How do you handle something like dyslexia?

[Rainbow Rivers]

My daughter is 8, she has been ready and very interested in learning to read since age 4. I suspect dyslexia though as her fathers brother and sister are both extremly dyslexic and my sister is even math dyslexic so it runs in the family. She loves trying to learn to read but gets frustrated quickly and is very difficult for her. When she writes it is perfect.........if you hold it up in a mirror. I have gone through checklists for dyslexia and it looks very promising that she may be struggling with it. I am not sure how to help her at this time with it and I can not afford to have a doctor test her as she has no medical insurance. The school will not test her unless I enroll her. I am very patient with her and will not let her adult sister help her due to her total lack of patience. I do not make a big deal out of it at all and keep assuring her she will learn to read and we keep trying on days she is interested which is on a fairly consistent and frequent basis. I do not think this is a case of she just is not ready, there are many signs of dyslexia here! Any input on how to help her would be appreciated as it is giving her real low self esteem, not by me but she has had experiences with school friends that teased her including an adult woman telling her she was too stupid to play with her daugher and she needs to go to public school to actually learn something. Thankfully we have moved from that area and do not have that problem anymore but the damage was done............

[Meredith]

Its important to know that "interest" is not a sign of reading readiness - teachers will tell you otherwise bc in a teaching situation, "interest" is hard to come by! But unschoolers are interested in so many things, some of them well before they are "ready" to handle those skills. 8 isn't that old to be not reading - some countries don't start teaching reading in schools before 8! Its still really very young. If she's writing at all, then she's learning literacy skills, you can be sure (even is she wasn't writing, but you mentioned she writes).

Generally speaking, people with dyslexia learn to read by a different route than others. They tend not to utilize phonics, for instance, but rely heavily on context for understanding. So providing more context - stories with picture, subtitles on movies, read-along stories - those will all help someone with dyslexia, any kind of dyslexia, develop their own strategies for processing information. A friend of mine's dd read sentences before words, so I'm not just talking about "whole word" approaches (although some find that a useful tool, do you know about "word windows"?). Some people with dyslexia won't seem to read - or have any sense of themselves reading - until they are 11, 12, even 13, and then all of a sudden are reading, as though the process were like one of those "magic eye" images and suddenly came into focus.

Its also important to realize the one can have written dyslexia without the writing component. My dd seems to have no dyslexia when she reads, but still, at 8, regularly writes letters and numbers backwards and disordered. She may have two separate issues going on, one where she's writing letters/words backwards (and its interesting that its consistent enough to be read in a mirror, Mo's is random), and the other where she's learning to read via a different process, one that tends to go unrecognized by "education professionals".

[John Hayes]

I collect links to free dyslexia help products,programs and services and post the collection of links at http://www.dyslexiaglasses.com/links.html .

One unusual link is to to a program to teach dyslexics K-3 how to read. The program is a series of step by step lessons and comes with free down loadable work sheets. It is actually designed for teachers by teachers to use in the classroom and so is slanted towards teaching small groups of children but the information can easily be modified for home schooling. Like all the other links on my links page for dyslexics it is free.

If you are interested in visual dyslexia you can visit my home page at www.dyslexiaglasses.com for more information.

[Charissa Vaunderbroad]

I am so sorry that people have been cruel to your daughter for her learning difference.

I would probably point out that writing backwards is a gift.

I have been diagnosed with dyslexia and math dyslexia, I can score high enough on tests but I have to use "Jedi mind tricks" to do it. I do have the ability to read upside down or backwards very well, if only someone had pointed out that was cool.

For the math dyslexia I imagine each number with the corresponding die face on top of it in red but I still have to count by fives to read an analog clock.

If you let her pick out some cd/book sets from the library it may help with any frustration she has, also video games that have subtitles on the cut scenes and the website starfall.com would be helpful tools for a pre reader. My son had a very hard time with the traditional approach to learning to read. He just got very into spelling with the video game scribblenauts.

If you want my advice it would be, maybe take the focus off traditional reading lessons if they aren't fun for her and focus on some low pressure ways to build her confidence.

[Sandra Dodd]

Each child learns to read (words or numbers) in his or her own way, so there's no reason to "handle" suspected dyslexia except not to make a deal about it, keep helping the child do things, read to her, play games, live a rich life, and at some point she will figure out how to read. It's happened over and over.

Lots of reading stories are here:
http://sandradodd.com/reading

[Rainbow Rivers]

LOL actually I have never heard of it before either and this was a fairly recent conversation I had with her where she said she was tested as there are different types of dyslexia. It is not so much as writing numbers backwards but simple things such as telling time on a normal clock are impossible for her and I remember the frustration of my mom trying to teach her how to tell time as kids. She is now 42 and still can not tell time on a normal clock. Also she can not balance a checkbook, something to do with numbers look all jumbled to her and she can not figure them out. Weird I know but true, she will stare at a clock forever trying to figure it out. As far as things like trying to balance a checkbook goes I am not sure where she goes wrong as I have never seen her checkbook but I dont think she writes the numbers backwards but if she should write a 9 she writes a 0 instead or something like that. She has had her kids balance her checkbook for years now. I never thought much of it as a kid, just knew she could not get simple numbers or times down for some reason.

[Jamie Jetson]

Oh my goodness!!! Math dyslexia??? I think my daughter has that and we've been dealing with it. ( I've never heard of it and don't get on computers often. I will research it now.) She's also very smart and I think she worked through it. But so very oddly for so long wrote EVERY single number backwards. Is this what you're talking about???? She's begun to write numbers correctly now, but she's 8 and I haven't pursued mcuh math education yet.

[Rainbow Rivers]

Thankyou for the tips, I will definatly try these with her to see if it helps!

[Slinky]

There are these alphabet cards where the letters have a rough texture to them. A friend of mine who did school at home used them for her daughter who was dyslexic. the idea is you trace the letters with your finger as you say it and look at it and the added sensory stimulus helps you to remember the way the shape goes.

Also for reading try getting different color transparencies and lay them over the top of what is being read. This is a technique a lot of college level people with dyslexia use. I think most find either blue or orange helpful.