1shortmomof4 wrote:Has your ds been evaluated for dyslexia? I see from your post that he's undergoing visual OT so there could be more to his struggles that need help. What signs are you seeing? Kids that have LDs or even other struggles (like vision) tend to mature later and it takes more time to bring all those skills together. He could have dyslexia and he could have dysgraphia - which is a writing issue. If that is the case, no matter how much cursive instruction you give, it is going to be a major problem and that alone may further delay his progress. Take a look at right brain/visual spatial learners and see if he might fit in that class of learning. Those kids tend to write later and it is a struggle although they suddenly take off with reading. I know handwriting is important and the newsfeeds are filled with the fact that schools are no longer teaching cursive but unfortunately, some kids may benefit from typing and having mom scribe - especially when learning those narration skills. I'm a mom to 3 dyslexics (one of which is hearing impaired) and visual spatial/RB learner who is maturing slowly and struggles with handwriting. One of my dyslexics is dysgraphic and learning to type has been the key to his academic success. Yes, he can write and I've seen gradual improvement but boy does it take a long time and a lot of patience. If you suspect dyslexia or even dysgraphia, if possible, get some professional evaluations. Those are key in establishing the paper trail needed for later accommodations when high school (testing/SAT/ACT) come up and later on in college. You'll both feel better about it if you have some clear understanding of what he's struggling with and how you can help him.
Thank you for the feedback, Heidi. No, we haven't had him evaluated for dyslexia or any learning disabilities. He's in vision therapy right now because of headaches and eye pain he was having when he would try to read. He hated reading, although he was decent at it, he would often go back and repeat words, or skip lines, lose his place, and comprehension was very low. He'd say the words were blurry or moving around. Those were the reading issues. In general, I would just say he's struggled to learn across the board. Memorizing math facts is hard for him. Lining up columns in math; remembering anything that has a certain order. He still has a hard time figuring out when to regroup with subtraction, for example. If I or the directions don't specifically tell him to do that, he will just take the bigger number minus the smaller number.
He still isn't solid on remembering our phone number and address (we moved a year and a half ago.) His spelling is terrible...although I feel he is finally beginning to improve with it, he's still not confident at all with it, and will constantly ask me how to spell things, rather than take a chance that he'll make a mistake with something. In general, he's easily frustrated, and hesitates to try new things, and has a hard time translating one skill to a different area (like when learning addition, he often got a problem right on a flashcard, but missed the same problem on paper a few seconds later.)
I had never thought about the importance of having him evaluated for leaving a paper trail to enable his success later. Where do I begin to look for that evaluation? Our local public school is pretty willing to work with us, should I see if there's someone there who could evaluate him, or see our family doc, or do I need to find a psychologist of some sort?
It's a good reminder that I need to maybe look at some of these modifications as more long term than something we do for a week or so to get over a hump.