what she sees.

feel free to PM me - we found out about her problem about 6 months ago so have picked up some info along the way. I am still sure we haven't got the diagnosis/es she deserves but I also think it is highly unlikely we ever will, we had an IQ test done to try and find out if it was memory or processing related (before we discovered the language problem) and she is extremely bright so is obviously managing to compensate for her problems. Of course the more of the exercises they suggest we do to help her because she shows all these signs, the more capable she is of covering it up but it must be tiring for her and very frustrating.

just seen your reply - DD1 was far and away the top reader but she does struggle with small print (she has coloured lenses for irlen syndrome and long sighted issues), seeing full stops and expression is harder for her because she spends so much energy trying to say things right. Her reading in her head is superior to her reading out loud and comprehension confirms that.

My DD is dyslexic, but is also very bright and one of the best readers in her year. Whilst many dyslexics struggle with reading not all do.

School reluctantly did some brief screening which showed high ability with low processing speed and they felt she was coping. So I paid privately
One of the things I learnt is that her main coping mechanism is auditory processing memory 6 years beyond her age, so she is storing massive amounts of information in her short term memory.
Really what I was aiming to stop was school stating 'she didn't seem to what to push herself', when I fact she is working three times as hard to achieve the standard.

Thanks, nonickname for the detail. We have a parents evening this week so I'm going to ask a few questions and try and get to see the SENCO. We've always been told it's normal and that her writing issues are due to her being left-handed.

I've noticed that if I have to do something else mid-book when I come back she has read ahead and seems to read much more fluently, as if the thinking time has made a difference.

she is probably reading it in her head and once the words have become words in her head rather than her trying to break them down out loud she can then read them easily if that makes sense.

Our SENCO and staff hadn't come across my daughter's presentation of her problems before so be prepared for them being blank and also the whole 'it is normal at this age' well it might be normal in some cases but in a bright child it isn't normal.

If they can't help or won't help yet etc (although I think Yr2 is when they really have to start doing the tests whether they want to or not) then my advice would be to try and find a private SALT (it sounds so much like my daughter's problem) or a private child or educational psychologist who can do a dyslexia test. The SALT was cheaper we found but my parents helped pay for the tests which is how we could afford a WISC IQ test too which showed up her 2 standard deviations difference between scores. Writing issues could be eyesight related too. Worth trying to find a Behavioural Optometrist near you who can do more tests than just a normal optician and also prescribe exercises for many things, we don't pay for the extra tests (other than the colour machine one) it just all comes under NHS eye tests but we discovered she can't adjust near to far and struggles to see the lines to write on them, can't copy because of the adjusting difficulties and then the print is either very bold and too heavy for her to focus on it or so feint she can't see it.

She may well need a range of things investigating as quite a few of these all go hand in hand together as parts of dyslexia.

I have a, now 16yo, Dysleix DD1.

She still can't read accurately out loud, but has always been able to get top marks in SATs and GCSE reading papers. Partly I'm certain she reads far more words right, than she manages to say and partly, she's always used understanding the text, to get the meaning of words she can't read.

At primary, she spent hours talking about her books to avoid actually reading.

oh we get a LOT of talking about the book to avoid reading too Elephants.

And because they become so articulate and good at listening to what's said in class and answering questions on the carpet, the teachers think their problems will disappear.

They don't, it took to Y6 (coinciding with me doing it privately) for school to panic and get her a scribe for her SATs.

I have my fingers tightly crossed she keeps her extra time for A levels, they are testing this week. The powers that be have tightened the rules. Her lovely SENCO no longer gets to do the tests.

She likes to read and doesn't mind that she struggles. She likes to read independently too though I have no way of assessing what she is taking in. Good luck for her A-level assessment, I work in secondary so have more knowledge when it comes to secondary students.

so unfair she has to fight for her extra time Elephants. It does make me cross that there are children who are struggling every day, working much much harder than everyone realises and living in what must be a frustrating and confusing world but because they still come out average or above average everyone assume it doesn't matter. DD1 had terrible tantrums and strops after school (never in school) but since the language diagnosis and me (and a paediatrician) saying that whilst she can't be diagnosed with dyspraxia we have to treat her as if she has it all of that has stopped. she knows now that we KNOW there is a problem and that we are trying to help her, she knows it isn't her fault.

Hannah - if she likes to read on her own then you skim read what she has read, just ask her to tell you about a character, which bit did she like, can she show you where it was etc. I bet she will be able to.

OP,

Does she have problems naming things in other areas? E.g. if she saw a cat would she say 'dog' (or similar)?

Marking place as my yr 2 dd has similar issues. She is booked in for an assessment for dyslexia next month, something I had to organize and pay for myself. (Although the school does acknowledge there is a problem... Finally)

I am dyslexic I was diagnosed when at uni though I always knew that I was, I just couldn't get anyone to agree to test me (not very pushy parents). I have exactly the problems with reading that you describe your DD having and it is really frustrating! I see the word, I think the word but I say something else entirely. It happens a lot when reading out phone numbers for example - I can see the numbers in the right order but for some reason I can't say them in that order. I also occasionally have a lot of difficulty calling the right word up out of my brain when talking - the word is there and I know the one I want I just can't say it immediately - this means that I sometimes pause at the wrong place in sentences, this is confusing for some people.
On your family history alone I would get her checked.

I am interested to see people saying exactly my daughter's problems which we can only get diagnosed as a word finding difficulty but being dyslexic. I can see my battles will last for years won't they.

Do you think that a 'diagnosis' of dyslexia is going to get your DCs any help to address the specific word finding problem* or are you just looking for it to generate 'accommodations'?

(because I don't think that 'standard' dyslexia interventions do* address it, though I'd be happy to be told be told that they do)

Ooh, formatting went to pot there. Sorry

no I am not looking to generate accommodations. She won't get any anyway because she is functioning too well. What I WOULD like however is for someone to acknowledge how hard the poor kid is having to work rather than assume she finds everything easy and then when she has an off day think she is being lazy. Her self esteem is really quite low about it all. She has classic motor planning problems, a lot of classic dyslexia problems and whilst her memory in her IQ test was exceptional she is unable to follow simple things and goes very blank for no apparent reason. Noone expects this so it is assumed she is being difficult when I know she genuinely can't help it.