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Sure- I will be more specific- Now I look at my question, I too am confused :eek:

 

When I mean enhancing his education- I mean...

 

How are you turning his weakness into strengths?

 

I don't believe there is a "remedy" so to speak, but how are you making modifications to strengthen your child?

 

Do you substitute by using more visual/spatial (or the likes) teaching aids.

 

Have you seen substantial growth in your progress?

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We may disagree about the remedy part. I believe dyslexia can be remediated. Remediated dyslexics may retain some vestiges of the dyslexia (spelling issues and slow reading speed are the two most common) but most can be brought to a level near to, or at, their potential with the right remediation strategies.

 

By far the most common issue underlying dyslexia is difficulty with phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the brain's ability to "get" that words are made up of individual sounds. It includes the ability to both blend and segment those sounds. Phonics is the overt teaching that this sound is reflected by this (or these) symbols. But if the brain doesn't get the individual sound part, the phonics part won't work well. "Overcoming Dyslexia" by Sally Shaywitz is an excellent compilation of the latest research. I highly recommend it. Reading Reflex works strongly with phonemic awareness, and is a program that is pretty easy for a parent to teach. The Sound Reading CD is an excellent complement to RR. I have used both. I have seen ABCDarian (sp) recommended on this board as another option using similar strategies. Another type of intervention is Orton-Gillingham types of interventions. The Wilson method, which I use in tutoring, is very strong on building phonemic awareness, in phonics, and in fluency.

 

If your child can already read phonetically regular, single syllable short vowel words , including nonsense words like blant, shrump, glam then REWARDS secondary or intermediate is an excellent next step. It is critical to include repeated oral readings of the same passage in order to build fluency. Google "Put Reading First" and you'll find an excellent, free, online publication on the important components of teaching reading.

 

Aside from remediating reading, yes, I do make efforts to build on my children's strengths. One of my dyslexic kids is very strong in math, and so I have accelerated him in that. The other has other "dys-es" that impede many more areas, but has an excellent auditory memory, amazing creativity, and a flair for drama. For him, I use a lot of books on tape, and give him a free rein with the creativity. We look for opportunities for him to participate in drama. This is really no different than what I do for my other two who are normal learners: we work to make sure they keep pace in areas that are relative weaknesses, and give them lots of opportunities with their strengths.

 

Not all kids with dyslexia are visual-spatial learners. Have you had your child tested and do you know that for a fact? The child of a friend of mine is gifted this way, but not all dyslexics are. A smaller subset of kids with dyslexia also have visual issues which interfere with their reading. (Again, one of mine does, the other does not.) If there are visual issues with eye tracking, etc., then the visual-spatial intelligence will be negatively impacted and less developed than other parts of a child's brain. Right now, occupational therapy, vision therapy, and cognitive skills training are the available treatment options for kids with this component to their reading difficulties.

 

One thing to be sure to allow lots of opportunity for is the development of social skills. Many dyslexics learn to compensate this way, and actually make up a very significant portion of entrepreneurs--much, much higher than their proportion of the population. Speculation is that they don't tend to be detail oriented and so trust the details to others (instead of the deadly micromanaging) and their excellent social skills are an advantage as well. So be sure to support and include lots of social interacting in your dyslexic child's education plan!

 

HTH

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What I great post! Agree with everything Lauri4B said.

 

My 17yo dd is a remediated dyslexic. What helped with her weaknesses were vision therapy to remediate severe visual efficiency deficits, cognitive skills training to develop phonemic awareness and visual processing skills (we did PACE), and structured/explicit/multi-sensory reading programs (we used Phono-Graphix for elementary and Rewards for middle/high). Although she has been fully remediated in reading since age 10, she retains many typical dyslexic traits -- poor spelling, weak written grammar, weak organizational and time management skills, etc. Science is a struggle because of her weakness for memorizing facts and math is a struggle because of her difficulty following sequential methodologies.

 

It has helped *enormously* to help her develop her strengths over the years. She is a gifted artist and gifted athlete. These have won her a lot of social status in public high school. This helps *so* much to make up for the little hurts she endures -- such as during the spelling "games" her Spanish teacher uses in her public school classroom.

 

When we homeschooled, I used oral work whenever possible to get through content-heavy material -- DVDs, audiobooks, oral discussions of vocabulary, etc.

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Another thing that's helped my ds is helping other kids in areas he's good at. His riding instructor has paired him with a beginning rider and ds is helping and teaching that boy as they ride together. Because of the horses involved, the instructor is still there supervising and making the occasional correction, but ds is still making riding suggestions and is handling all the ground instruction (saddling, grooming, etc.)

 

Social and sports occasions are very important for my ds. I've even considered dropping back on academics to add in more sports, but I haven't had the courage for that yet.

 

BTW, my ds is also remediated. His problems included both auditory and visual difficiencies.

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