Starting down the dyslexia road..

[JulieE]

Hi there,

 

I'm new to this forum, but not new to special needs. I have 2 sons (12 & 11) with autism - not the quirky type, the down in the trenches / Oh Lord what is THAT on the walls?! type. Some of my other kiddos have special needs as well, but TODAY I would like to ask about dyslexia. My 7 yo dd has a lot of the characteristics. I have not taken her to be diagnosed. She is due for her 3 yr re-eval with the school district next spring, and I am going to request that be looked at as well. She homeschools, but receives speech with the school district (those evil R's!). So right now I'm going on the theory of 'if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck..'

 

She has particular trouble reading/writing her numbers. I don't have her do copywork for school. She was doing better with her numbers (for her limited worksheets with Rightstart) last year, but today we were doing some Life with Fred, and yikes - those numbers were turned every which way. I'm a bit worried - I planned to start MUS and wondering if it's going to be too much worksheets.

 

Anywho, the confines I have are: 1) limited income - no Barton for us. No parade of specialists - we've had a lot of medical bills this year & are on 3 different payment plans, and once we get an EKG bill I figure we'll be on a 4th. I am looking for some basic / lower cost things I can do to help her and ease her frustration with not being anywhere near the same level as her 9 yr old sister. I'm not hyper about her being slow to read and write. The grandparents ARE. My mom throws fits, bursts out crying "She can't READ. Look at her, she WANTS to read and she CAN'T READ!" (and it's not in the spirit of 'poor thing, she may have dyslexia, it's in the spirit of you (ie, ME) are not teaching her and if she was in public school she would be reading'). My IL's are not far behind - but they take the nagging approach - serious nagging.

 

..anyway.. got sidetracked! Is there a sticky somewhere of dyslexia resources? Of recommended reading & writing programs, of evaluation and treatment options? Recommended websites? Books?

 

Thanks so much, Julie

[LizzyBee]

Wilson is an OG based program that is a good bit cheaper than Barton. I think Recipe for Reading is the name of the book that costs about $25 and lays out an OG sequence, but you have to make all the manipulatives yourself.

 

How is your dd's phonemic processing? Can she pass the free student screening on the Barton website? If not, she's not ready to be successful with any reading program. The best program for remediating phonemic awareness deficits is LiPS (Lindamood Bell Phonemic Sequencing) from http://www.ganderpublishing.com. It's expensive, too. But you could get by with the manual and a set of pictures that show the mouth and tongue position for each sound. There's a set of cling-ons that will stick to a whiteboard. Alternate resources would be the book Literacy Leaders from EPS and Earobics software. To be effective, Earobics has to be done with consistency and a degree of intensity.

 

There's a ton a good information on http://www.dys-add.com (Susan Barton's website about dyslexia). Some of my other favorite books are The Mislabeled Child by Brock and Fernette Eide, The Everything Parents Guide to Children with Dyslexia by Abigail Marshall, and The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child by Robert Frank. And the gold standard is Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz.

[Guest Lindafs]

We are in DFW. My daughter went through the Scottish Rite program in our school district for 2 years and we had excellent results. However, there were still some holes when we started homeschooling. Found an AWESOME program that uses the same approach: Verticy Learning. Wish we had found it before. It can be expensive, but you can buy whatever parts you want, & they have a payment plan. I'm sure it's less expensive than the Scottish Rite tutors (also looked into that).

 

Lidna

[fiddle]

I saw a man at the homeschool conference this year who is dyslexic and came out with a dyslexia reading program called Rocket Phonics. If my dd was starting out (she can totally read now), I would've tried this. It's pricey new, but you can find it used on Homeschoolclassifieds.com for reasonable prices. It's lots of games and looks like maybe less tears approach?

 

The other thing that helped us in the beginning was that book Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. That set a good foundation for my dd and was a bit kinesthetic. If nothing else you could try this- the book is pretty cheap and sells used all the time.

 

If it turns out your dd is severly dyslexic, Barton is a good program (just tedious and slow). There are SO many programs out there (Stevenson, Barton, Wilson, etc.) it's hard to know what to choose. I've also heard people saying good things about Dancing Bears.

 

As far as books, the Dyslexic Advantage might be a good one and also books on right brain learning and things like Dianne Craft products (right brain phonics).

 

I found the key is to experiment to figure out what works for your child...... Like I said, Barton is the 'gold standard" and people rave about it, but ultimately it was *not* a good fit for US. There are a lot of other options.

 

Hope you get something helpful out of this. Good luck!

Paula

[herekittykitty]

If you haven't already, you should join the Yahoo group for parents of dyslexic children. Lots of great info there too. Two inexpensive phonics-based programs that I see recommended a lot there are Reading Reflex and ABeCeDarian. You might also look at The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis. The Davis program is pricey as well but you can do some of it at home. Claying letters can help a lot of kids and could give you some idea if the picture thinking approach is a good fit for your child. ITA that you do have experiment a bit and see what your child responds to. My dyslexic 7 yo now reads above grade level, though slowly, and I've done no phonics work with him at all.

[ElizabethB]

:grouphug:

 

Recipe for Reading is OG, if you write out the words on a white board (better anyhow IMO) all you need is the $27 manual.

 

All my remedial students have been helped by nonsense words and Webster's Speller, you could give those a try too, adding in multi-sensory techniques from Recipe for Reading as needed.

 

For those with an underlying visual problem, I like the uppercase 1824 Webster Speller. For those with an underlying speech/phonemic awareness problem, I like the 1908 Webster's Speller with diacritical markings. (Markings are distracting for those with underlying visual problems, but are helpful for those without any visual problems.)