Questions about dyslexia, poor working memory and and...

[Rod Everson]

Did you know that one of the nicknames for dyslexia is MIT disease? From what I've read, dyslexia is very common among engineers.

 

 

 

I've given that fact some thought and came to the conclusion that a person with poor binocular vision (in need of vision therapy) would develop vision skills in a way that would bias them toward becoming architects and engineers because they would become quite good at moving between 2-D drawings and our 3-D world.

 

I wrote it up a few years ago in Growing an Architect. Something to think about if you have a dyslexic child. He or she might well be developing some very useful vision skills even though reading is difficult.

 

Rod Everson

[Rod Everson]

 

This is probably not what you want to hear, but if you want to remediate the auditory portion of your dd's reading skills, I would stop teaching her sight words. The more she learns to compensate with visual skills, the harder it will be for her to get motivated to work on the auditory skills.

 

I agree. Sight word teaching just makes it harder for a child to make the sound-symbol connections they need to make eventually.

 

I worked with struggling readers for over 10 years and would test each of them with a phoneme deletion test before starting lessons. Many of them had trouble with it. The three auditory tests cover 1) blending, 2) segmenting and 3) auditory processing (phoneme deletion) start on this page of my site: Testing Blending Skill. (The Auditory Processing Test is the third test, but you will need the score sheet from the Blending Test Page.)

 

If I found a deficit in auditory processing, I would use a specific word list that I designed, stepping up the level as they could handle it. Nearly every child I worked with could reach the top level after several weeks of practice, and would then have no trouble with the auditory processing test. (Note that I'm not saying that this addresses CAPD, or other auditory issues, but it does train phoneme manipulation, a needed skill when learning English.) The page, Oral Auditory Processing, contains the word list and all the instructions. It's all free on the site.

 

Rod Everson

[hsmomshutterbug]

Oh Elizabeth, I found this post reply so helpful.  DS was recently tested, and found to have Dyslexia, but not the "common" type b/c for whatever reason, his reading skills (decoding) are fine, it's just the encoding portion (spelling, writing) that are affected.  The tester also said his scores indicated ADHD but after doing a lot of reading on my own, I don't think that is true at all.  I think it is more likely a visual and/or auditory processing disorder.  When you described your husband, that really resonated with me, and what I see in DS, b/c he is a natural leader, and interpersonal skills are effortless for him, and now I get the why and how of harnessing the strengths, or at least a place to start.  I just wanted to say thank you for sharing b/c that is one frustrating thing about this whole process of testing, they can give you results but then you're on your own to figure out how to to utilize that info. to help your child maximize their strengths and minimize the weaknesses. 

First, I want to strongly agree with Lizzy's recommendation to get more evaluations. Dyslexia inherently involves both visual and auditory processing problems. For us, vision therapy, which we did after being evaluated by a developmental optometrist (www.covd.org ) made a HUGE difference. Doesn't get rid of the dyslexia, but makes improves stuff that can be helped.

Next, I would question your assumptions and what those people said. For instance, my dd is a visual learner, but she doesn't PROCESS information well visually. In other words, the way she wants to learn (visually) isn't actually the modality she processes best. Think about that. My dd doesn't retain well auditorily, but she processes information more naturally that way because her visual processing is weak. It means you can't just put them into all visual materials and have it stick.

You mentioned you need something to spoonfeed. I'm not sure exactly what you meant, and I have a tendency to take things very literally. I would caution you to consider whether to you dyslexia means DUMB. It doesn't. My dh is an engineer, was class president in both high school and college, an extremely successful businessman, a leader in his field, heads a state level association for people in his field, and he's dyslexic. I went to a really interesting session by Esther Wilkison at the Cincy convention last week, and she pointed out that dyslexics aren't dumb. They just take a different route in the brain to get there. And because they take a different route (which takes longer), they form a lot more connections along the way, making them much more observant. So you'll notice how unusually good my dh is with people skills (reread that list, see how often he's chosen to lead!), and it's because of the DYSLEXIA. Dyslexia has gifts as a result, but we sometimes miss what they are. You have to start looking for the positive side of how it makes them think, what it makes them unusually capable of doing, and then you HARNESS it to teach the stuff they're not so hot at.

So what Esther said was instead of teaching to rote, you really, really need to focus on understanding. And it might take longer for that understanding to come. Or it might be they need to take a different route than you do to get there. But the more you take the time to UNDERSTAND, the better it's going to work out. So in science, you break out the manipulatives and do it over and over, in context, with word problems, till they get it. In science it means you do the lesson first with real things, then go back and read the book. (I'm learning that one the hard way!). In history it means they love historical fiction and love having all those facts put into a context, a big picture. It means you loosen up a bit on memorizing specifics and go more for understanding and relationships. My dd can't always tell you a date, but she can put you in a decade, because she gets the big picture. She can tell you about who married whom and who their kids were, because those relationships and a deeper understanding of the history fascinate her.

No, almost nothing done straight off the boards works for us. If you want a good picture of what COULD work for you right out of the box, take a look at the Christian Cottage Unit Studies. We're using one now, and they have a free unit you can download to try. Written by a lady with a dyslexic daughter, they have a happy merging of content, understand, lots of hands-on, time in books, etc. For us, that's where the happy spot is, when we have a bit of each. Less curriculum, more doing.

I'll say one more time, I highly recommend you get her eyes evaluated by a doc at www.covd.org The things you're describing with needing large print and a single sentence at a time are visual processing. They can help with that. We hit a wall where my dd could read the words on the page but wouldn't accept smaller print (which of course harder books have). One month of VT and things were totally different. HUGE, HUGE, HUGE change.