writing backwards and written reversals

[darky]

does anyones child write backwards?? my daughter who is 7 and in year 3 has a problem with written reversals and has started to write backwards from the right side of the page to the left. like it becomes ti etc. she is right handed.

whats confusing is, she can read really well and is probably above some of her peers, but her writing is hardley legable and she still reverses letters and numbers and is now writing backwards.

 

can someone with dyslexia read fine, but not write?? cant find anything about this, most dyslexia sites say dyslexics have trouble reading.

[smiley]

Hi,

 

This can be a typical stage of writing development - but if she previously wrote the correct way around i'd be having a word with the EP.

 

Is she bored with the school work? My son is above his peers academically in some areas, and will often find ways to push himself a bit more...........??

 

[Nic m]

hi darky,

my daughter is 9 (nearly 10) and in primary 6 and she has a reading age of 12+ but her writing is very poor and with lots of extra support it is only now becoming legible.Part of the reason is the hyper mobility but she also struggles with her alphabet and spelling.At 7 she was still writing letters backwards but that has improved a lot in the last few years.Good luck.

Nicola

[loulou]

Hi Darky,

 

Kai is 8 and in Y4. He also sometimes writes from right to left and has always done this. He writes numbers back to front (mostly 6,9,5,2 and 3). Last week his teacher commented on this at parents' evening and was quite concerned that he is still doing it at age 8. His reading is probably about age 6, but he was off school for 18 months so hasn't yet caught up. He is very intelligent. I know number/letter reversal is fairly common amongst younger children.

 

I will speak to my sister about this (she's a Y3/4 teacher) and let you know what she says.

 

Loulou xx

[jb1964]

Hi Darky,

 

My daughter wrote letters back to front, upside down and inside out - if you know what I mean. She mirror wrote regularly up until she was around 8-9yrs - then it suddenly disappeared with only certain letters/numbers causing her problems and I would say these have completely fizzled out now (she's 13) - I recall many times at parents evening being concerned but the teachers weren't - telling me that it was quite common for children to do this and that they wouldn't be worried unless she was still doing it at 11! Her reading age has always been well above her age and her english she had level 5 when she left primary.

 

Take care,

Jb

[Valiant_Skylark]

Yes. If by "fine" you mean ignoring the "effort" it takes and assuming that the child reads, on testing, at or above their age.

 

Eldest son did all of the things you mention too, but was always assessed as a very good reader (say two plus years above his age).

 

BUT in reality he had severe problems with eye-movement control (and dyspraxia, ASD and elements of dyslexia) which meant he was seeing the words all over the place and then having to effectively make a best guess as to what he was reading. Because he was a clever little stick, he mostly guessed correctly, hence the teachers always thought he had "no problems".

 

We noticed far more problems with reading when the child was tired or when the text got smaller as the child got older. He also tended to miss out the "little" words like and, but, so etc. Most school reading assessments tended to be just at the single word level, where he obviously had far less problems, so it was only when we booked into the Dyslexia Research Trust (DRT) for a free assessment, as we were fed up with being ignored, that we finally found just how hard he was working to read at the text level. DRT gave us yellow specs and eye exercises that helped, and we have since gone on to see Ian Jordan (Orthoscopics) who helped further.

 

I don't know if this helps at all. My son's dyspraxia is severe - he isn't just slow with his writing, he flips orientations without realising too (and his punctuation is "challenged"!) We now have get-round technology written into his statement ie laptop and scribe. Getting the school to honor the Statement provisions has, however, been an enormous struggle that I won't go into here!

 

I'd suggest checking out everything you can find on dyspraxia, dyslexia, behavioural optometrists and people like Ian Jordan.

 

Good luck,

 

VS xx

[darky]

thanks for your advice. my daughter has been diagnosed with dyspraxia also, so that may explain some things. we have a behaviour optemeritist localy, and have been toying with booking my younger two in to see him. my youngest son has a dx of dyslexia you see, he has a whole range of visual perceptual problems. my daughter was assessed 2 years ago, but was still a bit young. its only now she is having to put significantly more effort in, her reversals, writing backwards and presentation is getting worse if anything. they are both in the midst of stat assessment, im hoping we will have a good case for laptops for them both, but i know we are going to have to fight, but im good at that!!