I have a dyslexic DS who will be turning 8 soon, and have been wondering about getting him some kind of laptop/netbook/tablet thingy .... He has had a private assessment so far which shows that he is definitely dyslexic, and we are seeing GP next week to ask for referral to ed psych to get this "formally" confirmed (which shouldn't take long as it is blindingly obvious that he's dyslexic).
His teacher has suggested previously that we could encourage him to do his homework on the laptop, rather than writing it down, if he is struggling (he struggles particuarly with written comprehension and visual processing - he finds it very hard to translate what he reads/sees into written words). Is 8 too young to have his own cheapish laptop or tablet? We have one laptop for the whole family of 4 at the moment, and what with me running my own business and DS and DD constantly wanting to go on the Moshi Monsters website, it's become a struggle to make one laptop stretch between all of us ...!
I have noticed that DS is becoming much more confident with reading/literacy since I've been allowing him to play games on the laptop, and I really want to encourage this. However, I don't want his writing to suffer if he uses a computer too often - I'm not sure how to get the balance right. Or should I stop worrying and accept that we will all be using computers and not writing at all in a few years' time anyway?!
Any advice welcome, thanks very much.