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You say he has difficulty with reading and writing - has he ever been assessed for dyslexia? Xx

My son was found to have a specific significant difficulty in comprehension - understanding language - when he was assessed - he also has a mild hearing loss so the two together were causing great problems - especially as the secondary school automatically assumed he was just being difficult!. Children who’ve had very early neglect are often way behind with language comprehension. He also had dyspraxia type difficulties (though was never diagnosed as such) which made writing very difficult - he had OT for this. If you can get one a full assessment would help - or maybe a SALT one? Depends what he’s had already and when.

What help are they providing? My son went to learning support every afternoon to make sure he had the homework down correctly and understood what he had to do

Hi bluemetro,

My ad also has ADHD and her school at the time never picked up on her dyslexia as everything was put down to the ADHD. To be fair dyslexia can have the same behavioural symptoms as ADHD. Sally McKeown's book " how to help your dyslexic and dyspraxic child" states that if you answer yes to most of these questions then get an assessment-

- is he bright in some ways with a block in others,

- does he have difficulty carrying out 3 instructions in sequence,

- does he have particular difficult with reading or spelling,

- does he put figures or letters the wrong way,

- does he read a word then fail to recognise it further down the page

-does he spell a word several different ways without recognising the correct version

- does he have poor concentration span for reading and writing

- does he have difficulty understanding time and tense-

-does he confuse left and right

-does he answer questions orally but have difficulty writing the answers,

-is he unusually clumsy?

Also some dyslexic children actually see the words jumping or moving about and coloured overlays help with this.

My ad also has ASD and dyspraxia too. To DX it you will need an educational psychologist.

Hope the above helps.

Xx

Safia: He goes to Learning Support once a week for help with reading and spelling. He would probably benefit from less subjects and more support during the school day from Learning Support, but I don't think they have the capacity. The school asked for advice from a County Expert and the suggestion was to see Learning Support after school. As you can imagine that did not work after a full day. He has had quite a lot of help when they were in school in English, but without this he struggles and this mainly worked in a situation where it was not obvious he was getting this help.

Windfalls: He saw an optician re possible dyslexia as he said words moved on one occasion. He does find a filter makes a little difference, However we have also seen that this can also be related to anxiety.

Your list of questions is interesting as I had thought he was not dyslexic, because he did not put letters and numbers the wrong way around and is not particularly bright in any particular way. He does find it hard to follow several instructions. With reading I have noticed from early on that he will not remember a word further down the page and if we help him with a grammatical phrase he does not remember next time. Likewise spellings do not stick and he still misspells simple words. Tense and time are hard and he does communicate better orally but often will ask 'What do you mean?' However he is not clumsy but has difficulty in using a knife with a fork and took a long time to master shoelaces. When we asked for a full assessment for EHCP she mainly picked up cognitive problems. It is often difficult to know who needs to assess something as we try to work out what the problem is. We googled lots of things and that's how we finally got the ASD and ADHD assessments and then needed to find the right avenue to get each specific diagnosis as well as persuade professionals. DS found it hard as we saw 3 doctors before he got the first referral and soon began to doubt we would get him any help. I presume the way forward is to get a private Educational Psychologist assessment.

He has said when he reads questions he can't remember what he has read.

Hi bluemetro,

For me with my daughter the red flag really was the not remembering the word later down the page. I remember the floppy and kipper books which to begin with only have about 3 sentences on s page and same word is repeated numerous times and she would either read it correctly first time or I would sound it out and then the word would be repeated a couple of words later and she would not remember it. Poor short term memory is a problem with dyslexia. When she was assessed and I asked the ed pysch if she had any problems and she said "of course she's dyslexic" and looked at me as if I was mad!! Also my daughter is not particularly clumsy at home but has very poor spacial awareness and is forever covered in bruises. Games lessons at school are particularly tough for her.

I would definitely get him assessed.

Xx

Also consider an assessment for dyspraxia as they often go together. An OT will be able to help with that.xx

Thank you to you both. Re dyslexia I have done some more googling and see even more things that along the way we have put down to other things, but could be dyslexia, but have been dismissed. I also found the ones that major on the intelligence which were the things I had looked at before.

We have been advised with sensory issues to get an OT referral, so can mention dyspraxia at the same time.

As others have often said our children have a lot of different issues. I thought we had the diagnoses sorted yet more appear to be emerging. The main thing I think is to help others like school to find ways of supporting and to understand the can't rather than won't.

In reference to a previous recent post advice from others like this is something that has been missing on this board recently. One of the helpful things when something is suspected is to also know what professional would assess for that particular thing.

https://www.thepathway2success.com/30-digital-executive-functioning-tools-activities/

Exec function can be a real issue for kids with adhd - my son really struggles to plan, process, and starting a new task can be really difficult for him - as can shifting his attention from one activity to another. He’s almost 17 now and back in mainstream after 10 years in special provision BUT he’s only managing because he’s in school full time with 25 hours support.

Some useful resources on the above website and also recommend Sunshine Support. They’ve done some really helpful webinars .

Just to add to all the above info

Also just bear in mind that dyslexia requires a completely different way of teaching and so a couple of hours a week of extra help probably won't be sufficient to help him. They need to be taught at their own pace in a multi sensory way with lots of repetition. Xx

Hi Bluemetro, I don't know where in the country you are but we had an excellent experience with an assessor from Chrysalis Education Consultants in Warrington. My eldest was diagnosed with dyslexia by Dianne from there last year and she was really very good with him throughout the (quite grueling!) assessment, recognising his signs of distress and anxiety, taking it at his pace etc. My son has particular difficulties with working memory. The assessor explained to us that he needs to 'over learn' every concept thoroughly before moving on to the next as if the first concept isn't properly embedded, he will forget that as soon as he moves on to something new so, yes, as windfalls says, lots of repetition. We had no option but to use a private assessor as my son is home educated, but it can be quite costly. It was definitely a worthwhile investment for us though.

Thank you for all the suggestions. We have started the process for assessment and Learning Support are going to help with executive functioning skills at school.