I need to pick the brain of a parent who has a dyslexic child who has been through secondary school!

[grants1000]

That's it really. I would like to ask advice from someone whoose child, with dyslexia, has been through secondary school. I need to talk to someone whoose been there and done it.

DS's school are great and are working on a help package, but he's getting a bit frustrated and overwhelmed with it all.

Hi grants. My ds is currently in y12 and doing OK though I wouldn't say school were particularly helpful throughout. What do you want to know?

My DS school don't seem interested. They put him on a computer program called "Success Makers" but stopped it as his reading and spelling are OK. However, they seem to have failed to notice that he has no grasp of punctuation, paragraphs, capitalisation etc. He is in Yr 8.

Watching - not there yet, but interested.

The attitude of the school has been to wait until the exam stage and then talk about extra time or the use of a computer.

But my son is only mildly dyslexic.

(The only truly hopeless part was the MFL. We never cracked how to help him learn successfully through a couple of school lessons a week and it became an exercise in futility.)

waiting until the child gets to exams before introducing new ideas is futile IME. A bit like being given driving lessons in a robin reliant and then taking your driving test in a fighter jet.

Teach touch typing at home, so when they do get a laptop - there are a lot of excelent free dowloadable bits of software out there on the interweb that you acn download that will teach how to do it, often learning finger patters/muscle memory is more efficient than learning how to spell words by writing them down with a pen and paper....plus their work is then legible.

Go in and have a chat with your SEN coordinator.

As above, there should be a SenCo at the school whom you can discuss your son's dyslexia with.

JJ