Dyslexia

[acorntotree]

I suspect my ds aged 6 has dyslexia and recently showed some of his work to a friend's mum who works as a dyslexia assessor who said she agreed. However she also said he was unlikely to be diagnosed/supported at school as he is bright and gets by and wouldn't negatively impact school results. Is this true? If so, is there anything I can do myself to support him? My dh is dyslexic and underachieved at school until he was diagnosed. My ds is amazing at maths but hates reading and writing already and seems to be making little progress. Any advice from those with dyslexic children?

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely the school will assess. Funding is extremely limited and schools/LAs often don’t assess for dyslexia unless there are extreme circumstances - some LA’s even have unlawful blanket policies of not diagnosing dyslexia at all.

However, diagnosis or not, the school must make their best endeavours to meet a pupil’s SEN.

If you sought an independent assessment the school would have to take it into account, and can’t refuse to accept it just because it’s independent.

When DS is older a diagnostic assessment would help with exam access arrangements but that is a way off at the moment and an updated assessment would be needed closer to the time.

My DD was diagnosed with dyslexia in Year 6 and has subsequently had extra time in exams. She was at a private school though so they did an in-house assessment (not a full one). She is very capable despite having difficulty reading and spelling etc so it wasn’t picked up earlier. She’s about to go into Year 9 and will be reassessed pre-GCSEs, to ensure she still qualifies for extra time. This is very important to her as she is a slow reader.
To try and reassure you, other than this she hasn’t needed a lot of extra help. She is very capable at maths and science and reasonable though not as good at languages (including English). What I would say is that she has had very good preparation for exams in Years 7 & 8, for example her history teacher gave very clear instructions of how to write essays and how much they were expected to write. This has helped her to move forwards more strongly and I’ve been relieved that her how her academic ability is enabling her to cope.
During her earlier years,I did an awful lot of reading with her but I now see that she didn’t learn phonetically. She learned from repetition. It was painful at times and expensive whilst we did different programmes that we had to pay for but 15mins a day definitely helped her get by. She can now spell some surprisingly difficult words but will still stumble over easier ones, it’s a lottery but I’ve given up worrying. Her teachers are aware and she doesn’t seem to lose marks for spelling (except in English). It is the vocabulary that needs to be built.
Also, DD does process things differently so if she doesn’t have the right vocabulary, her explanation (for example in science) may or may not score marks. At around age 7, DD had a book of written maths questions. She could do the maths but couldn’t read the questions so I’d read them out to her (eg she couldn’t read “weigh”. Again, we gradually built the vocabulary so she could recognise the words.
Its hard to know whether this would help your DS but maybe it might give you some ideas.
Other things we’ve done, we sometimes combined audio books with a written copy, to allow her to independently connect the written word with the correct pronunciation. Otherwise she would just skip words she didn’t know and like all of us, who knows how to pronounce everything? We did get a reading pen but she doesn’t use it much. She found it useful when her science teacher would prepare a paper copy of work on the board so she didn’t have to copy it all down before doing an exercise (eg drawing lines between correct answers).
Luckily her writing speed is normal so she has been able to increase her written work over the years, it used to be really short! If that wasn’t the case, I’d have considered a laptop etc. Lastly, have a look at Oaka, it might be a bit early but they specialise in dyslexic friendly subject leaflets. DD didn’t take to them, she prefers preparing herself but again it might give you ideas for little things to do at home. It’s very hard because you feel that you are almost punishing them by doing extra work at home when they are already probably putting in a lot more effort than most at school but I liked to try and help her keep up and not drift too much during the earlier years (though I didn’t suspect dyslexia at the time).
One thing over the years is that I’ve become more comfortable about the fact that she hates reading (I adore it so that’s a bit painful for me) but I’ve relaxed around her watching and learning more from videos. I’ve also bribed her on rare occasions to read a book or two. There is virtually nothing she would find interesting enough to choose to read so I’ve accepted that. I haven’t given up hope though!
Without a diagnosis, I’m not sure how much your school will do but there is a lot you can do at home, as I say, DD had nothing extra offered until she was 10.
Most importantly, don’t give up, don’t assume your DS will fail or perform poorly. DD has really started to flourish in secondary school (this was true for my DH also, who we think is probably dyslexic - and he got to Cambridge without any help back in the old days). One of DD’s teachers advised that sometimes the primary years can be the hardest for dyslexic pupils, and I think this can be true in the sense that reading and writing are obviously prioritised and they are so hard! However, you know that your DS will bring so much more to the table!! Good luck, and sorry for the mammoth essay!

I have a dyslexic 10yr old who is totally gifted in maths and science. If the school won't assess - the typical arguement is your childs is making progress so there isn't a problem!! Fight for it! I challenged my school every half term from yr 1, my son has just finished yr 5 and we paid for an independent assessment . It was delayed by covid but we got a diagnosis. Also consider Irlens syndrome if your child has dyslexia as they often sit side by side and it can be sorted by a coloured overlay!! The other problem you face is that most schools do not have qualified dyslexia trained teachers and teaching assistants. Most local authorities also say that all teachers and school staff are dyslexia trained - that simply means they have sat in a hall being told what dyslexia children do and how to help them . It does not make them qualified dyslexia teachers!! I would consider specialist support moving forward to support your child. I have 4 kids. All are dyslexic, 2 were diagnosed at gcse and one is about to be diagnosed at 17! An able child will cope upto a point and then hit a wall. The earlier the intervention the better as it avoids exam stress . Good luck

Thank you so much for your responses. My ds sounds very similar to both your children so I have taken a lot of ideas away from this. On every report I have had for my ds the teacher has said he doesn't put enough effort into writing and is lazy with spelling which is frustrating because I do his homework with him every week and it's such an effort for him, it seems like that's not recognised at all.

I remember a parents evening in Year 2. We got to “English” and the teacher said “hmm spellings” - I told her I didn’t care as DD could barely read the words she was being expected to spell and I didn’t think that was fair. The other kids would be seeing these words frequently when reading and she wouldn’t. We went through a few years of things like this, another one was never putting a capital letter at the beginning of sentences, I still have to remind her now!
It’s not nice that the teacher is making assumptions about effort though, I’m sure you do explain thIs. They sound like a throwback to the ‘70’s 🙄

Get him assessed privately if you can afford it.