Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

SingleSue

Itismehonest wrote: »

neverdespairgirl - You're bound to be concerned but it's amazing how many people have done extremely well for themselves despite being dyslexic (& with much tougher conditions).
Take a look at this

He will have talents in other ways. It's a case of helping him to find where those talents are. He may also just be later developing the reading, writing skills.
I've heard of youngsters who really struggled but then something just clicked & they were away. One boy, I recall, loved Harry Potter & that gave him the added impetus to really want to read the books which brought him on enormously.

It was Harry Potter that James was encouraged and helped to read by his most excellent English teacher in year 10. He had had the books for quite a while because it was the thing to do but had always struggled to get into them.

tomterm8

Itismehonest,

I don't get what you are trying to say. People who have Dyslexia have a normal range of intelligence: with treatment, they have precisely the same chance of getting a high flying degree as anyone else.

Edit: This is not a theoretical discussion to me. When I went to secondary school I was diagnosed with dyslexia and a reading age five years lower than the rest of the class. With the right treatment I ended up with a first class honours in software engineering.

A friend has dyslexia, was never diagnosed, and therefore never taught properly. She can't do the paperwork in her former job as a carer, so can't do what she wants with her life.

SingleSue

Itismehonest wrote: »

Of course you give them support. I didn't say otherwise.
However, making the parents &/or child feel like the child is a problem & failure is even more rot, IMO.
Not everyone will be high-flying professionals with degrees. The world needs all sorts of people with all manner of skills & talents to turn.

I take your point but as a parent of autistic children who have struggled with everyday things (learning difficulties amongst them), I would have to disagree.

For my two with autism, they have found it very frustrating, they are both very intelligent but their difficulties make it hard for that to be shown, so we have had to help and support them to bring that intelligence out rather than concentrating on other strengths (music in middle son for instance) because the alternative is 'too hard'.

For James with his dyslexia, he found it soul destroying being told he was stupid or below intelligence and even being written off by some of his teachers as stupid. He is far from that as he has an IQ of 148, he just struggles to get stuff onto a piece of paper.

Now, we could have believed what we were being told and accepted that he was slow (that was the phrase one health visitor said to me) and tried to concentrate on other talents but I knew he was bright and that it would be a travesty if something had not been done to help him.

I was proved right in the end of course but I could quite easily have believed the so called professionals and I dread to think where he would be now....certainly not about to start University that is for sure!

LydiaJ

Itismehonest wrote: »

Of course you give them support. I didn't say otherwise.
However, making the parents &/or child feel like the child is a problem & failure is even more rot, IMO.
Not everyone will be high-flying professionals with degrees. The world needs all sorts of people with all manner of skills & talents to turn.

Nobody has made me feel that my child is a problem or a failure, and I don't feel that he is. I do feel that he has a problem that it is my responsibility as his parent to provide the help to enable him to solve. It's the same as when he had a broken arm and I took him to the fracture clinic etc. And then when, a couple of years later, he started complaining that there were still things he couldn't do with that arm even though it was supposed to be fine, I took him back again and got more treatment until the arm could do everything it's supposed to be able to do.

Also, nobody (apart from a few thoughtless peers on occasions) is making him feel that he's a problem or a failure. He deduces that (mistakenly) by himself when he sees that most of the others can easily do something so central to contemporary life that he struggles with, so his teachers and I are all in league together to try to convince him that he isn't.

lostinrates

Hmmm

Shall I take a photo of something else to change the subject?

Spirit_2

LydiaJ wrote: »

They are the sort of children who find learning interesting, want to do well at school, and feel distressed that this wretched literacy issue keeps obstructing that. (Well, mine is, and it sounds to me as though hers is too.)
. Learning foreign languages is really hard, especially if they have funny alphabets or weird spelling and stupid silent letters.

.

Every sympathy for the distress..and wanting them to do well enough to access resources/communicate...I wonder at the value of the foreign languages though..does that not just emphasise a problem when a child can be talented and shine in other things such as maths/science/arts etc.

I think it is about diversity and to some extent peers knowing that child A is very good at x

tomterm8

lostinrates wrote: »

Hmmm

Shall I take a photo of something else to change the subject?

Chickens? ..........

Edit: do you know their sex yet?

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

You can duz coedz???

I have some great ideas .... just needed to pair up with a competent coder

Had one just yesterday in fact.....

Yes, I can (But I am very rusty, to be honest with you)

lostinrates

tomterm8 wrote: »

Chickens? ..........

Edit: do you know their sex yet?

It's too dark for chicken photos...

No, I don't know what sex they are,


And um, not very good at sexing the silkies. When I was given the snowballs all but one was got by fox and I thought, 'typical, I have the cockerel left' called it cotton eyed Joe and went on quite happily till joe laid an egg and was renamed jojo!

lostinrates

Here's a picture.

A happy memory from earlier this month!