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    Joined: Oct 2014
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    This seems like a silly question, but I don't seem to be able to find an answer. Many people refer to "mildly dyslexic" or "severely dyslexic" - is there any way to tell the difference, other than by intractability to remediation?

    I am really flailing about trying to figure out what our newly-diagnosed DD8 actually needs. Half the time I think I am wildly over-reacting (do we need to switch to a special school?) The other half I think I am wildly under-reacting (if school can't do anything, can I fake it at home with after-school remediation?).

    I am at a complete loss to try and understand how severe her needs are, and therefore how substantial her supports need to be. I don't want to yank her out of school needlessly - but then again, I sure don't want to wait a year before I realize that we haven't given her the help she needs.

    Any advice?

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    I don't think that dyslexia and other LDs are things that fit easily into categories such as "mild" and "severe". When I use terms such as mild/severe in reference to my children's LDs it's actually a reference to how their functioning (academic/social/whatever) is impacted by the LD, not a measure of the actual LD.

    Did the psych (or whatever professional) who diagnosed your dd give you any advice on remediation and the path forward? That's the first place I'd start - put those recommendations in place, as much as possible. If it's a long list and feels overwhelming, take it one step at a time.

    I found that reading and online research helped me get a bit of an understanding of what would probably come in the future and what we'd need to address with respect to the LDs my children have, and I also found that networking with other moms who were local helped me get an idea what I could and shouldn't expect from our school district. I also took advantage of any local workshops etc that came up that were related to either the LDs or how to advocate at school etc.

    It's also helpful to reframe how you look at it as not one big problem to solve now, but as being at the starting point on a journey. Dyslexia doesn't go away overnight, and no one can learn how to best accommodate/remediate for any one child overnight. You can start moving forward based on the advice you've received so far and the knowledge you have now - even if it doesn't feel like you have the big picture solved or even if it feels like you really don't understand much of anything about it. Just do some small something, one thing, and get started. And as you start, as you add something new, always observe, watch, and don't be surprised or flustered or caught off guard if something doesn't work as planned. That's probably going to happen no matter what, and it won't mean that what you've done up to that point wasn't the right thing to do, it simply means that you have more information now and you use that info to help you shape how to continue to move forward.

    It's a journey.

    Last piece of advice - be sure to talk to you dd about what's up, how she feels about things, what works for her, what doesn't work for her etc.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

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    There isn't really a widely-accepted standard for severity, other than the academic impact, or intensity of intervention. I would think of levels of severity conceptually more the way that the AAIDD and DSM-5 define intellectual disability, which is not only by a certain cognitive profile, but also by the level of support needed.

    The intensity of intervention tends to be more aggressive the younger the child is, as, after you've thrown the kitchen sink at them for many years, whatever limitations remain are usually the ones that are quite resistant to intervention. (Obviously.) At some point, one has to start looking toward the long-term, and providing access to life activities that have value to this individual, rather than remediating specific deficit areas to normative levels. That point may come very early (as with teaching keyboarding to dysgraphic elementary-age students), or much later (text-to-speech becomes appropriate for some students only in late high school/post-secondary, when the vocabulary of instruction takes a steep climb).

    I would not worry about the exact level of severity. Instead, I would monitor progress. If whatever interventions are in place are helping her rate of progress to accelerate, then you are on the right track. If she is not beginning to close the gap/obtain functional skills/gain full access to areas of strength, and continues to experience disproportionate frustration or negative self-concepts about learning, then it's time to modify or re-think the supports and interventions. Identify a metric that can be more-or-less objectively and reliably collected with some level of frequency (like every two or three months, or more frequently), and start charting it. If there is a good IEP in place, the progress reports should be tracking a measurable objective of this kind. If you don't have measurable, achievable objectives written into your IEP goals, politely but firmly inquire until you do. Those are how you hold the school accountable for servicing your child's needs. Often, you can just keep sending it back for revisions until you are satisfied, and then sign it, rather than rejecting it on the first draft. Or you can accept specified parts of it, and keep revising the rest of it until you reach consensus.


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    My older DD20 has a language processing LD, it is not quite the same as dyslexia but can cause similar problems in school. The treatment is a bit different. She is currently a junior in college and doing OK. She still struggles with reading & writing and does qualify for support as her university although rarely uses it. She was officially diagnosed in 2nd grade and had an IEP 2-11th grade. I'm not sure if I could but a label "mild" or "severely" on her LD. If we had not worked with her for years, I doubt she would be where she is today. She did learn techniques some that just improved her reading/writing and ways to work around her issues. She still reads slowly and needs a tutor to help 'edit' important writing assignment. But I keep telling her lots of college students need that.

    We have a private school in my area for students with dyslexia & language problems and I know a few kids who attended. Every other year, I considered if I should enroll her there but in the end we kept her in the public school. What I DID do was have her see a private educational therapist once a week from 3rd grade on. Her therapist was excellent, it was expensive but no where as expensive as private school would have been. My daughter also got help and accommodations at her public school. Depending on her teacher that sometimes worked better than others. We were also lucky she attended a K-8th grade school that had only a small number of kids with LD's in her grade, meaning the resource specialist has a lot of time for her.

    What I was trying to tell you is it is possible to get public school with some additional extra therapy after school to work. But make sure you are getting the RIGHT extra help. A generic tutoring center won't be enough.

    Good Luck.

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    Thanks so much for the very prompt and thoughtful replies - I’m guessing that slight edge of hysteria in my voice carried…. Warning, long reply below.

    All of you have confirmed what I suspected - that “severity” is really only meaningful in terms of symptoms and how amenable they are to remediation. Until we’ve put some major effort into supports, we can’t begin to judge how much impact the dyslexia is really having, or might have in the long term.

    polarbear, thank you for the big, deep calming breath! I think the big problem I’m having is that while yes, our psych did give us advice, it is more underwhelming than overwhelming. It’s appropriate, but fairly general, and includes the standard items: (a) Do an phonological-based reading program; (b) Provide accommodations in the classroom - assistance with writing, using non-writing formats where possible, extra time and (c) Start building skills with AT.

    Six weeks after providing the psych report, we are finally meeting later this week with the school’s learning resource teacher and DD’s teachers to plan the IEP and the way ahead. Unfortunately, while the school is willing and well-meaning, it is clueless and has zero resources. It is clear that any form of remediation is beyond the school’s capacity, and isn’t done (French immersion public school - apparently they don’t do that). All they can offer is accommodations.

    I have been researching like crazy, but find the information maddeningly vague. Yes, she needs OG remediation, but what else? And then what? And what to do in the meantime? What does she require to be able to access the rest of the curriculum? Do we need a new approach to math? What about once she’s completed basic phonological training? If I know the school really can’t do anything, it’s left to me to figure all of these out, and I haven't yet found any solid info.

    While we have been waiting for our school meeting, the spec ed resource has consulted with the board psych, and has been working out plans with DDs teachers. In theory, they've now spent six weeks working on the IEP, and should now have a basic grip on what they’re dealing with. But this week I get a report card, proudly noting that they are helping her reading by focusing on sight words….(.argh - she’s a champion guesser who can’t decode). And her math homework is returned, noting expectation that every single calculation should be accompanied by multiple full sentences of explanation and conclusion. double argh.

    It’s not that these individual examples are unsolvable - its that they suggest a gulf of understanding so vast, I don’t know if trying to bridge it is even a good idea. It’s going to be REALLY difficult to have this conversation without sounding like I’m attacking absolutely everything about the curriculum and their teaching, and of course they’ll get defensive - who wouldn't?

    At home we’ve now done a month of All About Reading (a do-it-yourself OG-style program) (thanks aeh!). I can now clearly see DD’s (previously well-hidden) deficits. She may have been reading bits of Percy Jackson to us when we really forced her, but take away her context cues and she has unmistakeable troubles with lists of random three letter words. We’ve got a long haul ahead of us, and this is where I get confused. Are we just trying to survive a year, while we “get caught up” on reading? Or do I need to be thinking about this as a much more global problem, for which she really needs to be in a seriously different kind of learning environment over a longer term? That, I guess, is the core of my question.

    So aeh - the bottom line with respect to monitoring whether the interventions are working, is that the interventions are singular, and I’m it. I just can’t judge if that is remotely adequate. Or how long I should wait for results before taking more substantive action. The IEP will not be tracking achievable objectives, because it won’t include anything intended to improve the situation. (No Wright’s law here…)

    So the more I see, the less I know what I am even asking them for. DD brings home French homework and math (using the term math very loosely), and I have no idea what I should be doing with it or expecting her to do with it. Should I scribe or let her practice writing? DH was upset when I said I was reading the French homework to her, that’s she needs to practice to keep up in school. But without doing any phonological training in French, is trying to make her read and write at grade 3 level useful? Cruel? Actually damaging, because it’s encouraging her to fake it and sight read, the habits I’m desperately trying to break her of?

    Thank you for the deep breaths, the calming words, and the reminder that this is a journey. Take a step. Take another step.

    It’s just that I’m suddenly terrified we’re going in the exact wrong direction.

    Fundamentally, I guess really what I am asking is simply - should I stay or should I go?

    Up to this week, I had been thinking (pending school discussion) that for this year, at least, we would try as Bluemagic suggests - regular school with accommodations, remediation outside. It can be me and/ or tutors - if I could only figure out what I wanted them to do do. Bluemagic - I’d love to hear more about what you sought from the tutor and how you integrated the two, especially in earlier years if you were dealing with a need for major catch-up, not just keeping up.

    Maybe she’s just a *little* dyslexic. Maybe she’s mostly asynchronous, and just needs a year to catch up. Or maybe she needs a great deal more than that, and she's in a school that can't provide it. How do I know?

    The mismatch between where she is currently functioning and their overall expectations seems to be huge. How much damage could this do to her? Does she instead need to be in the hands of experts where the whole curriculum will be presented in ways that would presumably be accessible, and the expectations on her would be reasonable for where she is at at this time? We do have two specialized LD private schools in the city, so this is an option we have to consider.

    I wish so much I could see the world through her eyes, and have a clue what she sees, and how things actually work for her.

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    Short Answer: My BTDT advice would be to check out the LD schools in your area. You may find some answers there or at least some peace of mind.


    Long Answer: At this point my DD9 has been diagnosed with just about every possible LD and is in out of district placement at a spec Ed school. When she was first identified the summer between K and 1st we wanted her at a small, supportive private where we would be paying out of pocket for OG tutoring in addition to rather hefty tuition. Our district convinced us to send her to the public for a year arguing that no one really had a handle yet on what all her difficulties might be and the cost could potentially be staggering to provide all the services ourselves, if we could even access all the needed services outside a public school environment. It was mentioned at one point that they might even be able to remediate in a year and then we could place her at the private if we wanted. That obviously didn't happen. Instead we kept adding diagnoses and services until we got to the point where her IEP looks like a paperback novel and it became clear that her needs could not be met in the local public. I now use the phrase "profoundly learning disabled" and everyone in the room nods their heads in agreement.

    Now in 4th grade she is in her 4th year of daily, intensive reading intervention (they are using Wilson) and she is approximately half a grade level behind in her ability to decode. (But 5+ levels ahead in comprehension). She has been working with OT's since she was 5 but it is clear writing by hand will not be her method of communicating - she is working on keyboarding and other AT skills as well as starting on cursive to see if that helps.

    She is making slow, steady progress with the emphasis on s-l-o-w. That's fine though - early on I found it hard to believe she would ever learn to decode but now she is indeed reading. Slowly, with difficulty and many, many errors based on context clues, but she IS reading. Now I am starting to think of all her issues as being divided into 2 categories - which ones will she be able to remediate even if it takes years and which will she never really be able to overcome so we need to focus on real world work around solutions. My goal is to get her to a point that she can function in the real world. To me that means being able to encode well enough for word prediction software to guess what she means to type and to decode well enough to be able to select the correct option from the word prediction list.

    I'm not sure if this helps much but I guess what I am trying to say is don't worry about labeling it moderate or severe. Give her whatever support you can and buckle in for the ride. You don't yet know where this path will lead so don't worry about things that may never happen. Find out your options and make informed decisions rather than scared decisions. I'm sorry I'm not familiar with the Canadian system to know what she is entitled to. Here in the US our local school district HAS to provide services. Ours couldn't meet her needs in district so they are sending her to the spec Ed school. I would guess that the French immersion program which would be a fabulous opportunity for an NT kid may be making things more difficult for your DD.

    Based on my experience well meaning but clueless school staff are just that - both well meaning and clueless. If she can't get the intensive help she needs in that school it is probably not the best place for her. And I have to ask - do you feel qualified to do this intervention yourself? I know that neither DH nor I could have possibly done that with our DD. I know one mother, a teacher, who trained in an OG type program (sorry but I'm not sure which one), quit her job and decided to tutor her dyslexic son full time at home. It didn't work and he is now in his third year at an LD school where he is apparently making huge strides. I think they regret the years they lost not having placed him there sooner.

    Good luck and know that you are not alone. Please keep us posted.

    {hugs}

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    MichelleC - is English your first language or French? If it's English, I'd seriously consider taking her out of the French immersion school - it seems like it's throwing an extra challenge for you and your dd to both deal with. I'm a huge fan of immersion schools, but for my own dd who struggles with reading, I just feel that it would have been too much.

    I would absolutely scribe for my child (I have, I did, and it was a good thing!). The key is to separate out what the goal of the assignment is - if the goal is handwriting practice, no, don't scribe. If the goal is creative writing, putting together a story or reporting factual knowledge, then it's ok to scribe (or to let her start using a keyboard) - in this situation, by scribing, you are removing a barrier, not preventing learning.

    I also proof-read my 2e kids' homework (for spelling/grammar/etc) and we check our kids' math homework because they do make a ton of dyslexic/dysgraphic type errors that have nothing to do with conceptual understanding. I emphasize with them that they are ultimately going to have to learn how to do this *successfully* for themselves, but at this point in time, my dysgraphic ds (who is in high school), still misses a lot of silly things due to his dysgraphia as well as makes additional accidental mistakes when he checks his work himself. I first thought that this type of double-checking was over-helicoptering or whatever, but I read a bio of a well-known successful business person where he mentioned that his mother did this for him as a student and then his wife did this for him in college or something and that now as a business person he is still relying on others to proof-read what he writes. It's just part of what comes with having an LD and it's ok. I have a good friend (adult) who's dyslexic and she works in a career that requires a lot of reading - she proofreads everything for herself but she says it took her years to come up with a methodology that works for her, and that it was very individual, not something anyoe could have taught her.

    One thing that I think has been really important - it was recommended to us to have our reading-challenged dd listen to audiobooks at her comprehension level, so that she could keep in pace with intellectual peers re what the reading concepts and vocabulary she was/is exposed to. This has actually been a bit difficult for us, for all sorts of reasons, and I can see the impact over time that happens with a child who isn't reading for fun the way her peers are.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    Our dd eventually benefited the most from a Lindamood-Bell program, but it took probably two years and tries with different approaches to find what worked for her to significantly improve her reading skills... so it's a highly individual journey.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

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    Good Luck, just to clarify I was telling you what I did for my DD to give you perspective. I'm not necessary recommending this for you, it's hard for me to say what's best for your DD. If I were you I would certainly look around and check out all the other educational options. My daughter didn't have a 'tutor' she saw an Educational Therapist who specialized in reading & language disorders. This was someone who had a PhD and had studied reading & language problems. I didn't tell her what to do with my daughter, she looked at her test results and did some testing on her own and made an individual plan for my daughter. Initially it was working on her reading skills, and eventually focused more on her writing. Mostly she had her only plan and only worked on 'homework' when it was incorporating parsing the book they were reading in English or something similar. My daughter had problems with reading comprehension, and she worked mostly with non-fiction sources to get my daughter to look at every single work and parse out meaning.

    I know what this kind of thing is like to tackle. I've only recently had my son labeled '2E' and as he already in H.S. and I wish my interventions could help faster. But even if your daughter's dyslexia is 'mild' I doubt this will just be a intensive one-year she will be back on track kind of thing. While you might be able to get her back on track that way, my experience is this kind of thing affects the long haul.

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    My deep gratitude to all of you for your time (overdue), and a whole new set of questions (too soon!). It’s been a busy week, and your thoughts and questions have been with me throughout. The chaos has included the school meeting, receipt of draft IEP (no content, no surprise), phone discussions with both private LDs schools as well as the public English one, several kinds of dyslexia reading specialists/ tutors, the producer of/ trainer in a French OG-type program, gazoodles more research, and goodness knows what else. Huge brain dump of my week follows for your suggestions - apologies for volume!!

    I have been trying to evaluate three basic options. We can stay put, add in as much support as we can, and keep assessing to see if we have good progress or need bigger change. Or we can assume right off the bat that that isn’t going to be enough, and jump ship immediately, either into the local English school (easy) or a private LD school (hard but not impossible). Pemberly, we seem to have the opposite situation to you here - we may need the private to get enough remediation for her to be able to function in public, where there is little support.

    DH heavily favours the first approach, with all fingers and toes crossed that she is more asynchronous/ delayed than truly dyslexic. He thinks we should give status-quo-plus-supports a fair try to see if it’s working before leaping hysterically off into radical change. At least a couple of months; ideally until the end of the school year and then re-assess. He figures it will be quite clear whether her reading is improving - he thinks it already is (and has rather too much faith in my do-it-yourself intervention). But I do see his point about not assuming the worst without evidence, and jumping into a panicked decision. On the other hand, I think he’s a little too fond of the notion that she might just be delayed, and will hop up to grade level by the end of the year, and then chug merrily along for ever after.

    She’s already old for starting dyslexia intervention, and if she needs more, I don’t want to wait.

    So what does option 1 look like? DD’s teacher is lovely, flexible and is already working hard on the accommodations, particularly with AT (text-prediction and text-to-voice). DD seems to work more happily on a whiteboard, so she does so whenever she wants and her teacher takes pictures and adds them to her folder. While DD is pretty unhappy in school, she does really like her teachers, who are a perfect match temperamentally for DD, and bring out the best in her (and that’s not easy to achieve). We’re happy to drop the French if that’s what she needs. But she speaks it like a native (her teacher thought she was), so it’s actually the one thing she can do really well in school right now…. and just because of practice, her reading and writing is currently much better in French than English. As noted, main teacher is inexperienced but very willing to work with us to support DD and learn more. She is not, however, getting useful advice from the Learning Support with respect to to what are appropriate expectations (like realms of written output in math). DD is getting small group reading (standard approaches) with the Learning Support twice a week, and one-on-one writing support from her teacher twice a week. No OG-type remediation, in either language. And I’m concerned that the school really doesn’t see the difference. 500 kids, and they tell me they’ve never dealt with dyslexia before….

    Option 1 therefore requires all remediation to occur outside of school - and outside of school hours. While this is far from ideal, so far it’s no as bad as it sounds, since we’ve mostly dumped all other homework, plus piano, and replaced with reading remediation. So we haven’t increased homework time, and we’ve replaced two frustrating things she was hating and struggling with, with one frustrating (repetitious) thing she can succeed at. There are also some advantages to at-home remediation, including flexibility to choose her most receptive times, and being able to let her turn it into a game, which takes a lot of time but keeps her more willing. She has even asked several times if she can read to me from her books that come with the program - this is a small miracle!

    But Pemberly asks the key question - “do you feel qualified to do this intervention yourself?” Darn good question. Can I deliver the AAR program? Sure, it’s designed to be self-explanatory. But is this intervention enough? Doubt it. Thus my original post, trying to figure out how much more, of what, she probably needs. And is extracurricular sufficient, or does she need her whole day in an LD-friendly environment?

    It would be great to have daily at-home remediation work supported by regular professional advice and direction. And don’t worry, Bluemagic - I wasn’t trying to say - “hey I’m going to do what Bluemagic told me!” Just that what you described was similar to the approach I had been thinking about. I’m finding it difficult to identify professional supports though - someone who might be the equivalent to your education therapist. Searching the term gives me psychologists who do assessments and psychotherapy, but not anyone focused on reading and language interventions. Alternatively, I can find a couple dyslexia specialists who provide Barton tutoring - but little that seems to occupy the space in between that you are describing.

    However, one of the dyslexia tutors seems to have broader experience (does teacher training and helps schools design reading programs, as well as one-on-one support for kids in reading and writing at all ages). She thinks she may be able to give us a better picture of what kinds of deficits are really there (for example, she says there are types of errors quite specific to dyslexia, and other kinds of errors that tend to have other causes. While the remediation approach is similar, trajectories may not be.) So I’ve set up four sessions with her and DD over the next two weeks, so she can get a feeling where DD is at and give us some advice about moving forward (by Skype, ugh - she’s not local. But she claims to work by Skype all the time. I guess we’ll see). She sounded a bit horrified by my at-home remediation program, though, so I don’t know how open she might be to a mixed home/ professional approach. But I can certainly appreciate how an expert can feel about the damage that can be cause by well-meaning bumbling amateurs - given that’s how I feel about DD’s school.

    The tutor is bilingual and does OG-type remediation in both English and French - but like others, her first advice was to drop the French. I hope that in a couple of weeks we will have a more detailed functional assessment of where things are at, and some external evidence that will help DH determine whether he is being cautiously optimistic or dangerously pollyanna-ish….

    In the meantime, I also have a date with our local English school’s principal and learning support. They *do* provide an OG-type program within the school, so it will be really helpful to see the differences in how they could support DD. My biggest concern for DD is her being crushed through inappropriate demands and expectations, made in sheer ignorance. While an LD classroom best addresses this, just being in a more dyslexia-aware environment could help, too. I have really been bouncing between stay put for a bit, or jump all the way to an LD-specialist school. Now I am thinking more seriously about option 2 - public English school. It may be a better middle road, if they can offer a more knowledgeable and supportive environment and a single language. But I’d hate to be wrong and need to make a second school change within a year, if this move isn’t enough.

    Please keep your very pertinent questions and comments coming. If you have further thoughts or see red flags triggered by my (very long, sorry) musings, please send them this way. They are helping me figure out what I need to ask and the implications and trade-offs of these choices. You guys are an enormous help, and very much appreciated!

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    MichelleC, you do have a difficult choice!

    Here are my thoughts based on my own research on this board and other places, as well as my experience with my 10 yo HG dyslexic/dysgraphic, who was diagnosed at 9. First though, I would encourage you to check out the Eide's information about stealth dyslexia. There is a slideshare online that details how dyslexia presents differently in gifted kids. I keep going back to it, because the info is so right and helpful. If I hadn't found their research, I think I would still feel lost and confused!


    We have always homeschooled. The diagnosis occurred when my mom spider sense started to go off as I watched him learn to read. When he was eight, I started asking questions. Lindamood Bell has an inexpensive evaluation that they offer. I took him over there when they were having their "summer special," and he was at or above grade level in all of his skills, according to their testing. (But their tester had never had a kid score so high on the PPVT either.) His comprehension was much higher than his fluency and decoding skills, a gap they acknowledged was unusual. And I knew that this was a hallmark of what the Eide's describe as stealth dyslexia. But I felt reassured that he was at least at grade level, so I hired a reading specialist to tutor him once a week, and let it be.

    She did her own assessment, and I think she thought I was a crazy "that mom" when I started spouting off about him possibly being gifted and dyslexic. Her little assessment showed essentially the same thing as LMB's -- high in comprehension, relatively lower in other skills, but still not substantially behind. She works at a local fancy private school, and said that he would have been in the middle reading group there.

    I also took him to two developmental optometrists. The first one gave him a bs diagnosis. The second was much more professional and thorough, and correctly diagnosed him with far sightedness for which he was compensating. He got vision therapy for several months to prepare him for eye glasses that he uses for reading.

    Then, finally, I had the full psycho ed eval done, and there was the definitive diagnosis.

    Like your husband, there is a way I tend to "disbelieve" the diagnosis at times. He functions at or even significantly above grade level, so how can he "really" have dyslexia? Won't he just "grow out of it?" I asked that question many times of knowledgeable people, and I kept getting the same answer, so I will share it with you: Gifted dyslexics compensate well for awhile. In middle school and high school, their compensation strategies tend to break down, and then they struggle. So it IS better to attack it aggressively early. Kai from this board is one person who helped me with this, and she had another point, too: It is much easier to get a kid to comply with interventions when he/she is 8,9,10, or even 11. Twelve and 13 yo's start to buck your authority, though. So now is a good time to work at this, before adolescence sets it.

    We chose to do two intensive (and expensive) weeks at LMB. (I went back with diagnosis in hand.) I know you said they don't have it in Canada. You might even be able to travel to do this for two weeks, however. In addition, they have just started doing tutoring remotely over the internet. My son did some follow up tutoring in this manner since it was a bit of a drive for us. I felt that my son would be more motivated and compliant for the intensive, short-term remediation, and this is LMB's model.

    My son was not the usual kind of kid that LMB sees. He started at a much higher level, and progressed much faster. Probably many families would choose not to spend that kind of money when a kid is performing in the average or better range on academic tasks, but I felt I had looked into that question, and that it would be worth it long term to address the issue.

    We did LMB over a year ago. It definitely "worked" in terms of his reading. I have him read aloud to me three days per week from fairly difficult stuff. (Short stories by Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury -- he likes horror :)) These stories are challenging in terms of comprehension, but also at times in terms of language. When he comes across a word he doesn't know, I am THRILLED to hear him SOUND IT OUT! There is almost no wild guessing on multi-syllabic words. This is how I know LMB worked. Very few weird insertions or replacements, either. (One funny story -- the other day he was reading and he read "Now there, let's have no talk of drying!" I stopped him because I knew that was wrong. I thought he had fallen into an old habit and inserted an "r" where there was none, but in fact, it was a typo in the text!)

    Writing, spelling, and handwriting are still a work in progress, and I am continuing to remediate those at home. There is no question that he is below grade level in those skills. I can see that he is making progress, but he still needs supports in those areas.

    Wow. This was longer than I meant it to be. I guess my point is that there is something to be said for intensive early intervention, especially in a short burst. And it is normal to "disbelieve" the severity of the diagnosis. These kids can be so impressive one day, performing at a really high level. Then the next, they totally bonk something or struggle greatly. The "right level" seems to change almost daily. This is normal, but it is important to hold to the course and realize they will not look like other kids!

    I hope some of this is helpful!

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