Dyslexia? Visual Peception Impairment

[finknottle]

Our DS1 is 10 and has been diagnosed with this by a paediatrician. It affects his concentration, writing and maths, but his verbal skills are good and his reading too.
We thought he had dyslexia but apparently the whole thing is much more complex and the doc has suggested exercises to help his concentration. He kept harping on about ds's attention but tbh that's much better. He does things like learning 20 words for a dictation which he gets right 3 times and then gets 40% of the words wrong during the actual dictation test. Performs really badly under pressure and has had a miserable year. We thought at first it was his attitude till we saw he just doesn't seem to see how a word is spelt although he can visualise it and spell it aloud correctly. Maths was his favourite subject and he used to get As and Bs till he was 8 and the maths got more complex.
Doc also suggested ergotherapy which seems v popular here in Germany but I'm still not sure I get what it is and what it does, despite my German being OK. Is it occupational therapy? To help with coordination?
A bit lost here No Special Needs procedure in place at all it seems, unless a child officially has dyslexia which ds doesn't. Even then, all they do is stop giving marks for spelling.
The doc couldn't rule out dyslexia, poss because he hadn't done the official tests for that, he did loads of other written and verbal tests.
Sometimes I think the more I read, the less I know, and my ds is in tears so much these days

Sorry to hear about your ds. Mine doesn't score as "classically" dyslexic (whatever that is!) in tests but they have decided he is. They said he would struggle under pressure because he needs more time to make sense of auditory messages and words on paper. Also affects his ability to process and remember complex commands like a maths problem unless it is infront of him. He forgets what he was asked to do by the time he has figured out how to do it. Funny, doesn't affect any other sphere of his life and he generally has an excellent memory for information.
There seems to be so many theories relating to dyslexia. Some don't even recognise it and lump everything together as specific learning disability.
At school ds does braingym exercises, spelling dictation, paired reading, toe to toe.
He has just been assessed for tinted lenses and overlays which have ben shown to help some sufferers. He swears by his pink overlay, which is really helping, and we are looking into glasses but they cost £240 just for the lenses....
Have you thought about seeing if the plastic overlays would help your ds? (Much, much cheaper!)You can find out more by looking up chromagen, who are the manufacturers of the lenses.
Sorry don't know about ergotherapy but best of luck with it.Hope you get on ok. Heartbreaking when they are upset.

Thanks for your post, silversea

That's really interesting about the coloured lenses, I hope they help but wow at 240 pounds.
The doc didn't rule out dyslexia, only recommended ergotherapy which is occupational therapy I've discovered and there's a long waiting list for appointments...
We're supposed to go back in 3/6 months for more tests. The school offer nothing. Doc even said we should carefully consider if we tell the school at all tho; seems mad not to as ds's teachers can't keep telling him off for things he genuinely can't help.
Tbh we waited months for the tests, they took weeks (about 7 start to finish) and we don't seem to have found out as much as I'd hoped. Guess it is a long long process.