My DD is 9 (in year 4) and ever since reception has struggled with writing and spelling. Her reading is excellent - it came easily to her and she scores on the 99th percentile on standardised tests. She reads constantly. She is also quite able verbally.
Her written work however in no way reflects this. It is terse, hard to read, and spelling is erratic. Every school year in the autumn term teachers make lots of worried comments about this and then by spring they say actually she's fine.
This would be OK except she is getting increasingly anxious and frustrated by it. She describes it as having so many ideas that she just can't get down on paper.
She also struggles with rote learning like times tables, organisation, reading music, telling the time, left and right.
She is very socially anxious, though teachers report her as being absolutely fine socially. She is very highly strung generally. Struggles to sleep, gets very worried about pretty much everything.
School think she probably doesn't have anything diagnosable but if she does they think most likely dyslexia.
I can see why they say that but I'm not sure. As we go round and round these same issues every year and she is now herself losing confidence in her ability we feel now is the time to have her assessed to see if we can get to the bottom of what might be going on for her.
Whatever assesment she has would be private. School recommend a dyslexia assessment by a specialist teacher. I might have inclined more towards an educational psychologist as they could consider a wider range of potential learning needs. It seems to me that dyslexia is a possibility but not the only one. School weren't keen on this idea but couldn't really explain why.
So, I was wondering whether anyone had any thoughts. Would you go with the recommendation and see what happens? Would you wait longer for an ed psych? Or something else entirely?