9 year old doing well at school but sense there is something "wrong" with English - Dyslexia?

[FantasticMrMouse]

We are told that our 9 year old is doing well at school - great at maths, general knowledge etc.

However her English is dreadful.. We employed a tutor for 11+ preparation who mentioned dyslexia for the first time to us. The school say that she's careless so are pushing her to improve accuracy. Examples are writing words like "plants" for "planets", "parrell" for "parallel" etc. She also misses out many words and put randoms capitals in the middle of sentences (e.g. "Person", "Dog").

She learned to read fairly easily in reception/year 1 but we noticed that it was by memory more than phonics, and she found the transition to chapter books very difficult as the words were so close together. We've had her eyes checked for long sightedness (fine). She doesn't read books at all for pleasure, finding it too "tiring" as the words hurt her eyes, but finds papers or magazines easier.

Not sure if it's relevant but she has scored 125+ in standardized tests at school.

My question is whether this sound like dyslexia and if so, how come no-one at school has spotted it? I suspect they're going to laugh at me outright when I bring it up.

When you say you've had her eyes checked for longsightedness do you mean that she's had a full eye examination with an optometrist?

The reading issues could be due to astigmatism, or a muscle imbalance or convergence issue as well as long sightedness. It could also be due to Irlen's syndrome (but its less common).

Missing out syllables of a word though when spelling doesn't really fit in with either of those things. I'm an optometrist so know more about the eye problems, but my 9 year old has an auditory processing disorder and also does the same.

When you say you've had her eyes checked for longsightedness do you mean that she's had a full eye examination with an optometrist?

In the past few years, we've been to at least 3 different optometrists in two well known chains. One said there was "something" so to come back in a year; the next year, the optician said there was possibly a squint but I wasn't there to ask questions and there was no follow-up plan. I was pretty frustrated at this point, so I paid for a 3rd optician (because I had had my quote of NHS visits ) and that person said she was fine and I think thought I was a time waster.

OP - something that was helpful for us in differentiating between having missed out a stage/using an unhelpful strategy and a more significant problem was whether or not a period of focused support on the issue made any difference. i.e. if you spend a few sessions with your DD encouraging her to slow down, sound out, check her writing etc as mumma suggests is she able to process what you mean and make an improvement? I know with my DS for example that sort of practice at home showed no improvement which seemed to indicate a more severe problem, he has made improvements but they are incremental, over years and with a lot of 1 -1 support.

Concentrated support doesn't seem to help. Today I gave her a hint that there was a mistake on a certain line she'd just written and even going through it word by word, she couldn't "see" the random capital until I pointed out the affected word. Over and over again we have the same conversations.

Senco here. Spend the money getting her Irlen's tested first. If she has that then the coloured lenses will make a huge difference. If her working memory and speed of processing seem ok then it is more likely to be Irlens. There is a very good woman in Dorking. Have been very impressed woth her reports. It is pricey though -£600 ish I think. For actual dyslexia then wouldn't bother with ed psych but get a good specialist teacher - it is cheaper. Look at The Helen Akell website.

It does sound to me that you are right and there is a 'something'. If there is no specialist at the school then having a report with recommendations will give them something to follow. However, start with Iren's.

SENCO here too save your money and buy a set of Reading rulers from Amazon around £10.00 and see which she prefers (that’s the science behind it)

she couldn't "see" the random capital until I pointed out the affected word.

This sounds similar to DS - he really couldn't see the difference between reversed and correct letters. I read something helpful about how the dyslexic child treats letters as objects, not as symbols - their brain struggles to get that whereas a chair is still a chair regardless of what angle you view it from, a letter has only one correct depiction. No idea if this has any evidence base to it but it made sense to me.

Which letters is she writing as random capitals? It’s common for children who are confused by b d and p q to write these in particular as P Q D B.

In terms of eyesight issues, I agree with exploring irlen's testing. If it works it is quite clearcut. The other thing you could screen for yourself is a convergence problem. Try it out yourself first - hold up one finger at arm's length, then watch it as you slowly bring it towards your nose. At some point you will "lose" the single image, perhaps briefly, when it becomes harder for your eye muscles to turn your eyes in to converge. Then get your daughter to try it - ask her to tell you when she sees double, but actually if you watch her eyes you will probably see them flick out when convergence fails. If she finds this difficult then you have a specific question to ask, you may need to ask to see an orthoptist.

I grew up hearing about "specific learning difficulties" which I think is better terminology than dyslexia as used in the UK currently because it seems to often be applied as a "catch all" to a group of disparate problems. Which of course need different solutions. A detailed assessment is expensive but could be useful at this age as you would still have time to make real improvements before the increasing demands of senior school.

Good luck finding some positive ways forward.

LaughingElliot, I was a bit cross when I wrote that... Great to hear your son's sorted now too. My son loves reading now too and his reading age zoomed similarly. He even took the L6 reading SAT, which after being 'sub normal levels' in the lower years, was quite a radical improvement!

OP, the Irlen's test isn't too expensive. If you're near London, go to this place: [http://www.ioo.org.uk Institute of Optometry] They're really good and will do a basic normal NHS eye test, then let her try a few filters. They'll only do the proper test if they think she's got a problem, but it's around £50. Their website's good as it explains it all, so worth a look.