Question about Dyslexia

[joybed]

Hi as you know I have 2 boys with ASD and a daughter who has some features of ASD but is coping well generally and just appears very shy. School up until now have had no concerns. She is in year 1 and doing very well with her reading. However her writing and spelling are less good. For the past 3 weeks she has scored 0/5 on spelling tests and appears to be genuinely struggling her scores have been getting less and less over the past 6 weeks or so. For the past 2 weeks she has been refusing to learn her spelling and this week has been genuinely distressed when I have asked her to do them. I spoke to her teacher and they agreed that Lydia would join another spelling group to increase her confidence before she rejoined her present group. However she is upset she has been moved down a group nobody has told her she has moved down she just knows that. She told me she had joined duck group and I said that was good to which she burst into tears and said i didn,t understand as that was the group down and this meant she was stupid. I explained she just needed to increase confidence etc but she wouldn,t have it and said there was no point as she couldn,t possibly get them all right as she was stupid. Obviously much encouragement has been given and much liason with the teacher. We have also noticed that her writng is very untidy and that a lot of her letters are back to front. She often gets B and D mixed up. She is aware her writing is untidy but sayd she can,t write and neater, my writng is also very untidy and I told her this which cheared her up a bit. So my question is can you be dyslexic but stilll read well. There is a strong family history of dyslexia on my side and Piers possibly has it also. How can I encourage a child who has given up. I don,t really care about my children being top of the class so please don,t assume i am concerned she is not clever enough, I just want her to be happy and at the moment this is making her sad.

[smiley1590]

i used to get my B's and D's mixed up and similiar spelled sounding words like saw and was i have dyspraxia and some ways can be close with dyslexia as all connected with the ASD side of things does she have poor handwriting balance co -ordination , fine and gross motor skills are weaker than others?!

 

XKLX

[chris54]

It is quite possible to be dyslexic and be an able reader, but not being able to remember how a word is spelt, does not necessarily mean you are dyslexic.

What system of learning spellings do they use?

Poor handwriting, like has been said has other causes and may or may not be caused by dyslexia.

 

When I was in primary school I had very good hand writing, we even learnt joined up writing by the age of 7. But I could not read at all, I just coped what was in front of me having no idea what it said.

 

My son is now a prolific reader but has problems with spelling, he often spells using pure phonics which means he gets words wrong but readable. And his hand writing, just about readable some of the time but he is not classed as being dyslexic.

[Suze]

My son is severley dyslexic,...yr 1 is still quite young to be able to get a definite dx .My son was 7 when he was dx.Writing letters backward is also quite common and lots of kids will do this and not be dyslexic.School are doing the best thing , trying to increase her self esteem etc.The next 12 mnths will make things more obvious if she is dyslexic, in the meantime give lots of positive feed back , keep her self esteem up and stay in close contact with school, best wishes suzex.

[Kazzen161]

My son has atypical dyslexia - he can read well, but his handwriting and spelling are poor. As his spelling improved, his handwriting also improved.

 

Infant schools usually do a dyslexia screening test on children who they think may have dyslexia - have they done one?

[purplehaze]

Hi, My daughter who is 19 and at uni always had problems with spelling tests and getting letters muddled when writing, she has always been disorganised and clumsy etc. She coped ok in primary apart from being told to pay more attention to silly spelling mistakes, but in secondary particularly in 6th form she struggled and her English teacher suggested she may be dyslexic and that I should talk to the SENCO. When I mentioned it to the SENCO she told me as my daughter was in 6th form they wouldn't get funding to test her and that she would have been tested in the past. Well she is in her first year of uni and has been diagnosed with dyslexia and they are offering her support. My daughter has always loved reading and has never had a problem with reading. It can be hard on their self-esteem even when my daughter had to have a spelling test as part of the DX she was so worried and was nearly sick and this is due to her past tests at school and teachers using the word silly (even lecturers have said silly spelling mistakes etc).

 

You and the school will need to be positive and praise your daughter lots (which i'm sure you are)-use her strengths which is reading which can help with spelling! Make it fun by taking her shopping and writing her own shopping list or think out of the box rather than just practicing a spelling list, break words up (when my daughter had the days of the week spellings I had to break the syllables up for her and she found that easier) etc. I also find my daughter still spells better if a word is spelt the way it sounds-so phonic was good for her but anything else was/is a struggle.

 

Could you tell your daughter that she might be able to help others in the new group with their reading as she was so good at it??????

 

It sounds like the school are doing good to support your daughter and you which is a really good base fro things to work really well

[Sally44]

My son has also recently been dx with dyslexia and his is severe.

There are lots of different skills needed to be able to read and write and spell. Like autism, dyslexia is on a spectrum and there are different areas of difficulty.

Eventhough my son really struggles with phonics he can sound out and blend some simple CVC words. But recognition of them never becomes automatic. But being able to see the word enables him to use his phonic skills to blend the sounds.

If you totally remove any visual clues - as in spelling - it becomes even harder because you have to associate sounds with shapes and you have to be able to access that information in your memory and retrieve it and be able to turn that thought into a motor planning and co-ordination skill and write the sound on paper in its correct visual symbol.

 

For things like b, d, reverals you can teach her a trick to differentiate between the two eg. if you walked into the letter 'b' you would bang your head, but if you bumped into the letter 'd' you would fall over it.

 

Your daughter may find it hard to visualise letters and words. I think this is called visual dysgraphia.