14 yr old - how do you keep their self esteem up?

[SoTiredNeedHoliday]

HI,
My 14yr old dyslexic child has huge potential but is simply not applying themselves for fear of failing. They believe that they can't do the school work so its better ( in their very teenage mind) not to try their best.

How do you overcome this hurdle.......

I have been trying for a long long time with praise and support and teachers giving praise and support when there is the opportunity to.

Is there something else, some other way that I am missing. Its so sad to see them with such little belief in their abilities.

I have a profoundly dyslexic teenage DS and whilst I can’t offer any magic words of wisdom, the only thing that has any effect in his case is to be led by him with focussing onnpositive acheivements. He knows he needs to be able to read and record to be functional and like your DS the “I don’t care” attitude is default rather than being shown to fail. I don’t know how severe your sons dyslexia is but assistive tech helps a lot, a c-pen etc but the only way anything works is to concentrate on the positives. The worst thing that ever happened was a teacher said to DS that if he doesn’t try harder he won’t get into college to study what he wants (he’s really talented at the practical element of this topic but struggles with the written) He’s now refusing to even entertain the idea of studying this subject at all, all because of misjudged words which have set us back years. Like I say, just keep focusing on the positives there sadly isn’t a magic wand.

luxuryhandwash Thank you for your comments, the two sound very similar. One negative comment and they would rather not try.

It is so heartbreaking to see the potential not being used and to see how scared they are of criticism.

Other than the c-pen is there anything else your son uses on the technology front?

He uses speech to text/text to speech tech (Apple iPad is great) it’s an ongoing battle to get the school to modernise their way of thinking though. There are lots of apps that can read pdfs etc. Unfortunately he is so illiterate that he has to have a reader/scribe LSA in a class room setting to access the curriculum but my aim is to get him functionally independent as “in the real world” she won’t be there. He’s bright and capable but literally held back by the extraordinarily profound dyslexia. He does most of his homework research watching YouTube videos or searching for podcasts etc that he can listen to rather than read. It’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s never going to be able to climb the mountain, but there just might be a longer route that goes round it instead!

I have quite a lot of experience with teaching literacy. I'd be happy to try and help if anyone would like to pm me.

Luxuryhandwash what sort of apps does he use - can you pass me the names? There are so many out there but I am not sure of what is useful and don't have any time to waste, so I'd love your advice as a starting point.

My DS uses his laptop so perhaps some of the apps might have a laptop version available rather than an IPAD?

How does he go with writing up notes for each subject - for instance the physics teacher said that 'they have a wonderful text book to make their notes from'..... That is like a giant mountain for a dyslexic student to have to read the chapter / topic of a physics text book then to make your own notes for it.

I let the teacher know he really does learn visually and by listening so it would be good if there were notes provided. But he will need to be able to keep up with the reading and the notes

Hi, to be honest we did away with the laptop (although he has it at home) in favour of the iPad as it is miles ahead in terms of built in tech (Siri for example) Dragon is ok for use on a laptop but doesn’t read (only reads back what it’s typed)
My son does have an EHCP because of his severity (hence a person to read and scribe) but even then it’s a constant battle getting teachers to make the adjustments. Your problem with physics for example is exactly what I battle with. The c pen will read the text book and the speech to text will write. But unless staff are on board it’s no wonder the poor kids throw in the towel - who wouldn’t?! Makes me mad!!