Dyslexia - My perspective

Well, I thought that I would blog about my experience with Dyslexia. Maybe someone will benefit from the different things I have experienced and tried out.....

My daughter, Kelsey, was having a few (not bad) hassles at school - nothing great, but I knew she was struggling a bit - especially with her fluency in reading. She has always been a sharp little girl, very considerate, kind, helpful, sensitive! She loves to help and has great initiative. She is also athletic and from a young age has had great control over her muscles and her body weight to strength ratio is very high! Meaning she is tough and strong! She loves all sport and is fearless while playing.

Anyway, she went to 1st Grade in South Africa and her teacher said she was one of her top students (thanks to a SUPERB preschool/day mom who taught her to read and write from 3 1/2 years old). She was amazing! When we moved to the USA, she went to 1st grade again as her birthday fell in the later part of the year and children her age only started 1st grade with her. We thought this would be a good thing so she can get an ear for the accent and different vowel sounds.

Well, she seemed to struggle with recognizing some of the sounds, especially the a's and u's - then the e's and i's. her reading was still not fluent and she reversed some of her letters from time to time. 2nd grade she progressed well, her mathematics is always great and there's no problems there, just her sight reading and fluency again. She was asked by her teacher to reread books over again to get used to the words. She would read 'for' for 'of' etc. I later learnt that this is a classic symptom of dyslexia along with the reversing....

She really did fine at school so there was no real bells ringing, and when she finished 2nd grade, having got mostly 100% on her spelling tests but her writing stories and applying those spelling rules left much to be desired. She spells very phonetically. She still reversed her 'b' and 'd' and then her 'p' and '9'. I knew there was something up as by 3rd grade the natural reversing should stop.

I decided to have her tested for dyslexia, as if she had it, then we could then move forward from there - if not, then we'd try something else. She loves school and I did not want for her to stop that love and have a bad experience because she wasn't coping and then end up hating it. She's there for 6 hours a day and 12 years of her life - a long time not to enjoy something. So for me it was essential I get to the route of her problems to ensure a positive experience.

I found a Dyslexia Centre not too far from where we live and set up an appointment. We were there for 2 hours where Kelsey had a positive experience. They were kind and reassuring. They tested her IQ to reading to spelling etc. Basically, she has a high IQ and that is why she was doing 'fine' at school - she was compensating. But all the tests are based on an average IQ of 100 - so against that she was doing fine, but for her OWN ability, she was way under - hence a lot of room for improvement. I also got a 9 page full written report back from them with a folder and copy for the school and another for her teacher. Impressive. There were a number of resources they gave me to help her and insisted she not attend 'Resource' at school as they do not help dyslexic children.

On my own, I did some other research and with my background training in Aromatherapy, Reflexology and Nutrition, as well as being a teacher and doing a short course on Sensory Integration, I used all these things together to come up with a ‘program’ for her.We’ve been doing this program for 3 months now and have already seen a marked improvement – her oral reading going from 52 words a minute to over 80. This still needs to improve but this was great for Kelsey as her program has required a lot of will power and strength of character which she has valiantly shown. The results motivated her and she could see it was worthwhile. She is now a lot more intrinsically motivated and I need only remind her from day to day.

I'll post another post about the symptoms and the program we are doing......