DD10 newly diagnosed dyslexic Help!!!!

[Fruitloop]

Gosh i do not know where to start. My dd has finally been diagnosed with dyslexia. I had to pay for it myself as the school said that they did a test on her when she was 8 years old and it came back negative. She is not considered as a 'failing' pupil by the school and therefore are reluctant to offer any help! On top of finding out dd diagnosis, we are also looking at senior schools. We looked at our first one tonight and although the senco was very helpful, the overall feeling that I got was that great sentence 'as she is not failing, we will probably not offer any additional help and will just monitor her'
Am I stressing for nothing? Any advise

there are probably more posters with dyslexia experience on the sen board rather than the sn board tbh - it's under education i think, rather than sn?

Try the British Dyslexia Society? They may be able to offer some good advice there. They have a website too I think?

Hey fruit... ds2 has dyslexia ( as well as asd sensory issues etc etc).. Ds1 is dyslexic and so am I.

Trouble with going up to secondary school is the increase in Reading and writing..( particularly at gcse level).. And being able to get down things like homework or class notes fast enough etc.
So it's worth finding a school that will take these things into consideration and come up with stratagies for these and maybe tell you what help they think she may need ( disregarding how academic she is).. weirdly both my boys are academic.. And I have a degree.. But it will be things like extra time or off White worksheets etc that will help her and what you need to be hearing from a school is something like " we deal with this a lot.. Some of the things we can do are.. "
rather than monitor her.. Where she could get lost.

There are school with dyslexic friendly status out there.. The bda I'm guessing would know who they are.. Or ask the lea which schools in your area have this status.

Having said that I went right through secondary school without even being picked up.. And I'm actually pretty bad :) .. But I still went on and got a good education and have done alright.. So don't panic :)

Oh and the best thing I can suggest to help your daughter .. Is to read as much as she can without getting tired everyday.. And to learn how to touch type..
I and ds1 both type and spell by the patterns that the words make on the keyboard... And read by the shapes of the words :).. Oh and spellchecks often don't help so don't rely on them.

OP - dyslexia is a very broad and unhelpful dx. What exactly are your child's problems? Reading? Writing? Visual? Auditory? Memory? Organisation?

And what kind of help do you want from school?

My DS has ASD and my DD has dyslexia - and I find the dyslexia way more worrying. Because nothing helps her - whereas loads of things help my son.

My DD is getting a tremendous amount of support but she just is totally unable to learn to read or write. I find it totally heartbreaking and very stressful.

So, give us some more info. What does your child struggle with? And what kind of help do you think she needs?

First, sorry that I ventured into the wrong place. I am new to this and did not mean to offend anyone.
Second, thank you ACC for your advice. As a matter of interest, do you find that word processors that read work back to you help?

IndigoBell, I think we crossed over. Good questions!
Have not received full Ed Psyc report yet but was verbally told that she has very poor working memory and equally poor phonological skills. She can read fairly well but told me yesterday that the lines of words on the page bounce up and down so she keeps loosing her place.
What do I want from the school? Recognition of her condition and help to get through the education system. DD is a hard worker and law abidding. We think that the reason that she has not been 'picked up' until know. Her self esteem is through the floor and I just do not want her to get lost in the system.
Sorry, am in a bit of a blind panic about the whole thing. I know that she is not severe (DD good friend is so know the problems she faces)but also know that she needs help to reach her potential.

You are very lucky if she is telling you it's a vision problem - that is normally fixable.

My recommendation is to visit a BABO optometrist who will test her for 2 things

1. Irlen syndrome - which is normally fixable by wearing coloured glasses or using a coloured overlay

2. Visual tracking problems - which are normally fixable by doing vision therapy

So, don't panic yet. Start with getting her eyes investigated - and then you can move on to her next problem.

her phonological skills - do you mean she doesn't know how to blend sounds into words? If so is that just down to not having been taught it? If so you are again lucky - because (once her vision is fixed) you can teach this very easily.

There is a lot of discussion about the best way to teach children to read. And it is entirely possible that your child has been taught via 'whole words' rather than 'synthetic phonics'. If she hasn't been taught synthetic phonics. You can just teach it to her. Toe by Toe is 10 minutes a day at home. I would definitely give that a go after I'd had her eyes tested (by a BABO optometirist - not a bulk standard optician)

If you have vista or above there is already a screenreader and a voice recognition thing on the accessability bit on there.. Which may help.

It does help sometimes.. It's worth bash!

irlens does sound a possability if words or lines are jumping about.. So indigos advice is great.. While your waiting you can try out printing dome stuff off or getting her to write on non bleached paper ( bright White paper is a nightmare as are bright computer screens .. I set mine lower!)
or you could try lilac or blue paper to print things off with double line gaps.. That can help.

I taught both my boys to read the way I taught myself because school stratagies didn't really work wonders.. And I just assumed I was probably in the best pistition to teach them :)..
The best way I can descibe this is that I taught whole words and used a red pen to outline the shapes.
Then for longer words taught them in shape sections leading to the whole word..
Dh had to do school Reading with dd ( non dyslexic).. Because she blends and the boys and I can't do that!
Spelling the boys and I learnt by rote and by pattern.

Hope that helps :)

Thank you both. DD was taught Jolly Phonics and I started to notice a problems when she began to blend. Got all sorts of books and games to help her but they did not work. Also tried colour coding to visually show her how to decode words. Worked on the day but DD could not remember them the following day. As a matter of interest, I can coach DD to do spelling tests but again, DD cannot retain the words. Maybe shapes are next.
I have never heard of Irlen syndrome so will look into getting her checked.

TBH I'm felling really depressed about DD today. Just decided to give up on yet another dyslexia learn to read program (Easyread).

This blasted program claims a 96% success rate (for dyslexic kids) - and it still doesn't work for my DD.

Absolutely nothing works. She is totally unable to learn to read and write. I'm at my wits end....

I have done so much research on it, tried almost everything, and nothing helps.

Indigo.. How old is dd?

She's 7 and is in year 3.

She has had extra help since reception. More or less 10 mins 1:1 every day for the last 3 years. And she can still only read 3 letter words.

It's not blending that is the problem. It seems to be a combination of an atrocious memory and very slow processing - I think.

okay don't panic .. Big thing I totally believe in is that she enjoys litterature ( sp? Sorry lol).. So audio books, you Reading to her, going to the theatre .. All of this will help. Encourage writing using a voice recognition system.. ( you need to train the computer by Reading certain things out loud.. But I found that you can whisper what it says on the screen to ds's and they just copy what you say.)
Be relaxed about it.. I'd see what school offer in way of more help. 10 minutes a day isn't a lot!

You can also play the word fishing game:
get the fridge magnetic letters.. Put them on one side of the sink or bowl filled with water.. Pick up a word card..( just make these yourself ).. Then find the right letters and throw them into the water in order ( we like to do this with a big splash :)).. And then fish them out in the right order.. Saying the letters in order. No problem referring to the card in the begining.
To make the game harder you can do longer words.. Or two short words in the bowl at once ( so there is more letters to choose from).. And then see if she can remember the order to fish without the card.

You can do this with sand as well. Or hide in squirty cream and sprinkles ( lots of licking fingers in that version is a must!)
It basically rote and kinetic learning.. As she can feel the shapes of the letters..and it's not so hiddious as sitting there staring at a piece of paper getting frustrated.

Think it's a bit late to not panic :)

I haven't tried stuff like you suggested for learning words. I know the school has done a lot of stuff with magnetic letters with her - but I haven't tried any whole word learning. I have never been able to teach her a word. ( She is still working on the 45 high frequency words they are meant to learn in reception)

In year 2 her IEP target was to learn 20 of her reception words in 6 months - and she failed to.

She doesn't just get 10 minutes a day 1:1 she also gets an hour a day in a small group doing phonics.

She has just gone into the juniors in a new school - and as usual they are confident they can teach her. I'm going to give them 2 months and then see if they can prove that she has actually made some progress.

What is dd's confidence like Indigo?

Amazingly her confidence is really good.

No one has ever told her she can't write - so she doesn't realise :)

She's always sticking her hand up to read in class and such Her new teacher was absolutely gobsmacked.....

That's good, I hope that the new school helps but it's good to have a deadline too!

My dd3 is on an iep but not sure what's up with her, will see the teacher in a wk and poss go down assessment route I think. Her confidence was knocked badly last year, trying to build it up this term and it's costing me a fortune!x