WONDER IF MY SON COULD BE DYSLEXIC

[cmuir]

Hi

 

My son is 6.5 and has Aspergers Syndrome. Although he's incredibly bright (I know most mum's say that about their kids!), he is underachieving at school. We're live in Scotland, so don't know if this will be meaningless or not, but he's apparently on Oxford reading level 3 when his peers are mostly on level 9. He's apparently having difficulty with Maths counting up to 20, yet he seems to have regressed as he could count up to 24 when he was 2.5. His handwriting is very poor (he's ambidextrous). His school report says that he needs a great deal of encouragement in general and he's very reluctant to put pencil to paper. His concentration is very poor. This evening I encouraged him to write a few words for me - he wrote 'dog' and it looked like 'boe'. One thing I have noticed is that he seems very able to process visual/photographic/symbolic information much better than written information. I realise it's very difficult to give a definitive 'yes, your child could have dyslexia', but wonder if anyone could advise if the aforementioned could point to that being a possibility. Big difficulty I'm having with school is that they're cutting his support in school from 1-2-1 full-time support to shared part-time support which I'm not happy about at all. I'm deeply concerned that the academic gap between my son and his peers could widen. Last thing I want would be anyone to suggest he's held back a year - that would destroy him since he's made good 'friends' and is apparently very well liked, despite his social difficulties (associated with having AS).

 

Comments would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

Caroline.

[JsMum]

Hi, now I will try to make this short, because for me I would say its the Dyslexia that causes the most damage for J in his education, you see from him been 6yrs old it has been documented and reported that Joshua was Dyslexic, but no one actually diagnosed it, and no one actually put it on his statement and no one actually gave him enough help, feel free to replace the no one with LEA, but they didnt do a thing, the 6 yr old Jay, was a very unhappy Jay in the classroom, his work was repeatedly tossed in the paper bin, his spellings that were wrong brought him to facing a nice large red brick wall and the kids soon got to know why he was there, there words was because he is stupid, until one got a black eye from a swift high kick, but J had to stand at the brickwall again because he hurt someone, no one bothered to ask why, Js struggled throw his litracey recieving just 30 mins a week to help him, in these lessons there Dyslexic provision, its part of his IEP, throw the years he thinks of himself as stupid, thick, eradicating his self esteem, taking away his confidence, breaking him down, even assessments at a specialist Dyslexic Centre didnt increase the support until recently when he went throw a full educational psychologist assessment, he isnt just Dyslexic, she said, he is severely, dyslexic, well that matched the Speicalist Dyslexic Centres assessment, and she insisted that J be diagnosed and his statement will be changed to read this, along with his ASD and SIDs the thing that concerns me is that in Js class there is other children who cant read, other children as old as J, and J is severely dyslexic what range are these undiagnosed children.

 

Having Dyslexia assessed and then treated will make a massive difference to a childs life if they have Dyslexia, its about confidence, self esteem, and with the ability to read, a tool to learn and enrich your understanding of the world around you.

 

For J its the Dyslexia that has caused him a lot of pain.

 

JsMum

[llisa32]

Hiya,

 

I thought I'd share my story as it may be relevant..It's difficult for me to say if you son is Dyslexic but from about aged 5 both the school and myself thought my son was.

 

He was having considerable difficulty learning to read the most basic words and absolutely hated having to read or do any writing - he also used to mix up letters like D and B quite a lot.

 

He started having a one to one session for an hour a week with the LSU based on Dyslexia and basically they went right back to the beginning in terms of teaching him to read - so they went back to the alphabet, and learning all the sounds etc again. As soon as he got the hang of the phonics he started to pick up the reading.

 

Round about age 6.5 I started to consider that J might be on the autistic spectrum, and at the same time I was perplexed that his reading had improved so significantly and was continuing to improve.

 

To cut a long story short...J was diagnosed as HFA in February this year aged 8, and all of the specialists believe he does not have Dyslexia - what he does have is significant problems with auditory processing which was in part why he struggled to comprehend phonics and is also why he struggles at present with spelling.

 

From what I've been told quite a lot of chldren on the spectrum struggle with writing and a lot of them dislike having to do it - my sons very concious about his scrawl. My son also went through a long phase of calling himself stupid etc as he saw his peers reading different books to him and it was apprent to him that his reading wasn't of the same standard as them.

 

So...without wishing to confuse you....it's possible that he's not dyslexic, but may need extra help to learn that side of things as if he were (if that makes sense! ....

 

We took things really slowly, explained to him that it was just the way his brain learnt stuff like reading, but that it didn't mean he wouldn't 'get it' in the end. We started right back at the alphabet, and kept boosting his confidence along the way.

 

His reading age has now gone from 2 years below him age 6 to half a year above him age 8.

 

He will now at least attempt to read most things and has finally been able to enjoy flicking through a comic - he still hates writing and drawing with a vengence - but it's a start!

 

Hope you manage to get some support in place for your son <'>