Dyslexia - Found a great article

[pollo_la]

I found a really great article on the topic of dyslexia. Dyslexia - Made Made or Born With It? (The article link is at the end of the post).

[wapiti]

It sounds like he doesn't understand what dyslexia is

 

This was my first thought.  I'd guess that the Eides would disagree with him on what dyslexia is.

[pollo_la]

Those are some good points. :-) My second dd does have some "dyslexic tendencies." However, she is making progress with phonics. I started phonics with her very early on, and admittedly, probably made the mistake of introducing a few too many sight words after she had only a basic understanding of blending in place. That seemed to stall her out initially when we got back into heavy phonics. I do think some kids have a tendency to look at the whole word, regardless of the method taught. I also think some kids have a natural tendency to read form left to right while others tend to have the tendency to do it from right to left. My "dyslexic" child has ALWAYS wanted to do it "backward." That being said, when I use phonics in a systematic manner, and practice activities that emphasize left to right progression, she is learning how to read. She gets better at it all the time. Yes, she is harder to teach then my first dd and my third dd, but she makes progress and she is right "on track" for her age. It is also true, that when a child is found to be dyslexic, that the methods used to help "remediate" the child are all heavily phonic, break the word apart type methods. Why don't we START with these methods for all kids? Then, all children, weather they have dyslexic tendencies or not, would learn to read (for the most part). 

[FO4UR]

Having a child who is dyslexic, I think you only see a small part of the bigger picture.

 

I'm a believer in phonics first and fast for the greater population.  However, when you have a child who has a break down in either visual or aural processing (which is termed "dyslexia" most commonly), it begs to reason that the same method of associating sight-to-sound (phonogram:phoneme) will not work.

 

I used to believe the way you do until I taught my oldest child to read.  I started with SWR.  His little sister eaves dropped on the lessons and picked up reading at age 3. He memorized everything, did the lessons wonderfully, and couldn't read a lick after all that first and fast phonics.  What worked for him is strikingly different.  It is not the sight words, or blended phonics, of the public school system today....but it certainly wasn't phonics.  He knew more phonics at age 7 than most educators LOL, but knowing phonics did NOT produce reading for him.  He is dyslexic.  He has a glitch in visual processing and all the phonics in the world won't cure that...or help him compensate.

 

 

 

It is also true, that when a child is found to be dyslexic, that the methods used to help "remediate" the child are all heavily phonic, break the word apart type methods. Why don't we START with these methods for all kids? Then, all children, weather they have dyslexic tendencies or not, would learn to read (for the most part). 

 

 

This is not a fact.  I think most neurotypical kids will learn to read fast and well using a strong phonics based program.  This would weed out the dyslexic kids from those who simply do not intuit language via sight words at the age of 6.

 

 

Just b/c a method is used to remediate does not mean that it works.  (A friend whose child has used Wilson's for years, and still reads at a 2nd grade level in the 10th grade comes to my mind. :banghead: )  

 

 

Reading is a complex skill.  To help struggling readers, we have to break the skill down into sub-skills and investigate on an individual basis to find the sub-skills that need to be explicitly taught in order for *Reading* to happen.  Phonics encompasses only a portion of those sub-skills.  It's important, but it's not that panacea that many curriculum writers tout it to be.

 

[pollo_la]

Thanks for your input Paula! I do think you are on to something when you say there is more to it then "just" phonics. There are many phonics based curriculums out there that I am not a fan of. I am not a fan of "rules" at all. So, when I say phonics, I am referring to a way that we teach kids to break words apart, not a bunch of rules to memorize. Also, I think it is extremely important to teach kids using all 3 learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic). Some kids will do fine with black and white sentences out of a book, but that will not be the case for every child.

 

So sorry to hear about your friend's child. :-( Reading is a complex skill, that is for sure!

[kentuckymom]

Wow....just..... wow. As the mother of a dyslexic and the wife of a dyslexic, this article really disturbs me. Now, I agree that the move to whole language/sight based reading instruction has harmed a lot of kids, but the fact is there WERE recorded cases of dyslexia before the 1940's. I remember reading about some in, um, yeah, a well known book about dyslexia whoseve name escapes me at the moments. In fact, I'm pretty sure the term "dyslexia" was coined before the 1940's. Yes, there are lots of perfectly typical kids who can't read well because of poor instruction. That doesn't mean no kids are dyslexic, however.  My son did not memorize a single word before kindergarten. His kindergarten used a blend of phonics and whole word instruction. Yes, the sight words drove me crazy, but learning them wasn't what made it nigh unto impossible for him to learn to read. In fact, he could hardly learn them at all. He was still struggling with words like "of" and "the"  halfway through the year. He also struggled for about half the year to associate letters and sounds, despite the fact that both we and his preschool teacher had been working on that for years.

 

My kids have a friend who is 7 years old and in first grade. He and his siblings have always been homeschooled. To my knowledge, he has never been taught sight words. Since he started kindergarten, his mom had worked and worked to teach him phonemic awareness and letter sounds. Most of the way through 1st grade, he still doesn't know all the letter sounds.  No one could convince me that this is due to poor instruction. It's due to the way his brain works. My three year old, on the other hand, has already picked up all the letter names and sounds just from informally playing with and talking about letter names and sounds. My daughter was playing a game with him the other day that involved putting her big foam letters in order (don't ask me what was fun about his, but they had a blast). She knew all the letter names and sounds. He knew about half of them. Apparently the author of this article has never met a kid like him.

 

If dyslexia is man made, why are there signs that show up in toddlerhood? Why are brain images of dyslexics different from those of non dyslexics? Either this writer didn't do his research, or he completely ignored the research that didn't agree with his agenda. I'm all for pushing educators to move back to teaching reading phonetically. That will help a whole lot of kids who have been hurt by the sight reading emphasis. Dyslexia, however, will not cease to exist.

[sweetpea3829]

This article is completely missing the boat.  Am I correct that it was written in 1993?  The date up at the top of the article seems to indicate so.

 

So I've done a lot of reading on this topic of the last several years.  And the more and more I read about it; the more and more I hear other families' anecdotal stories of their own dyslexic/LD kiddos; the more and more I've become convinced that dyslexia is, more or less, a symptom of something else.  Perhaps an auditory processing issue, or a visual processing issue.  

 

Anyways, my husband is dyslexic.  My 8 yr old daughter shows some signs of dyslexia, but when evaluated, dyslexia was listed as a future rule-out.  She is, however, dyscalculic.  Then, add in my 7 yr old son...as a toddler, he showed certain red flags of dyslexia (along with certain "skills" that one might see in a dyslexic).  For example, he had a significant speech delay...but it was not a matter of delayed speech actually, it was an articulation delay.  Even now, at 7 yrs old, his speech articulation is not as strong as it should be.  His speech seemed to indicate that he wasn't hearing all of the oral phonemes of words, based on the fact that, when he spoke, he tended to (and still does to a point) leave certain sounds out.  This particular child is actually academically gifted and went on to never struggle with reading or math.  Actually, when we consider that some dyslexics seem to be gifted with the ability to see in 3D, I would say my son would fit that bill.  He began building complex 3D block structures at 18 months old.  Block structures that went beyond your typical tower that many 18 month olds would build...his were castles or cities with turrets and bridges and multiple buildings.  Then, at 5 1/2 yrs old, I caught him reading a book to his little brother...except, he was reading it completely upside down!  And it wasn't a beginning reader, either...it was a real picture book, lol.  

 

Anyways, I digress.  I'm pretty sure dyslexia isn't caused by the method of instruction...though certainly, the method of instruction can exacerbate the issues.  

[Mom-ninja.]

The guy knows not what he is talking about.