Call from teacher to say they think my daughter is dyslexic but I'm not sure

[babytops]

My daughter is 6 in year 2 at school. Her school were non existent during lockdown and me and my husband both working from home, as well as having a toddler running round. So its safe to say we were not great on the homeschooling front. Second lockdown was better and they did assign some work on an app which we did most of when we could.
She has obviously missed half of year 1 and some of year 2 so is most definitely behind. I think most noticeably in her reading as she never got all the early phonics stuff. When they went back the school jumped straight into Year 2 work with a little bit of catch up from year 1.
She can read a fair bit but does struggle with some sounds. At home we are working on her reading and spellings (as she has a spellings test every friday - last weeks words were things like decision, treasure, leisure, vision) some weeks she gets 10 some weeks she gets 4/5.
I havent been overly concerned as obviously she missed so much school I was expecting it. However it seems the school have other ideas.
She is going to tutoring lessons before school 2 days a week that I assume the school were given funding for - this is for comprehension. Her teacher pulled aside my husband at pick up last week to say she is really struggling 'she is struggling the most out of everyone in the group' and my husband had to ask what it is she wants us to do, which is keep working on her reading. Ok fine, that's what we are doing. And I have noticed a considerable improvement at home and really proud of her.
So today, I have just had a call from her about an hour ago in which she mentioned speaking to my husband last week about her and then went on to say she thinks my daughter is dyslexic. She went on to say that she sometimes mixes up letters (which I haven't noticed at home bar the occasional b/d) and is really struggling. Then went on for 5 minutes about how its a really long process to get diagnosed through the senco at school and is really expensive for the school and that we can pay privately for an assessment.

Honestly the whole conversation knocked me for six. I asked her to email me everything she had just said and she replied that I am best speaking to the senco (who has never met my daughter!)

I'm looking for anyone with experience of dyslexia because most of the symptoms online dont apply to her but some do. And im wondering how much of that could just be the missed school ?

I am also unimpressed with the teacher to be honest. She ended the call saying 'now I could be completely wrong' !?
I also think something else is clouding my judgement. Another mum had a call last week about her daughter, in which the teacher said she thinks her daughter has adhd and her mum had the same WTF reaction as she really doesn't think she has it. Has since spoken to her gp who agreed.

I feel like I'm looking for an ulterior motive for this teacher to be diagnosing kids in her class with different things with the caveat that she's 'not an expert' and 'could be wrong'

I am considering paying for the assessment privately if I can get the funds together. But surely she could just be behind? and understandably so ?

@babytops

Thanks *@LimitIsUp* I dont think she struggles with the phonics in the same way - its more that she has to sound it out to read it, rather than just know the word if that makes sense. So she is slow because she is still sounding out lots of words before putting the sounds together.

We have been working on sight words at home to help reading - so currently i have a pile of words and we chose 10 a week for her to learn. Last weeks words she now knows by sight and were words like which, after plus colours and days of the week. And now shes knows them all.

I just hate the fact that they clearly need to catch up and know a lot of parents have complained as the school seem to have gone full pelt into year 2 stuff without the foundation stuff in place.

Regarding using flash cards for sight vocab, rather than thinking 10 a week, choose 5 and keep with them until she can read and write them instantly, once she is able to do this with one word, swap in a new word but keep the other 4. It may be that some words will take longer to embed than others, so having a set number every week can be counter productive. Have her write the learned words on post it’s and stick somewhere at home - the fridge / door / bedroom wall anywhere she can see them to practice herself. She needs to over learn.

My dd is mildly dyslexic. She never had a problem with reading but she struggled with remembering spellings and used to get really anxious. At primary level the teachers were dismissive because her reading was fine.

In year 7 I eventually paid for a private screening which was £50 at the time. High School took it seriously and have put measures in place based on the screening alone.

Her main problem now is anxiety and lack of confidence around academic work which was caused by the lack of support in school when she was younger. It's definitely a good thing for it to be spotted sooner rather than later!

@Soontobe60
Thank you for your response. This is probably what I thought would have happened had I given it some thought. Not a call out of the blue on a Wednesday afternoon to say she thinks my daughter is dyslexic and we should go get her tested privately. No tact whatsoever. And I've come away not actually knowing exactly what she struggles with.

@paralysedbyinertia

Most schools cannot afford this. Most LA EPs will no longer assess. If there is to be a ‘proper assessment’, the parents will now nearly always need to go private and pay themselves so this is entirely down to them.

I didn't know this, @Howshouldibehave. I mean, I'm well aware of the problems with school budgets, but I didn't know that the assessments are rarely provided now. What happens in cases where the parents can't pay?

The school will identify and highlight the child’s particular gaps and put appropriate provision in place. Reasonable adjustments can be made where necessary.

I’m a SENCo and up until relatively recently, like a pp, we would involve the local SEN advisory service to come in and support, but that team has been disbanded.

I spoke to the SENCO when my child was in the reception year and we had an initial assessment done near the end of the school year. The results showed a spiky profile with a few low scores that were close to the borderline. The Senco said we needed to wait until she was older before doing the full assessment but she was doing well overall. We were given a few things to practise over summer. The next school year she was doing a lot better and the school decided there was no need to take it any further. They told me not to pay for private assessments as it would be too early.

Op only you can know how much you did with her during lockdowns.
Were you doing enough to keep up or hoping school would go back over stuff.

I know a parent who didnt get either kid to do anything other than the zooms (which were more like mental maths say) and no do the white rose videos so didnt do the learning. Unsurprisingly both kids now have been identified as behind.

But also with reading for eg our school gave out no books or online access so kids are at least 6x2 books behind. And when say reception only do 30 a year that is a lot.
My nearly 6yo is still sounding out and blending. It is hard to know with mine of its behavioural or difficulty.
As we hardly did any reading etc in lockdown 2021 because i spent most of the time ensuring dc1 kept up with all the work.

Op as your dc missed the phonics check i would see if they can pass that. And would look at the y2 sats papers with your dd to see if she can complete them. As that is the level they will move on from into y3.

Imo schools deciding who to refer for testing is a conflict of interest as they hold the budget and dont want to waste on kids who will leave in a few years.
It needs to be independent or at least a parent to refer for independent opinion. As also it will cost schools to implement requirements.

I dont think much of our senco. They referred a boy for posible asd who didnt have it. But blamed everything on my dc (or us as parents) who im convinced has adhd/asd.

How much time are you reading with dc daily?
It might be dyslexia but equally you need to try to catch up at home to ensure the dc is getting enough practice.
My eldest was not meeting expectations at end of yr 1 but i did a lot at home and we passed the SATs and now in top 25%. And that was pre covid.
It does sound like your dd isnt making as much progress with the school interventions as other kids.
I would have thought most phonics would have been covered by the mar in yr1? As basics are needed for the phonics check.

Honestly? I’d be grateful that a teacher has pointed it out. I’d long had suspicions my son was dyslexic, but always had my concerns dismissed. Lockdown homeschooling was terrible for us both - I had to literally sit next to my son and do it with him - and absolutely cemented my belief.

Before they returned to school last Sept, I’d arranged a private assessment (long waiting lists for these) and got private tuition sorted with a dyslexia specialist. I told the school of my actions, and then when the assessment confirmed son was dyslexic, the school finally, at my prompting, started putting actions in place to help him.

If you are able to rule out dyslexia now, or indeed have it confirmed, it can only be of benefit to your daughter. I was congratulated by the specialist for having acted when I did (DS was 8 at the time).

The teacher might have shown a lack of tact, but at least she has cared enough to call it out.

We went private, his school didn’t believe he was dyslexic because “boys always lag behind at the start”.

What did it for me was a conversation with someone who work as a dyslexia tutor at a university. She said she would pay and added “these kids come to us at 18 or 19, with their self esteem destroyed thinking they are stupid, an early assessment would have prevented all that suffering”.

This is not saying that having a dyslexia report will just excuse an underperformance, it does comes with a lot of recommendations on how to support your child. In the case of DS just breaking instructions in sets of shorter instructions made all the difference and cost nothing to the school. He advanced 3 levels and was placed in the gifted and talented group within a year of doing this little change. (I also had to move him to a different school where they were at least prepared to read the report!)

The report costed about £500 back then but it is still paying back so many years later, he has received much support without having to fight for it at every step, he is now getting a bit of extra time in exams, is entitled for DSA and most importantly, he knows how bloody intelligent he is (in the 98 percentile according to the report) he just happens to process information in a different way.

The phonics check was done in Nov and even if a child was off self isolating that week they will have done it again. So you'll be able to see if she passed it (ours was on the March school reports).

1 in 4 children are dyslexic (there are many different types) and some companies like GCHQ are actively recruiting people with this brain type due to their immense capabilities.
Basically you have just been told your DC has a super power. Embrace it, help them understand it, work with the school to help them access the right learning, and the world is their oyster.

The definition of dyslexia is that the child's reading abilities are significantly worse than other children of the same age/ability so it's not possible for 25% of children to have dyslexia.

She could be masking it well - especially if she's got a good memory for things like spellings and sight words. I got into my 40s just assuming that reading text was meant to be like slippery treacle trying to get the content to stick in my brain before I got my diagnosis (I went back to uni and it was picked up then) - I'd breezed by on being able to pull information out of texts decently, bullshit my way through assignments getting the general gist of things, and a good memory.

The ed psych got me reading passages of text, then took the passages away (evil!) and asking me questions on what I'd just read and I had no fucking clue whatsoever - I'd decoded it, read it aloud with expression - but hadn't retained any of it. I remember as a kid being really quietly worried when doing work and trying to work out which way round ps and qs, bs and ds went but no one noticed - these days I struggle massively writing phonetic transcriptions and remembering which way around schwas (rotated e) go!

Not really, @drspouse, just way below the kid’s own other abilities. My son was always top of the class in reading, his dyslexia manifest is all about information processing delay and other things dyslexia trips him over with.

Sadly, many bright kids who have dyslexia are not allowed to achieve their potential because schools think that as long as they are achieving the absolute minimum, they are “fine”. They aren’t.

The person who assessed my son said some poignant words “you are going to struggle to get him help, his intelligence will hide his dyslexia but his dyslexia won’t let his intelligence shine”

It has been true, 100%. Having dyslexia shouldn’t mean that the just minimum adequate performance should be expected from you, at the end of the day... even Einstein had dyslexia.

I wish my teachers had noticed that I'm dyslexic at school rather than bullying and mocking me for not being able to spell.
On the surface I don't seem dyslexic as I'm an excellent reader and have a high IQ however my spelling is atrocious. I mix up simple vowel phonics and I cant tell if its incorrect. I didn't get a diagnosis till I was nearly 17 and that was only because my psychology lecturer thought it was very odd that a well spoken, bright and eloquent person couldn't spell simple words like said properly.
My brother has much more severe dyslexia as well as my sister so theirs were much easier to pick up as small children and with the right support my sister is now doing brilliantly at uni.
Teachers and senco can tell the diffrence between behind and dyslexic tendencies. I'd seek assessment when you can as with the right support people with dyslexia can achieve a lot, without it life can be a real struggle.
(Seriously, there were over 20 spelling corrections in those 3 paragraphs)

@drspouse sorry my mistake it should say 1 in 10. There are many different types and dyslexics can often have high IQs so they have spiky profiles - excellent attainment in some areas with a spike in others.

www.nessy.com/uk/parents/dyslexia-information/child-dyslexia/

@KarmaNoMore by definition if the child's reading is below their own other abilities it's also below that of other children of the same ability.
@burpees that's a bit more realistic! Still 3 in every classroom of course.

@KarmaNoMore
As well as Einstein we can add... Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, JFK, George Washington, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney, John Lennon, Keira Knightley, Jamie Oliver, Richard Branson, Holly Willoughby, Sally Gardner, Abi Elohinstone, Muhammad Ali...

Not a bad collection of people!!!!

No experience of this so not much help but I'm hugely surprised that they'd be diagnosing this at a time when so many children are behind due to varying experiences in lockdown. The other thing is 6 just seems extremely young but maybe they are just getting ready to hit a button in case in children need diagnosing

@stayathomer if you look up thread at my Nessy Link dyslexia can be diagnosed with about 92% accuracy at 5.5 years of age, diagnosing is a much better tool now than previously.

Great that you are talking to the SENCO about your DD but just wanted to add - it sounds like she may be young for the year, is she? My DD is and really struggled with phonics and writing at that age compared to her classmates. The teachers were concerned about her, she had to have extra 1 to 1 tuition until year 2, when she gradually learned to read. It took even longer than that for her writing to catch up, she was always painfully slow and would write a sentence in the time it took the others to write half a page.

Anyway - she is not dyslexic and is doing great now in Y10, fully caught up with the rest of her year and on track for excellent GCSEs. Maybe not relevant as you'd hope your DD's teacher knows what she's doing, but your post reminded me of my DD's struggles. It was tough enough for her without a pandemic so I feel for your DD trying to catch up, dyslexic or not.

@Crocidura
Yes she's an august baby.

Thanks everyone for all the replies they're all really helpful. The senco can't fit me in for a phone call until the beginning on June... so the out of the blue phone call sending me into a panic just annoys me more.

Anyway I've bought some reading stage books online that a teacher friend recommended, daughter really likes them so we're enjoying those. No issues with comprehension when I am reading the questions, she's reading with no mixing of letters or complaining about moving words.
Obviously I am not qualified but I personally don't think there is an issue I think it's just something she needs more 1on 1 time with which we are committed to doing.

Either way will speak to the senco in June when I imagine not much will happen and then school will finish for summer

I have a DS with dyslexia. Whilst you are waiting to talk to the senco it would be worth looking into getting her an eye check. My DS had convergence problems and tracking issues so needed prism lense glasses and we had to do exercises to help his convergence. It wasn't a cure but his reading improved a lot. If she has any visual issues then the earlier you spot them the better.

KarmaNoMore "at the end of the day... even Einstein had dyslexia."
Except he didn't and neither did many of the historical figures often cited in these discussions.
Babytops has the teacher said why they suspect dyslexia other than some letter reversal, which is actually equally common in non dyslexic children.
As you say her education has been disrupted so I wouldn't take any action before speaking to the SENCO other than supporting her reading. You've seen improvement in the short time since the conversation so I'd take this as a very positive sign.