Should we get a private dyslexia assessment?

[Packo625]

Hi there
Would love some advice please... Since home-schooling in lockdown I've begun to suspect my six year old daughter (yr 2) may be dyslexic. I flagged to the school (state Academy) in October/November and they were quick to do a screener which was great. The screener came back with no signs of dyslexia and we agreed to speak about it again in Feb. The last couple of months of home schooling still make me think there's something more there.

She has great vocabulary and really good ideas, but the problems start when she tries to write the words down. She can sound the words out in her head but writes/types it the wrong way round e.g. 'shuot' instead of 'shout', 'whril' instead of 'whirl', 'prack' not 'park' - yet she would be able to read these words easily and she knows the sounds.

She frequently gets 'd' and 'b' mixed up in both reading and writing. She is also writing some letters backwards e.g. she wrote 'coin' but the 'c' was backwards. This often happens with numbers - she'll write 5 completely backwards and recently wrote 'yes' as 'ye2'. She sometimes writes 12 as 21 and vice versa. When we were writing out numbers in 5s - she knew all the numbers when saying them out but wrote 25, 30, 53, 04, 54, 50 - she's got the order of the numbers mixed up. She also sometimes mixes up words when reading e.g. 'was' as 'saw' etc.

All these things are just examples - she doesn't do any of these things all the time, it completely varies from day to day.

She's reading level 2/3 Oxford Reading and she absolutely hates writing bless her.

I'll talk to the school again but I'm keen to get other people's thoughts - are these just age appropriate mistakes? We would be happy to pay for a private assessment if we think there is a possibility as I believe the sooner any issues are spotted the better.

Thanks in advance for any advice :)

Yes, some of the things you mention seem indicative of a visual learning profile. I am a teacher/tutor who specialises in working with dyslexic children. The point about her being good some days and not others is also common in dyslexic children, However, if you work to iron out the difficulties now, you may not need to go as far as getting a diagnosis. A starting point would be to read the book, "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Davis. She will probably do better without phonics (although you do indicate that she is OK sounding out).

Your daughter could alternatively be dyspraxic if she is more clumsy than having trouble with phonics but all these conditions have the same root cause (and broadly the same way that they can be fixed)- see the book I mentioned above.

Thanks Hummingbird! I'll check out the book. Thank you.

My DD passed the dyslexia screening (Y3), she was then diagnosed with convergence insufficiency (her eyes couldn’t focus properly Y4) as we realised there was something more going on, then finally in Year 6, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. Reading and spelling are hard and this impacts all subjects as she is slower than her classmates. She’s Y7 now.

Your comments about reading/writing/spelling all ring true, though they aren’t definitive. The numbers, I don’t know, another child at school had dyscalculia and her mum once described it as “she could do a big sum and know the answer was 50 but still write 05”.

An assessment would could cover both, I believe. We had an assessment done at school and DD now gets extra time for tests but nothing else has changed as she is coping well. However, at home we introduced audiobooks (sometimes listening whilst ‘reading’ a paperback copy, sometimes alone) to try to help her learn words by sight and to help her to enjoy stories, when reading can be such a chore. I’m trying to encourage her to type work (she’s done a lot of this in lockdown) and use spellcheck etc. Basically, trying to use technology to help her to read faster and write more etc (obviously she’s older than your DD).

We have the book mentioned above and I went through it with DD, where it explained how a person with dyslexia sees the written word, but DD didn’t recognise it - I believe it’s different for each person. The book is useful though.

Hope that helps.

Hi @BreakfastClub80,

Many thanks for sharing your experiences with your DD. It sounds like she's coping well which is great.

I haven't heard about convergence insufficiency, but it's reminded me that I must get her eye sight checked generally anyway. Audio books are a great idea. My DD loves us reading to her and I don't want that love of reading to go because she finds it difficult herself.

Thanks for sharing :)

After many years of have a nagging feeling something wasn't right for my DS, we just had him assessed by an Ed Psch and have discovered he has dyslexia. He is 15 and I am so cross with myself for leaving it so long but his primary school told us there was nothing wrong with him and he would just catch up (which he did) and his secondary school have never flagged up a problem. I am so cross with myself for not following my gut feeling before. If you can afford it, book her in with an Ed Psych and put your mind at rest.

Hi @TwigTheWonderKid. Sorry to hear this about your DS, at least you know now for GCSEs/A-Levels and hopefully he'll get more time etc. The school are sending in their Academy SENCO lead to assess DD after the Easter hols, so we'll see what comes of that. I feel reassured that they are doing everything they can and taking it seriously. I tend to agree with you though, I would hate not to do everything we can at this stage and then find out later that there's an issue. Thanks for responding!

It's good that school are listening to your concerns. it would be interesting to know what your SENDCo's qualifications are My DS was tested for almost 3 hours on Monday by the Ed Psych so you might just want to keep in your mind that it's perfectly possible, especially given her age, that the school may not pick up on what's going on and so my next advice would be to keep that in mind as she gets older. The more I read about dyslexia the more I realise how amazing kids are at adapting to and overcoming these difficulties, which is of course great but can also mean they slip through the cracks. My son's undiagnosed dyslexia was not really a problem for him at his very nurturing primary but it's had a massive effect on his confidence and mental health at secondary.

If you are still around, OP, just to say that my Yr2 DS has recently had a full assessment and is dyslexic. He passed the school's screener in Year R and again in Year 1 (they repeated it because we voiced some concerns after lockdown 1.0).

Screeners don't always pick it up, especially if the child has managed to learn some compensating strategies. His teacher was led by the screener and reassured us all was fine.

DS does reversals too, but be aware that until 7 it is age normal for many kids to do this, so teachers may not give it much credence as a dyslexia indicator in a young child. The biggest thing for us was the gulf between DS's verbal ability, vocab and ideas, and his ability to get anything down on paper, coupled with his very obvious frustration and avoidance of writing in particular. Also spelling is a total car crash and he doesn't remember spellings from one minute to the next.

I meant to add that DS was "assessed" at school by the Senco in Year 1 using a screening tool (which didn't pick it up) so do check what they are using. A full diagnostic assessment by a specialist teacher who is qualified to assess for and diagnose dyslexia will take 3-4 hours, as the PP said. It is usually outside of schools' budgets to provide these and rare to have in house staff who hold the relevant qualification (though of course fabulous is they do).

OP, so much of your post I could have written about my age 7 DD (also year 2), I had a meeting with her teacher last week and came on here to see if anyone had any useful advice. Her teacher agreed that she has a particularly "spiky profile" and that private assessment would be worthwhile. She dies regular letter, sound, word and number digit reversal. She "passed" a practise SATS maths assessment (which school did after the last lockdown to see where their gaps in knowledge were) with higher reasoning than arithmetic scores (fraction questions were all wrong and some others where she mixed her tens and units). She is reading (after a lot of effort and drama last year) purple level books, but battles with the phonics real/alien words with no context to the real ones. Her spelling and writing is her major weakness, but again is very inconsistent. We will be going down the private route if only to try and prevent myself going round in circles, like I have spent the last year doing (since teaching her in first lockdown) and wondering how I can help her learn in a way she understands.