Thank you Mich. I'm so glad to have your input on this.
I thought that the testing that the S&L therapist did was enough to diagnose dyslexia. She did tests for
working memory (OK)
verbal phonem awareness (ok)
rapid naming (not OK)
basic reading test (read this page of a book) (not OK)
She said informally that she feels he has some degree of dyslexia. And I agree.
I thought that the therapy she is planning to provide would be targetted at helping him learn to read and compensate for his difficulties. She mostly works with children who have language based LDs, so I thought this therapy would be what he needs. Are there other therapies/professionals I should be looking at for the reading program you suggest:
"If he has a language based learning disability such as dyslexia, he will need an explicit, systematic, multi-sensory, rule based reading program to learn how to crack the code."
I'd like to know more about this. He's not starting with the S&L therapist until February (waiting list!) so I have time to do some background research. Also, if I tell the school that I want something specific for DS during school hours, they might be able to accommodate (it wouldn't be a trained therapist, but they have a teacher who goes from class to class helping children who have difficulties).
I'm working at home with a book (in French)that the S&L therapist recommended that teaches phonems with pictures (like the sound "ch" is a little girl saying shhhh with the c as her mouth and the h as a finger). DS loves this approach and learned about 5 phonems in a week that we had been struggling with for a long time.
Yes, I've seen that vision therapy is sort of contreversial, and am not sure I'd do it with him. I'm pretty conventional too (and DH is even more so). I did try Padovan therapy (kind of a mixture of patterning and speech therapy, and song with some vision work as well) and didn't see a long term benefit.
A friend mentioned Arrowsmith also. I'll check out the site. DSs first language is French and this limits options as well.
