Halloween Education
Supporting a Dyslexic Child By Ellie Malt “Do you think she might have dyslexia or something like that?” I asked. I was standing in the playground with one of the teaching assistants, watching my 4 year old climb into her buggy, eager for her after-school snack. Although it was only her second term in Reception, I’d noticed she seemed uninterested in the alphabet, while other children could already write their names. But I was only really thinking out loud. Even to me, it seemed ridiculously early to be jumping to any conclusions. “Probably” she shot back over the general hubbub. I admit, I was shocked. But looking back years later, finally in possession of a formal diagnosis, I appreciate her honesty. I only wish I had acted sooner; it could have saved so much struggle and frustration. In the following years, when I picked my daughter up from playdates, I would see the books being read by her friends. They were usually far in advance of anything we were struggling through at home. Bedtime reading had become a frustrating experience. Spelling tests were dreaded. I turned to friends who were teachers for advice. “Each child learns at their own pace” they said. I clung to that mantra for a couple more years, until the issues became too difficult to ignore. Plucking up courage, I approached her teacher and suggested investigating dyslexia. Her reply was discouraging: “Do you really want to ‘label’ your child? In any case, there is no official diagnosis possible until she is seven.”
psychologist for a proper assessment.” Six months and several hundred pounds later we had the official diagnosis. While it was a relief, it was also the beginning of a new and difficult stage in the dyslexia journey as we struggled to work out what to do next. According to the Richmond Dyslexia Association: “Neuroscience has made lots of very recent discoveries about the learning brain and what a dyslexic brain looks like.” Crucially, there may be several reasons why the connections between the sounds and the shapes of the alphabet don’t establish themselves firmly in some children in the early years. An excellent strategy for parents is to find out which reasons apply specifically to their child. “Dyslexia is on a spectrum so is it an umbrella term for a wide range of strengths and difficulties? It is becoming much less common for it to be given a single diagnosis” reports Sophie Camillieri, Chair of Richmond Dyslexia Association. Many of the explanations for why an intelligent child finds it difficult to learn to read or write begin with the two main ways we absorb language from the world around us: our eyes and ears. Good words to google here are “sensory processing.”
By my daughter’s eighth birthday, her loss of confidence was dramatic and she was falling even further behind at school. To me, it seemed obvious there was a problem. But still I had to push her school into running a screening test.
For some children, discriminating between different sounds is problematic. For others, a barrier to learning might be found in the visual pathway. As a starting point in establishing which of these issues apply to your child, you could seek an assessment from a Behavioural Optometrist, Auditory Consultant or Speech and Language Therapist. Dyslexia also overlaps with other conditions that could be affecting your child’s sensory input, such as hyper-mobility and ADD or ADHD. Learning more about these could help you to eliminate them or find therapies that will remove as many barriers to your child’s learning as possible.
The Head of Learning Support called us in. “I think she has dyslexia” she said. “You should see an educational
It’s also widely accepted that memory is a key part of the dyslexia puzzle. If a child is absorbing sounds and symbols
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