The last two weeks have been interesting for us. Adessa has been falling behind in her school work. She’s a really good kid – articulate, well-spoken and smart. So it’s been kind of frustrating to see her not keeping up. Her teachers noticed it too so the school asked if they could screen her. Turns out her IQ is above average but… BUT… she is dyslexic. So while she excels in math, puzzles, problem-solving, memory and more, her reading, writing and spelling are poor. For a first grader this isn’t bad yet. But it’s going to become a bigger problem as she grows obviously.
As soon as I heard the term dyslexic something just clicked. So we went to track down exactly what Dyslexia means. This is going to be a long list, I apologize. They say if your child is exhibiting more than 3 of these symptoms you should have them screened. I’ll just go ahead and put a * next to every one that Adessa has done, and a ** star next to those we see all the time.
People with dyslexia do not make random reading errors. They make very specific types of errors. Their spelling reflects the same types of errors. If you notice that a child who appears to be average or bright when they are talking to you is struggling to read, spell or write, this may be the strongest indicator that they may be dyslexic. Watch for these errors:
Reading:
** Can read a word on one page, but won’t recognize it on the next page.
** Knows phonics, but can’t—or won’t—sound out an unknown word.
** Slow, labored, inaccurate reading of single words in isolation (when there is no story line or pictures to provide clues)
* When they misread, they often say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape, such as form-from or trial-trail.
* They may insert or leave out letters, such as could-cold or star-stair.
** They may say a word that has the same letters, but in a different sequence, such as who-how, lots-lost, saw-was, or girl-grill.
** When reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy cadence (not in smooth phrases), and often ignores punctuation
* becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time
* Reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words.
** Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.
* Directionality confusion shows up when reading and when writing
** b-d confusion is a classic warning sign. One points to the left, the other points to the right, and they are left-right confused.
b-p, n-u, or m-w confusion. One points up, the other points down. That’s also directionality confusion.
** Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking
** When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn’t look at all similar, such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep
** Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of
* Omits or changes suffixes, saying need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately.
Spelling:
** Their spelling is far worse than their reading. They sometimes flunk inventive spelling. They have extreme difficulty with vowel sounds, and often leave them out.
** With enormous effort, they may be able to “memorize” Monday’s spelling list long enough to pass Friday’s spelling test, but they can’t spell those very same words two hours later when writing those words in sentences.
** Continually misspells high frequency sight words (nonphonetic but very common words) such as they, what, where, does and because—despite extensive practice.
** Misspells even when copying something from the board or from a book.
* Written work shows signs of spelling uncertainty–numerous erasures, cross outs, etc.
Dysgraphia (writing):
** Unusual pencil grip, often with the thumb on top of the fingers (a “fist grip”)
Young children will often put their head down on the desk to watch the tip of the pencil as they write
* The pencil is gripped so tightly that the child’s hand cramps. The child will frequently put the pencil down and shake out his/her hand.
** Writing is a slow, labored, non-automatic chore.
** Child writes letters with unusual starting and ending points.
* Child has great difficulty getting letters to “sit” on the horizontal lines.
** Copying off of the board is slow, painful, and tedious. Child looks up and visually “grabs” just one or two letters at a time, repeatedly subvocalizes the names of those letters, then stares intensely at their paper when writing those one or two letters. This process is repeated over and over.
** Child frequently loses his/her place when copying, misspells when copying, and doesn’t always match capitalization or punctuation when copying—even though the child can read what was on the board.
* Unusual spatial organization of the page. Words may be widely spaced or tightly pushed together. Margins are often ignored.
Child has an unusually difficult time learning cursive writing, and shows chronic confusion about similarly-formed cursive letters such as f and b, m and n, w and u. They will also difficulty remembering how to form capital cursive letters.
That’s a lot of stars I know. It was like reading a textbook description of my daughter. Every quirk I thought she had, from even the way she held her pencil… was classic Dyslexia. I had no idea! It’s fantastic we found out when she was so young. There are sometimes behavioral problems with kids, 40% of kids with dyslexia are ADD/ADHD but thankfully Adessa is not. She has a better attention span than most 6 years old I know.
There’s really no way to know until the child starts to delve into reading/writing/spelling. We found out so early because her teachers are fantastic and thought the same way we have been. Here’s this really smart kid, yet she can’t keep up. According to her IQ and tests in other areas, her teachers told us she should be at the top of her class. That’s the problem with Dyslexic kids though they say. They usually are quite smart, so they can cover up and use strategies to compensate for a long time.
Her Dyslexia will not go away. There’s no magic cure or lessons that she can take to just instantly overcome this. She’ll probably struggle with a lot of things in school such as remembering dates, facts, directions and more. But at least we know that now, we’ll be able to acknowledge what her strengths and her limitations are.
In the meantime, I’ve gone ahead and contacted a Dyslexic tutoring center in Utah. She’s going to be evaluated and we’ll start getting her tutors who can help her learn to read and write like she needs to.
There’s a specific method they use for dyslexic kids called the Orton-Gillingham method. Simply shoving more books at Adessa and telling her to sound out more words or memorize flashcards won’t work. It’s going to be much harder for her to learn but I think with the extra help she’ll at least be able to keep up, since she’s just barely started to get frustrated recently that she can’t read as fast as the other kids in her class. The stats say that 1 in 10 kids actually has Dyslexia though, so it wouldn’t be unusual if there actually happens to be more children in her class with the same problem.
I’ve had a lot ask how this will affect her Chinese and thankfully, it won’t! While a foreign language such as French of Spanish might have given her a lot of problems, with Chinese being character based she should actually be able to pick it up and stay at the same pace as the other kids. It’s all in how Dyslexic’s think. While reading up about it they say the problem that these kids have with letter reversals, jumbled lines on a page and words that run together is because their mind is trying to form an image on a page. It’s not trying to see the letters and words but make a picture. So actually, her Chinese should start to come along faster than her English writing.
