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Does this sound like dyslexia?


elinnea
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My older two children learned to read fairly young (around 4.5 years old) and very easily. Basically taught them letters and their sounds and they were reading chapter books shortly thereafter.

 

My dd has not been interested in reading like the boys and hasn't taken to it readily at all. Last year we started using Dancing Bears. She knows most of the green flash cards but still confuses "b" and "d" and "w" and "v". She will sound out the words but then doesn't recognize them when they appear again on the page. She recognizes a few words like "cat" but when she sees "car" or "can" she guesses that they are cat.

 

Otherwise she is highly intelligent and she does great in math. She understands math concepts a lot more readily than her brothers did at that age.

 

Does this sound "normal" and that she needs just more time or is this something I need to have checked out? I don't want to wait and hope that things work themselves out only to find out it is something I should have sought help for earlier, kwim?

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http://www.bartonreading.com/students_long.html#screen  Here's the link for the Barton screening test.  It's NOT a dyslexia test, but it's free and informative.  Also I'd get her eyes checked by a developmental optometrist, just to make sure there's not a physical explanation.  COVD.org is where you find them.  You can get a regular exam and just ask them to *screen* for the developmental stuff.  

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Agree with Elizabeth.  Check out the Barton site for information on dyslexia and also the student/tutor screenings.  The screenings are free, by the way, and not hard to do.  To administer the student screening, you need to pass the tutor screening, but they aren't all that long.  It isn't testing knowledge, just basically sound discrimination and some other useful skills that are helpful to learn to read/spell.  If you decide to do the screenings, please make sure that both of you are well-rested, there are no distractions and no interruptions.  The screenings don't take all that long but you really need to make sure that both of you are ready.  

 

If she cannot pass the screening then you will know that there are some issues needing to be dealt with before she tackles a reading program (Barton makes recommendations on her site).  If your child passes but struggles in certain areas that will give you valuable information, too.  If she passes with flying colors then you know she may do very well with an Orton Gillingham based reading program (the gold standard for most dyslexics) which is very helpful if it looks like she may be dyslexic.  There are several good ones, and some are well set up to do at home so you don't have to pay a fortune in tutoring.  Even if she isn't dyslexic, an OG based system can still work well for many students.

 

And read up on dyslexia.  Overcoming Dyslexia with Sally Shaywitz might help.  So might The Mislabeled Child by Brock and Fernette Eide.  And The Dyslexic Advantage by Brock and Fernette Eide.  See if your local library has them.  Read through at least The Mislabeled Child to see if anything there sounds familiar.

 

Below is a link to an interview with the authors that you might find interesting as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzJCiSv5rtU

 

FWIW, your child may need more time AND be dyslexic.  

 

AND she may also have a developmental vision issue, which is frequently NOT caught in a standard eye exam.  In fact, she could have perfect 20/20 vision and pass every standard eye exam but still have a developmental vision issue, which are tricky to diagnose.  As Elizabeth said, check out the COVD site to find a Developmental Optometrist in your area.  Ask for a standard eye exam that includes a developmental vision screening.  If your insurance covers eye exams it should cover that.  If there are any red flags they can do a more in depth exam later, but those are frequently not covered by insurance.

 

http://www.covd.org/

 

In the meantime, while you try to figure things out, read to her as much as possible and have her listen to books on cd if she does well with auditory input.  Expose her to as much well written literature as you can.  Do it daily.  Let her pick out stories that interest her.  Don't limit her because she is not picking up reading quickly.  She needs the exposure to concepts, vocabulary, grammar, etc.  If you just go at her reading pace, she may fall far behind.  

 

And I would suggest limiting or even eliminating all required out loud reading while you seek answers.  If she IS dyslexic and picks up bad habits like guessing based on the first few letters, etc. it can be exceedingly difficult to unlearn those bad habits.  If dyslexia is the issue (or one of the issues) then she will need a different approach to reading instruction than a neurotypical child and forcing her to read out loud before she has had that type of instruction can create far more problems than it helps.  

 

Maybe give her access to a Kindle Fire (if that is an option) and get books on Kindle.  You can include audio (for a bit of extra cost) that syncs with the text so whatever words are being read are highlighted as they read.  That way she is seeing the text and hearing the words at the same time but isn't being held back by decoding/fluency issues.

 

You are right to ask questions.  I wish I had pressed harder with my own questions when my kids were much younger.  Good luck and best wishes....

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It could be dyslexia. Or there could be a different underlying issue. Or she could just need a little more time. DD9 also has trouble remembering some letters and sounds, despite years of practicing them. And she is a word guesser. Instead of sounding words out, she guesses. Often she gets it right, because she is bright and understands what word should come next, due to the context. We've been using Dancing Bears, too, because it works on that guessing habit. Just recently she has become very interested in reading books on her own, and she can manage some longer chapter books, but when you ask her to sound out a word out of context (just by itself on a page or a flashcard), she has trouble.

 

She was older than her siblings were when she started to make some progress reading, and her troubles with reading are out of proportion to how bright she is (very). When she read a page of text to me and gets to a word that she must sound out, it can be laborious. After she gets the word, I ask her to go back to the beginning of the sentence and read it all again. When she gets to the tricky word, more often than not, she still does not know what the word is and must sound it out again. I'm talking about easy four- or five-letter words (she can do most CVC words now but occasionally will miss one if it contains a vowel she is unsure of -- she still confuses E and I, for example).

 

I do suspect that she has dyslexia. We thought we might enroll our children in private school earlier in the year, and during the entrance evaluation, I was told by the screener that she thought DD9 probably has dyslexia. I then took her to the local dyslexia private school for their free (15 minute) reading evaluation, and they told me that she showed no issues :glare: . We plan to have her evaluated more thoroughly in the near future, because we need some answers, even though technically she can now read a book on grade level.

 

Dyslexia can be tricky. You can get opposite advice from people who claim to be reading specialists (I've had one tell me that she needs a concentrated Orton Gillingham approach, and another tell me that DD9 would not be able to learn with that method and we shouldn't bother trying it). Neither of these "experts" examined DD9 personally but made their advice based on my description of her problems, so I didn't put full faith in either of their opinions -- I just mention it to show that getting good advice can be challenging.

 

So here is my plan, once we get going on having her evaluated (we are in the middle of moving, so we want to wait until we are in our new location). I'm going to have her evaluated for free by the school system. They will not diagnose dyslexia, but I can then take the results of their tests to a neuropsych for evaluation. I may pursue a speech eval and/or audiologist screening as well, depending on how things go. In the meantime, we are continuing with Dancing Bears until we learn more about her and perhaps find that a different curriculum might work better.

 

Here's my advice to you. You are seeing a problem. You can see that she is struggling more than you would expect. She is showing some signs that could be dyslexia. Don't wait to pursue some evaluations. I wish we had done them sooner, but I was overwhelmed with other things. I really needed someone else to tell me that yes, it sounds like she has a problem, and I need to get help; instead, I met up with people who downplayed her issues and didn't really believe me. I was relieved when the person at the private school told me she suspected dyslexia, because it was the first time that someone else saw what I do. Trust your instincts.

 

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Agree with Storygirl, trust your instincts.  If things appear off, then seek answers, just as you are doing right now, and look for a way to get some sort of thorough, professional evaluation.  Hard to do since many "experts" actually are pretty clueless (BTDT) but if you can find someone highly recommended and qualified in your area a solid evaluation is worth its weight in gold.  Many, many things can cause difficulties with reading, not just dyslexia.

 

FWIW, I was told for years that DD14 and DD10 couldn't be dyslexic because they were maintaining their grades.  I waited until 5th grade to finally press for a thorough, muli-hour evaluation for DD to give us more solid answers on why my very bright child could not effectively read or spell.  And when we finally got those answers it was such a relief.  We were shown not only her weaknesses (some of which we were unaware of) but also her strengths (many of which we were unaware of and not tapping into).  DD10's eval soon followed.  Again, it gave us answers to questions we hadn't even known to ask.  My only regret is that we waited so long.

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Thank you everyone for all your very thoughtful replies and especially for the reminders to trust my instincts.  I do think that dd has some sort of problem but it's been easy to talk myself out of it and hope for the best.  Your replies have given me lots to think about.

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