any other parents of Boys with experience of speech/lang delay / reading/writing difficulties pls?

[Jodee]

sorry for the bad spelling, etc. typing this very quckly at work!

Briefly, DS is nearly 8 (y3), has had a great deal of SALT since Reception, and is being assesed again on Fri by senior therapist (she may discharge him). I have no concerns now about his speech, but his reading/spelling is seriously behind. am very concerned that he is not catching up, is getting further and further behind. he has an IEP as well, he struggles with concentratiion.

I am thinking along dyslexia lines now, this has never been raised so far with SENCO or therapist.

I really wanted to hear from other parents who have had similar experiences with their boys - how has their reading/writing developed, should I really press for more help? Thank you !

DS2 is 10 and was diagnosed with severe dyslexia last year. He could read well as he was memorising the words but his spelling was always very poor.

The school did not pick up the dyslexia, so I would suggest asking for a test if you are at all concerned.

DS2 has not really progressed, I'm sorry to say, but I think I am more aware of his difficulties now. He brought home his topic book by accident last week and I was nearly in tears, as he writes very little and the words are more like groups of random letters.

Don't let your DS be signed off if at all possible as it sounds as if he still needs help, and the work is only going to get harder. Good luck.

I Pressed for tests for my ds at 7 when it became increasingly obvious he could not write or spell. School did a generic special needs tests which showed that he could not write or spell
I had a private test done and he is dyslexic but he can read pretty well. He has to memorise all new words he comes across as he cannot decode them IYKWIM. He also suffers from concentration problems.

I have been teaching him to touch type and have a word recognition programme for our PC now so as he speaks, it types for him. School allow him to type most homework as his writing is so poor.
I would get your ds looked at sooner rather than later. The school told me for 2 years hewould 'catch up' and his problems were just immaturity. He is now 10 and really behind with writing and spelling

Thank you both, it doesn't really bode well. DS memorises words; before I realised this I thought he was progressing well, and he will guess a word first rather than decode it by blending the sounds eg. this morning he twice read 'push' instead of 'pull'.

He does seem to have a low self-esteem at the moment, any ideas about boosting this?

he has found it difficult going from lovely cuddly infants, where he had a little bit of responsibility collecting the younger children to take them to the nurture group he also attended, to being bottom of the pile in Y3 in the juniors, no separation between younger and older children at playtime and feeling a bit 'picked on', lots of homework, etc.

IMO, the low -self esteem thing is crucial to beat, more so even than writing thingy (there are ways round all that, thank god for technology)

for example, my son has fantastic problem-solving skills, so we big him up on that, and his maths and science understanding is much higher than mine; he loves the fact that he is better than I am at maths!

Re homework - once I had a diagnosis, I (politely) 'told' the teacher he would only do the homework I thought achievable or necessary. That was fine with her, but before I would have felt I was undermining her.

For instance, DS2 is very good at maths, but the effort involved in copying out sums, underlining etc means he quickly becomes exhausted. Now I get him to stop when I can see he understands the concept.

Toe by Toe has really helped with his spelling but it does have to be done three or four times a week for 15 mins. We have very little imput at school so I do this myself. It helps with decoding and building up words which DS2 cannot do.

Agree about self esteem. DS2 is a member of the Green Team and has been on the pupil council. There should be opportunities to excel at school that are not all academic.

ah yes sherbert.
Jodee, you willhave to learn to be a bit pushy as some schools are bteer than others in their understanding of the problems faced by dyslexics.(subsitute other specific learning difficulty here)

I am not assertive, but I had to learn to stick up for my ds when it came to basic things like telling them nicely that ds would be typing homework (otherwise they'd be getting one paragraph of unintelligible writing which took ds 2 hours to write, leaving all of us tearful and wrung out )

Have you had a look at Dyspraxia as a diagnosis as well. Especially if he is a clumsy child.

DS is 12 and has been on and off the special needs register in primary and is now back on it at secondary school. The SENCO thinks he is dyslexic but hasn't done the full assessment yet.
He didn't really click with reading until he was 7 , but now has good comprehension skills, but is reluctant to read books.

His spelling and punctuation is his main problem.
At primary school they did a few schemes with him. Something called Wordwall and Stareway to Spelling which is by the Toe by Toe people but is actually for spelling,whereas Toe by Toe is more of a reading scheme.

It did help to some extent. He just narrowly scraped a 4 in his SATS writing last May, but everything else was a high 5 including reading.

Now he is at secondary school he does most of his homework on the pc, still gets a lot of spelling wrong. Last night he kept putting mite instead of might . The spell checker didn't pick it up because mite is a proper word. He also confuses are for our

Science and IT are his strongest subjects but is in top set and coping very well with all subjects except French and German. His main problem with these is lack of confidence.
He had a french and german test this week, both of which he is having to resit because he says he can't remember what he has learnt for them.

I have had to give up on the notion of any languages for DS2 because his problems include language comprehension trouble. He has problems with, where in a sentance a word goes, which tense to use and the inflection of his voice. I think the language he needs to learn first should be english.
DS has been on the special needs register since he was pre-school. and has been having 1 to 1 for all of that as well (15 hours) and it still wasn't helping because nobody had a diagnosis, all they were doing was trying to keep his frustration levels within bounds instead of treating his problem. We have taken him out of school to Home Educate him, all school were teaching him was 'how to be a failure'.

Jodee, I was going to suggest dyspraxia as something to consider as well, depending on how his motor skills are.

I'm afraid I know sod all about facilities for dyslexia down here but we do have a fantastic co-ordination clinic who provide OT & Physio and really are superb. DD ended up having SALT privately after not getting a lot of help from the NHS clinic where we are.

I think that given the fact you feel he is getting further and further behind then it is time for the SENCO to be doing something more than an IEP. I would ask for a referral to the child development centre or for him to be seen by an Ed Psych.

For self esteem I have found with DD the key is to get her doing other stuff as much as possible that she really enjoys and can be good at, it seems to soften the blow of the difficulties at school. I know boys and girls are different but I would guess a similar things may well help him.

Haven't seen you for ages, maybe we should try to sort out another meet up or something ?

Most LEAs are very reluctant/can't afford to diagnose dyslexia... they will provide the support but since dyslexia is widely linked with just poor spelling... I could write an entire essay on this here Not relevant...

Anyway with regards to SLCN it will DEFINITELY have a knock on effect on reading and writing ... however it is not automatic that your DC will have dyslexia... Certain elements of speech and language development overlap and if he's got receptive language delay then it will affect his ability to store and retrieve information. In my experience, if you pressed for a statement you would only get "language delay affecting the development of his reading and spelling". The best thing to do would be to speak to your SENCO about Toe By Toe which would help develop his language AND reading skills starting from the very basics (helping self esteem as you can praise and identify what he knows) The repetition works well if he is on the SpLD spectrum as it will target his memory. Best of all you can watch it work as it can be worked on at home as a previous poster has suggested.... Little and often is better than once a week GOOD LUCK