Davis therapy is WONDERFUL!!!

[Mom in High Heels]

We just finished up 3 of the 5 days of the Davis dyslexia therapy and it was amazing! Due to scheduling conflicts we couldn't do the entire week this week, but we will finish up the last 2 days in Sept. The 3 days we did though were amazing. After the first day Indy was READING!!!!!! READING! On the second day he asked if he could bring the book he was reading to lunch! I almost cried. We learned so much and I couldn't believe how much he retained. If you have a child with dyslexia, I highly recommend reading The Gift of Dyslexia. The book talks you through the therapy and there are therapy kits available, but if you can at all afford it, I would say go to a trained therapist. It is expensive (ours was $2400 for the week-6 hours a day), but worth every penny. I am so pleased by Indy's progress. Dh is also dyslexic and wants to see if the military will pay for him to go through the therapy too, that's how impressed he was with it.

[rootsnwings]

That is absolutely AWESOME!!!!!!

 

I am passing this info along. Thank you for sharing!! :D

[merry gardens]

We just finished up 3 of the 5 days of the Davis dyslexia therapy and it was amazing! Due to scheduling conflicts we couldn't do the entire week this week, but we will finish up the last 2 days in Sept. The 3 days we did though were amazing. After the first day Indy was READING!!!!!! READING! On the second day he asked if he could bring the book he was reading to lunch! I almost cried. We learned so much and I couldn't believe how much he retained. If you have a child with dyslexia, I highly recommend reading The Gift of Dyslexia. The book talks you through the therapy and there are therapy kits available, but if you can at all afford it, I would say go to a trained therapist. It is expensive (ours was $2400 for the week-6 hours a day), but worth every penny. I am so pleased by Indy's progress. Dh is also dyslexic and wants to see if the military will pay for him to go through the therapy too, that's how impressed he was with it.

Glad you had such a great experience with the Davis method. I read the book when I first suspected my child had dyslexia. I spoke to a tutor trained in the Davis methods and considered using him, but my son was six at the time and the tutor suggested waiting. I used some of the methods he recommends at home. I bought the specific dictionary Ron Davis recommends. My son learned most of his alphabet by working with clay and we worked with clay for words too.

 

Davis' insight/theory that little words can cause confussion for people with dyslexia applied to my son. Most of those small words also happen to be high frequency words. The ability or lack of ability to read and understand those words certainly impacts a person's reading. I can see that it would greatly improve your son's reading if he's is now able to read and understand high frequency words. Lindamood-Bell works on most those high frequency words through a different approach in the Seeing Stars program.

 

One thing that Lindamood-Bell (and some other dyslexia programs) address that Davis does not is the auditory processing component of dyslexia. My son had problem with little words also because he could not distinguish the difference between several sounds.

 

The book "The Gift of Dyslexia" did offer some good insights for people with the gift for visualizing in their heads who also have reading problems. That description applies to a large number of people with dyslexia. HOWEVER, I don't believe that every child with dyslexia has that gift of easily visualizing, nor do I think that everyone with that gift for visualizing has dyslexia. My son does have the gift for visualizing that Davis describes in his book, but my son also had some rather significant auditory processing problems that the Davis method doesn't really address.

 

While it works on teaching individual letters with clay, Davis seems to rely most heavily on a variation of "whole word" approach. (Worked with a hands-on medium clay to construct easily visualized figures representing words.) That may be one way to by-pass phonics when a child can't hear the individual sounds within words. The idea of getting a child to read just in a few days certainly sounds tempting! I'm not dismissing the results you saw, (afterall those high frequency words greatly affect reading ability.) I do see some great value to some of the methods that Davis uses, (like manipulatives with clay and making sure a child knows what words mean.) That said, had I gone with using Davis' methods exclusively, I would not have corrected the underlying problem that my son had in hearing the individual sounds within words. Without the ability to hear those individual sounds correctly and distinctly, phonics next to impossible. Phonics is the basic underlying principle of our written language. But for people with uncorrected auditory processing problems, phonics is harder than whole words. Hence, the phonics/whole word debate in reading instruction....

Edited July 26, 2010 by merry gardens

[Guest Abigail]

Hi,

 

I just want to clarify -- the formal Davis Dyslexia Correction program does address auditory issues, in particular the ability (or inability) to hear or distinguish specific sounds of language. This would be done as part of every program.

 

I can understand why someone whose child did not have a formal Davis program would not be aware of this. The book, The Gift of Dyslexia, does delve into that part of the program -- so this is one thing that parents are likely to miss if simply following the book without the support of a trained Facilitator. But the child described in the opening post probably did already get that part of the program -- if not, it would be dealt with at some time during the remaining two days. (It's unusual for a program to be broken up into two parts as described, but should work well for the child if the mom is able to stay on track with any recommended followup and reinforcement during the interim.)

 

Davis does not attempt to teach a phonetic decoding strategy toward reading, but rather focuses on all three aspects of each word -- how the word sounds, what it looks like, and what it means. So the student would not be encouraged to "sound out" words, but would be encouraged to listen to the sound of the whole word and use the dictionary and dictionary pronunciation key to decode unfamiliar words. One reason that the dictionary pronunciation key is used is because English is phonetically irregular and inconsistent -- so the dictionary key provides a mechanism that works 100% of the time to figure out an unfamiliar word.

 

I'd note that this "three parts to a word" approach is similar in theory to ideas advocated by dyslexia researchers such as Virginia Berninger at the University of Washington (known for "triple word form theory"), and Maryanne Wolf at Tufts University (developer of the Rave-O program) -- both are experts in brain development and have written about the importance of combining instruction in word meaning and visual word recognition with phonetic teaching to build word recognition and establish reading fluency.

 

During the course of a program the Facilitator would go over the pronunciation key with the child to ensure that he can indeed hear and distinguish every sound. If there is confusion on any particular sounds, then the Facilitator would follow an approach similar to mastery of the letters themselves to help ensure that the child is oriented and draw his attention to the sounds until he becomes aware of the difference. In almost all cases, the student is also be given Davis Auditory Orientation as well as the Orientation or Alignment method taught -- and that works on resolving auditory confusion in the same way that Davis Orientation works to resolve visual confusion.

 

So while I agree that the Lindamood Bell program takes a very different approach to auditory training, it is mistake to think that Davis ignores that issue, or that the Davis program would be inappropriate for a student with auditory issues. Rather, the whole point of the Davis program is to provide an individualized approach that finds and addresses each child's particular issues and barriers.

 

Of course the most important thing for every child is simply that the parent find an approach that works for them. So it's GREAT news that one American kid is doing so well with a Davis Facilitator in Germany -- and it's just as great to know that another mom successfully integrated beginning level work with Davis clay modeling and another program that was a good match for her son's needs later on. You can't argue with success!:thumbup:

[Mom in High Heels]

(It's unusual for a program to be broken up into two parts as described, but should work well for the child if the mom is able to stay on track with any recommended followup and reinforcement during the interim.)

 

Yes, it is unusual to split it up, but if we didn't we would have had to wait until Oct for the provider to be able to fit us in, and we really wanted to get started before school. We talked to the provider and she gave me the option to split with the understanding that we would have plenty of work to do between. I happily agreed. We do have exercises that we do daily (Koosh and clay trigger words), and it is really amazing how much he learned in just those 3 days. I really couldn't be more pleased with his progress. Dh has a dyslexic friend in the Army (he's a picture thinker too) who is a lawyer and having a really difficult time because he spends his days writing briefs, and after hearing our story is considering doing the therapy as well.

 

In the week since we've been home, Indy has been reading so much stuff. Notes dh and I leave to each other, magazine covers, packaging, etc. He's done some book reading as well (YAY!!!), but takes an interest in reading stuff around him, which I think is wonderful considering before he never even attempted it. At his birthday party yesterday (he turned 8), he even read the cards!

[merry gardens]

Hi,

 

I just want to clarify -- the formal Davis Dyslexia Correction program does address auditory issues, in particular the ability (or inability) to hear or distinguish specific sounds of language. This would be done as part of every program.

 

I can understand why someone whose child did not have a formal Davis program would not be aware of this. The book, The Gift of Dyslexia, does delve into that part of the program -- so this is one thing that parents are likely to miss if simply following the book without the support of a trained Facilitator. But the child described in the opening post probably did already get that part of the program -- if not, it would be dealt with at some time during the remaining two days. (It's unusual for a program to be broken up into two parts as described, but should work well for the child if the mom is able to stay on track with any recommended followup and reinforcement during the interim.)

...

Thanks for trying to clarify, but I would like some further clarification on the auditory component of the Davis program.

 

I flipped through my copy of the book again. I found very little metioned about auditory issues, except for many comments that people with dyslexia are "visual" rather than "auditory", plus one short paragraph about some of common speech problems. I could not find phonemic awareness mentioned in the book. Where do I find auditory portion of the Davis program in his book? How much and what exactly does this program do towards correct underlying auditory and phonemic awareness problems that are commonly found in persons with dyslexia?