DD is a little bit dyslexic....

[Banana99]

Had parents evening, all good, DD is 7.
Says she has extrodinary reading ability, off the charts , I also know shes very good at spelling too.

earlier in the year they gave her one of those green sheets to put over her reading/work to 'help her concentrate'. We have one for home. We've never used it, DD reads at home all the time and has never needed it to 'stop things moving' like teacher suggested. In fact she's never ever complained at home and reads for hours.

She then tells me they've tested her for dyslexia and it was all negative but she still thinks 'she might be on the spectrum' on the basis when she is given instructions she needs to be told them over and over again?!? And it works better if told to do one thing at a time.

Maybe she's not listening and she can't be bothered (like at home) - does everything have to have a label?? Is everything dyslexia.
I mean I don't care, I just think it's a bit silly.

I didn't tell her that I find she concentrates on instructions more if you threaten to take away TV time!

Maybe you need to have a stern word with your DD about her behaviour?

I think the school are doing just the right thing by looking for underlying reasons why she might be finding it hard to focus, but if you are sure it's just a choice then you need to get tough on it. Take her TV time away at home if her teacher tells you she has ignored instructions during the day.

She's 7! She is very easy to distract and loves to chat.

I don't think everything needs a reason past she's 7!

Then you need to have a really strong word with her about her behaviour.

Schools don't go exploring sn for every 7 year old who is being a 7 year old. Something badly isn't working. If there isn't an underlying cause it is just bad behaviour.

I'm surprised that you are not concerned about her behaviour so much,
even it makes teacher/school think she may have SN, when you clearly think she doesn't.

I'm mildly dyslexic. If you were describing me at her age, aside from spelling well, we're a match.

At the grand old age of 48 I've just been diagnosed with ADHD too. Not a severe case, on the mild-moderate end of the spectrum. No meds, just behavioural stratagies which have been surprisingly successful so far.

Apparently even if ADHD had been on the radar back in the 70s I still probably wouldn't have been diagnosed because it isn't severe and it looks different in females, so it gets picked up on less often, or misdiagnosed.

I'm not saying your daughter has it. But it might be worth having a look at the typical sysmtoms for a girl on the less severe end of the spectrum to see if you can exclude/include it as a possibility.

You might well be right and she just isn't concentrating, but schools are mostly reluctant to spend time/ money testing for dyslexia. The fact that yours did is unusual, so I'd guess there probably is something going on.

On the vision issues, ask your DD if when she looks at text, does it ever blur or move? If so, then there was a point to the tinted cover. My son now wears tinted glasses as it's very extreme in his case, but I had no idea until the school picked up on it. He thought it was normal for things to move, so never said anything. He was a good reader too. It causes him more problems with things like working off the white board.

Then on the dyslexia/ attention issue, maybe think about it another way, as if she has got an issue and you ignore it, it will define her future far more than if you recognise it. Obviously I have no idea what your DD's like, but just because what you say chimed a bit, my son has poor processing/ short term memory. He was doing well, but as the work in class became more complicated, he found he couldn't hold all the ideas in his head, so got distracted/ failed to complete. That meant aged around 8, he started falling behind and feeling stupid.

We were lucky that the school spotted it and he's been diagnosed as dyslexic. He doesn't get much help, but the biggest plus is that it's helped his confidence to know why he struggles with some things. It's made it far easier for teachers/ us to help him too, as we're more aware of how his brain works. He's stopped saying he's thick. Let's face it, confidence is all, so that alone is worth its weight in gold.

So don't ignore it or have a 'stern word with her'. Work with the school and with her to get to the bottom of it all. It'll pay dividends down the line if you can nail it now. If you decide she is just too chatty, then you can have the stern word!