Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

neverdespairgirl

michaels wrote: »

Your son is 3 years ahead in his oral expression and vocabulary, remind me again what is it you and NDB do for a living....

I'm not sure dyslexic warrants a , hopefully the world has moved on from the days where it was misunderstood and resulted in bright pupils being held back (Sue don't comment). It would be a boring world if everyone confirmed to the 'norm' in everything. Apparently I was a slow reader until they eventually found some books I found interesting and then it just clicked and I became a real nose in a book at all times child and DD2 seems similar, DD1 has always been well ahead in reading but has no interest in books, DD2 struggled but seems to have made a real breakthrough in the last 6 months and now is much more keen to read.

I think it does merit a . He can't read for pleasure, because it's such an effort. And his spelling's so bad that his writing just doesn't make sense, and he also hates doing it, which is not a Good Thing.

So it's holding him back in itself, and upsetting him, too.

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

We've just received the draft of Isaac's report from the educational psychologist, with a request for some further information. She definitely thinks he is dyslexic , and his writing and reading scores are both really quite low, below his chronological age. She said, for example:

It seems that by the time Isaac has managed to write down his first idea he has forgotten the rest of what he wanted to say. Isaac’s spelling is, at best, phonetic or semi-phonetic, and, at worst, fairly bizarre and indecipherable


Which is true. She reckons his writing age at 6, and reading age at 7, and he's nearly 8. This compares with his oral expression, vocabulary and mental processing ages of 11, 10 and 9. So there's a real mis-match between different areas for him.

She sounded a bit suprised by his answer to one question:

When asked how ‘Space’ and ‘Time’ are alike in the last question on the Similarities subtest he made the following comment:


‘Space makes time in the big bang. There was no time before the big bang. No one knows exactly what time is but it stops things happening all at once.’

michaels wrote: »

Your son is 3 years ahead in his oral expression and vocabulary, remind me again what is it you and NDB do for a living....

I'm not sure dyslexic warrants a , hopefully the world has moved on from the days where it was misunderstood and resulted in bright pupils being held back (Sue don't comment). It would be a boring world if everyone confirmed to the 'norm' in everything. Appaarently I was a slow eader until they eventually found soem books I found interesting and then it just clicked and I became a real nose in abook at all times child and DD2 seems similar, DD1 has always been well ahead in reading but has no interest in books, DD2 struggled but seems to have made a real breakthrough in the last 6 months and now is much more keen to read.

I can't remember now exactly how bad DS's spelling was when he was nearly 8, but probably similar to that. He himself would certainly say that being dyslexic warrants a We may have better understanding of dyslexia than we had in the past, but we are still an overwhelmingly text-based society, and if you cannot read and write fluently and without much effort, then everything is harder, and takes longer, and it all feels very unfair to him.

NDG, my advice is to get him help, and get it sooner rather than later. I feel with hindsight that I spent far too long hoping that the small amount of extra help provided by DS's primary school would be sufficient, and that sooner or later it would click for him. Well, he's improved a great deal since he was 8, but it hasn't really clicked yet, and now he's at secondary school and his access to the curriculum is constantly impeded by his struggles with literacy. His literacy difficulties are a big contributor to his feelings of not enjoying school and of being a failure, despite everyone's best efforts to convince him that he isn't - although his innate perfectionism contributes a lot to that too.

[X-posted with NDG]

SingleSue

My fingers are itching tonight and not in a good way. Just seen a post elsewhere on the site where someone is bemoaning the fact they are 'only' 23, something which annoys me greatly. At 23 you are an adult, supposed to be doing adult things, not still thinking, behaving and being protected by your parents like a blooming 13 year old!*

Thankfully, I didn't press the button to upload my reply but by god was I tempted.

*Special needs/disabilities exempted obviously...but even with my lot, they are a lot more independent than that particular poster!

LydiaJ

SingleSue wrote: »

My fingers are itching tonight and not in a good way. Just seen a post elsewhere on the site where someone is bemoaning the fact they are 'only' 23, something which annoys me greatly. At 23 you are an adult, supposed to be doing adult things, not still thinking, behaving and being protected by your parents like a blooming 13 year old!*

Thankfully, I didn't press the button to upload my reply but by god was I tempted.

*Special needs/disabilities exempted obviously...but even with my lot, they are a lot more independent than that particular poster!

It's very odd, isn't it? A hundred years ago, most people in this country were independent and earning a living by 15 or so, but not eligible to vote until 21. Now they can vote at 18, but a lot don't seem to be independent until about 25 or more.

neverdespairgirl

LydiaJ wrote: »

NDG, my advice is to get him help, and get it sooner rather than later. I feel with hindsight that I spent far too long hoping that the small amount of extra help provided by DS's primary school would be sufficient, and that sooner or later it would click for him. Well, he's improved a great deal since he was 8, but it hasn't really clicked yet, and now he's at secondary school and his access to the curriculum is constantly impeded by his struggles with literacy. His literacy difficulties are a big contributor to his feelings of not enjoying school and of being a failure, despite everyone's best efforts to convince him that he isn't - although his innate perfectionism contributes a lot to that too.

Thanks Lydia - that's the way I feel about it too. He's already feeling a bit insecure about his reading and writing, as the others in his class are doing better at it.

The educational psychologist strongly recommends extra help, and we're definitely going to take up the suggestion.

neverdespairgirl

LydiaJ wrote: »

It's very odd, isn't it? A hundred years ago, most people in this country were independent and earning a living by 15 or so, but not eligible to vote until 21. Now they can vote at 18, but a lot don't seem to be independent until about 25 or more.

100 years ago I think it was younger - I have a vague idea that the leaving age only went up to 15 at the end of the Second World War.

My maternal grandmother left school at 12, in 1927. I think she left before the minimum leaving age, as I think it rose from 12 to 14 around the time of the First World War. Granny had to leave school to look after her "invalid" mother - "invalid" lived happily and healthily on from 1927 to 1982, though!

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Thanks Lydia - that's the way I feel about it too. He's already feeling a bit insecure about his reading and writing, as the others in his class are doing better at it.

The educational psychologist strongly recommends extra help, and we're definitely going to take up the suggestion.

Good. I hope it works out well for him. Actually, I'm not sure it would have worked to get DS extra help any sooner. He had too much else to cope with - his emotional problems with his bereavement really needed to be dealt with first to give him enough brain space to cope with extra help with his literacy. But Isaac is not in that position, so I'm sure going ahead with help at this stage will be the best thing for him.

michaels

Don't seem to be able to open my mouth without upsetting people today - still tomorrow will be another day and I'll do my best to do better.

LydiaJ

michaels wrote: »

Don't seem to be able to open my mouth without upsetting people today - still tomorrow will be another day and I'll do my best to do better.

I can't speak for anybody else, but if I've given you the impression that you've upset me, then the impression is misleading, and I apologise. You and your kids seem to be late readers for whom it all clicks a bit later than for other people. NDG's Isaac may well turn out to be like that too. But he might turn out to be more like my son and need help, in which case it's in his best interests to get the help sooner. It's useful to have perspectives from both sorts of people on the thread. If he's just a late bloomer, extra help now won't do him any harm.

SingleSue

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I think it does merit a . He can't read for pleasure, because it's such an effort. And his spelling's so bad that his writing just doesn't make sense, and he also hates doing it, which is not a Good Thing.

So it's holding him back in itself, and upsetting him, too.

To give you hope

James is dyslexic and reading and writing was a real chore to him in his younger days, he would get so frustrated because he knew what he wanted to write, it was all in his head but he just couldn't get the damn information down on a piece of paper.

He did have a short time of relief when he had a wonderful teacher at primary school who helped him (she showed him how to tell left from right using his hands..when you hold up your left hand, the thumb and first finger make an L shape, something he still uses to this day) and worked with him on his writing and reading but alas, he had to move upto another teacher..who then branded him slow.

It all really clicked for him though when he had an absolutely brilliant English teacher at the start of his GCSEs. She noticed he had a talent in creative writing (amazingly, she could understand his scribble and completely jumbled words) and started to spend time teaching him different methods to help him. She also worked on his confidence, he thought he was stupid (didn't matter how many times I told him he wasn't)...that confidence made all the difference as he went from being predicted pretty much all F and G's in his GCSEs to the final 10 A-C GCSEs (including English and Maths) he got.

He also got the reading bug, he went from hardly touching books to devouring them. Ok, he still has trouble if he is tired but he is no longer scared to read which had been the biggest problem before...the thought of failing.

I'll let you into a little secret, I also have a type of dyslexia ( it is more like Irlens than traditional dyslexia). I have to be so very careful when I write or type as things will get jumbled, especially when tired, the letters will be correct just not in the correct order as spelling has never been a problem for me (nor reading, I learnt to deal with moving words/paragraphs, letters blurring and re reading the same line several times from a very early age..I just thought it was normal!). I had a very advanced reading age (11 years at age 5) and have always read avidly because I always thought it was perfectly normal and that was how everyone else read.

I think it is also why my brain cannot process text speak (interspersing letters with numbers), it seperates it all out so it makes absolutely no sense at all..and why if the letters in a word are in the wrong place, it all makes perfect sense to me.