New year, need a new plan to support my kids

[stormandtrooper]

Happy New Year everyone! I’m new to Mumsnet but hoping for some great ideas to help me reach my goal for 2019 - to get the best support for my two awesome kids, both of whom have some barriers to overcome.

Let me introduce you.....

Scott is 11 and makes us beam with pride everyday! He’s kind and sociable and hilarious to be around. He is articulate with a strong vocabulary. Secondary school is on the horizon.

3 years ago was diagnosed with Dyslexia, ADHD (primarily inattentive type - no behaviour issues) and Dyspraxia. His primary school has done a great job boosting his confidence.

Although his reading is massively improved, he can reading anything now, it’s still quite laboured and below age
expectations. Maths is a huge challenge for him.

Hope is 7 and also has a really wonderful, engaging personality...funny, smart, loving and we are incredibly proud of her. She seems to have some similar issues to her brother although no diagnosis of any specific condition. We think her challenges are not perhaps as significant as her brother but reading is coming much more slowly than her peers and maths and memory are also an issue. Her confidence is a real worry for us and she has already labelled herself as ‘stupid’ and ‘not clever’.

So here’s what I’m after......

organisations or specific education programmes (either in or out of schools) with a track record of helping children overcome the barriers I mention.

Education hacks! For example, someone once advised us to take them out of languages so they get more time on other areas

Books/videos/websites

Early I know but.....alternatives to GCSE or ways to support them through GCSE. Could they do less subjects to reduce the memory load perhaps?

Basically any thoughts or ideas are very welcome

Thanks all
Paul

Following this as have a child of 9 who has very similar profile to your Scott. How did you get dyslexia diagnosed?

Our Ed Psych via school will assess for specific reading problems but will not give diagnosis of dyslexia (the LA policy).

Facebook has good forums for dyspraxia.

If not much traffic here, post on main SEN board.

meant SEN education...

Thanks so much for your reply and will definitely post in the other area too. In the end we paid someone to assess him privately. The school were happy to accept the report which was good. This is where the dyspraxia suggestion came from...although technically he does not have an official diagnosis for this.

We're the other way round - got dyspraxia diagnosis first via paediatrician who referred to OT/physio.

Its a while off yet, but am going to see if we can opt for less subjects at GCSE. Going towards teenage years, kids with SEN are more likely to have mental health concerns, so I would be paying close attention to building positive mental health through all his strengths and successes. Plenty of activities away from academia to show that life is not all based on those criteria.

For reading I had a look at reading bears books and toe by toe which are often cited here. A mix of sight words and phonics using high interest books/online resources like e books /audio books can help with the reading gap. We are working with a 3 year gap here, just do little and often - so maybe half an hour a day. Writing words can help get them into memory too - and looking at the shape of them (where you draw long and short boxes round each letter)

We do a motor skills programme called motor skills united (can get online) which covers all the bases from gross to fine, balance, ball skills and so on. He does this at school around 30 mins a day small group. At home we have a jar with fortune cookie type slips which have an activity on - we try to do 2 or 3 lucky dips for exercises and activities.

Understood.com might be useful, I use pintrest for phonics and sight word activities, teacher forums on FB for appropriate age they are learning at (Y1/2 for us) and mumsnet is certainly an excellent place to get ideas. You can google older threads 'mumsnet + dyslexia' for specifics if not many replies. Lot of people on here willing to share what works though - its great.

Welcome!

Wow...thank you so much!!! So so helpful. Really appreciate it. You have got me fired up now which is what I needed. Thanks again