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Hi all. So more problems here ... I can not tell you how depressing this getting

My son (age 7)was given the DDT to screen for dyslexia. His performance resulted in the mild range of dyseidesia ( he scored 20% on the dyseidesia section) . He scored normal range for dysphonesia - or so they tell me that this is normal; however, his score was 60%, which seemed low to me and some things on the internet say this is a 'borderline' score. The examiner also noted my son had much trouble completing the encoding portion.

Apparently, dyseidesia is "a type of dyslexia characterized by a deficit in the ability to perceive whole words as visual gestalts and match with auditory gestalts." At least it was characterized as "mild," I guess (although, again, I thought 20% sounded low and I looked it up on the internet and and on the internet 20% is characterized as 'moderate'). The examiner also noted that the "encoding portion of the assessment was very challenging for DS to complete." But I did not get a score on that section and I am not sure what that means in terms of dyslexia.

Anyway, I have no idea what I am suppose to do now - get more evaluations or what... I think this test is just a screening measure. So far, I have only discussed the test results with one of his vision therapists not the doctor.

I can not begin to tell you how depressing this is getting. I mean, I strongly suspected a form of dyslexia but, of course, I hoped I would be wrong. And I thought dyslexia had only to do with problems with phonics. Anyway, if you have any advice or insight, I'd certainly welcome it. Just wondering what I do now. Also, my son has a vision disorder (intermittent convergent strabismus) for which he is receiving vision therapy. Any advice, insight, words of wisdom, etc., would be very much appreciated.

Take a deep breath and don't be depressed. You and your child will come through this just fine. Your child has gifts and struggles that other kids don't have-- and that's OK. His gifts will win out.

My son was diagnosed at age 7 and I felt depressed and overwhelmed, too. He's 10 1/2 now and is doing great and has scored to 100 % on two spelling tests in the last month and is a grade above in reading. His writing still isn't where it should be, but it has improved dramatically this school year and I think he'll be fine. When he was diagnosed, he could barely read at a kindergarten level (which somehow the school thought was within the range of normal), so he has made up a tremendous amount of ground in a few short years.

What I suggest is that you immediately find a good tutor, regardless of what your school plans to do. We had one come to the house 2x a week, in the mornings for 2 1/2 years. We bribed my son to cooperate, because by the time he was diagnosed, he had a pretty bad attitude about school and reading. We stopped the tutoring when we realized he was 1 year above grade level in reading. That was in early 4th grade.

We used Wilson. We had a wasted 3 months where my son got worse in reading when we tried some slick new scam-program called Fast-track. I think there's a lot of voodoo and wishful thinking when it comes to dyslexia remediation, so make sure you do your homework when you select a remediation program. I also wanted an actual research-based program to follow, not just a tutor.

The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Eides seem to have the most scientifically based information. Lindamood-Bell is a program that seems to work for a lot of people. Davis seems like magical thinking to me. Another family we know used some kind of dyslexia therapy where their child was rolled around in blankets. (They think it worked, but sounds doubtful to me.) So there are many, many options out there.

As for school, what we did, we contact the principal to tell him we had a formal diagnosis of dyslexia and we wanted to discuss how to get remediation. That started the ball rolling for meetings that led to a 3-month 1xweek intervention through school. Because my son is HG, and wasn't behind enough, he never qualified for anything beyond that, which is why we did a private tutor. But my son does have a 504, which gives him accommodations. Each kid needs different types of help-- so you might get an IEP or a 504, depending on your child's needs.

It is a long road-- and I'm sure there are many frustrating times ahead for us still, as well. But I do believe you can manage the situation, and your son can still succeed, even thrive with dyslexia.

Hang in there are just move forward one step at a time.

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

More information is always better than none. Having the results of this screening now gives you a framework to think about your child as well as a starting point from which to ask more questions.

Why was this screening done in the first place, and does this test (never heard of it) test for the types of struggles that you observe in your son? Do the screening results synch with what you observe about your child? Does the whole word discrimination struggle seem to align with anything you observe in his development?

How is his reading coming along? Is it outside the range of what you would expect considering his vision struggles?

How is he doing in school? What types of struggles do you observe? Something more than just reading? Are there writing struggles, and if so, of what nature?

Don't try to answer all those questions all at once. Please. Whittle away at those questions are you start to wrap your head around what struggles your son might or might not have.

I have found the getting the results of testing to be almost liberating, as they really did capture and describe why school was such a miserable place for my DD. She's been doing Orton-Gillingham for 4 months now and doing fabulously. For DD, has removed a lot of the difficulty DD had in expressing herself in writing to reveal an incredibly talented writer.

Thank you all. The screening was done at my request. I had suspected dyslexia for awhile. (the school has never suspected dyslexia - or any of the other issues he has such as vision disorder and hypotonia) because he is super smart ... He is on grade level despite his disabilities because, I believe, he is so smart he is able to compensate. However, he basically had a breakdown last year and ended up with an "anxiety disorder" and my belief is that while he can compensate it is VERY taxing on him to have to compensate without support for hours on end every day. As a result, I have a pretty darn great IEP already (for vision, hypotonia, and anxiety) that I basically wrote and advocated for myself (with some help from the fabulous peaople here on this board). When was diagnosed with a vision disorder (convergence insufficiancy), reading became less laborous but still certain things have persisted and did not seem to get better even with his vision therapy. So I requested he be looked at for dyslexia. He actually reads on grade level (last year according tot the WAIS he was actually a year above grade level) but I can just tell somethign is wrong... it's hard to tease out whether it is vsiion or dyslexia. He is doing well in school this year because of the strong IEP and b/c am basically a major pain in the a$$ in making sure he is accomodated.

Anyway, the big thing is he writes everything backwards - he will right every single number backwards if left on his own. His letters as well as his numbers. There are other symtoms but that one is just sooooo severe - he wrote a calendatr for november and very single number from 1 to 30 was backwards - every one. except the number one LOL. He also reads was as saw and on as no, etc... That has improved with VT but is still happening. He still confsues b and d regularly. I could go and on.

I have advice for tutoring - a freind is actually a orton-gillingham tutor and has recommneded places in my area. But it is SO expensive. Does insurance cover this with a diagnosis?

Curious on the backwards writing... has he tried switching hands or closing the same eye as he writes with? DS just finished his patching for amblyopia a couple of months ago, which seems to have helped, but visual tracking is still coming up to speed. If yours may be more visual related, we found large graph paper for writing to help as well as a reading guide that let's him see only one line at a time.

It's all so tricky with what is a direct impact, what is develomentally slow due the vision issue, what is a deeper effect due to issues during a criticial growth phase, and what is primarily coincidence.

He has major problems with directionality and laterality... He is 7 and still has problems with knowing his left form his right... My three year old knows his left from right. Any kind of 3D manipulation he seems to have trouble with (does that make sense?). And he just guesses at b and d - seriously ... now he reads so well he can figure out many times from the rest of the word if it is suppose to be a b or d and go back and correct himself... it is so weird. His tracking isgreat since VT though - he went from below grade level to two grade level ahead on those type of evals. Interestingly ( or maybe not - I find it interesting) he scores super high on visual memory and visual attention tests.... so I guess that is good. His comprehension is high too.

Zen, he has never tried switching hands or closing the same eye as he writes with... I hate to encourage closing one eye becasue people with his vision disorder often turn one eye off and I don't want to further encourage that... But I could try it just to see what happens. I don't think I could get him to write with his left hand thouigh - he can barely write with his right hand due to the hypotonia ... well that isn't entirely true - he is doing well with OT, but I don't think he could write with his other hand well enough to tell us anything. But I could give it a try anyway.

I was just speculating on the handedness, but forgot you were dealing with the hypotonia, too. My amblyopia was mis-corrected with a year of full time patching at 1yr old, and I still have to squint my good eye to pass the driving vision test because my brain seems to treat my bad eye as 100% peripheral vision.

An interesting subject to me... I have extreme internal 3D manipulation but can't catch a ball. My parents say it took forever to teach me right from left. I always imagine that my brain decided if it didn't need it for the eyes it would put it to another use.

LOL You sound like you have a few things in common with my DS It's amazing what the brain does when it realizes/decides it can not trust the eyes...

marytheres, you're doing a wonderful job of advocating for your ds and you're making good progress both with getting remediation for his vision challenges and most importantly - you're making progress in an area you probably can't see for yourself at this time because you're so caught up in it all - but the key here is you're making progress in understanding what challenges your ds is facing. Even though you don't fully understand what this latest set of test data means or which direction it will lead you in, it's more data that you didn't have before the test. Parenting a 2e child can be a long journey where you learn a little bit here, observe a lot, try to figure out how to apply what you learn from tests, try a new way of remediating etc, find that there's another challenge that needs to be addressed, and you just keep plugging along. I hope that didn't sound completely frustrating to think of - I mostly pointed it out because in the midst of all of the worries and planning and work to figure out how to overcome challenges that lie ahead, it's easy to not see how very much progress your child has already made.. and it's very easy to feel like the challenges your child is still facing may seem overwhelming. They aren't overwhelming, they just *feel* overwhelming at times.

We're not dealing with dyslexia, but with other reading challenges. I find reading challenges extremely challenging! So many different skills go into reading. We have a friend who wrote backwards like your ds, but she also wrote forward - she would switch direction as she got to the middle of the page and then switched hands... I am not sure she ever grew out of it, but she eventually succumbed to the adults in her life's multiple attempts to have her only use her right hand In her case, there were no other challenges (that I know of). My ds used to right some letters backwards just because he'd get them mixed up due to his dysgraphia, but it was very random which letters, they weren't always reversed, etc. Since it's occurring all the time for your ds, I wonder if it's not some quirk in how his brain is interpreting the letters it sees? Did your vision therapy dr have any thoughts on it? FWIW, my first thought is, get him typing... but that's the parent of a dysgraphic kid talking, so take it with a huge grain of salt Our dd who had the convergence/tracking and double vision issues does rely on typing a bit more than the typical student. We've never sought out an accommodation specifically for it, but she's in a school (and grade) where students have the choice to type for most of their LA/Science/Social Studies work and she prefers typing, and I suspect it's because handwriting causes her more eye fatigue. I've really so often wished I could see the world through her eyes for just one day, because even though she made huge progress with vision therapy she says things every now and then that make us realize she really doesn't see things the same way most people do... plus I wonder how often her one eye automatically shuts down. And oops... I started rambling about my dd... sorry about that!

Re the reading and dyslexia test results... can you ask the person who administered the test what his/her interpretation is and what they recommend for remediation? Even if it's a school district person who tested and your child doesn't qualify for services, they may be able to make suggestions re what might help. If they have no suggestions, I'd look into what other sources are available in your area for reading assessments and reading tutoring/help.

At home, have you had your ds read out loud to you? Does he seem to be reading ok or does he miss words, miss letters, struggle on words you think should be familiar? Does he retain what he's read? Did the tester do any type of testing of auditory vs visual comprehension?

I am also trying to remember - has your ds been through a neuropsych educational eval? I'm not necessarily thinking that you need one, just trying to remember if he's had one and what you found out. My dyspraxic dysgraphic ds has the major issues with telling left from right... he still has to very conciously think it through even at 13, and asks me a lot of the time. And his younger sister also had it figured out at 3!

Sorry I don't have any specific advice... hang in there! You *will* get things figured out, one thing at a time.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you so much, Polarbear! I love hearing all about your kids and you are a great wealth of information and experience. Thank you!

I have not had DS evaluated by a neuropsychologist yet. We had a consultation with one specifically because I wanted to explore learning diabilities - particularly dyslexia/dysgraphia. We liked her and she came up with a battery of tests for testing dyslexia/dysghraphia. However, a week or so later we got the results of the developmental vision eval and the neuropsych and I both agreed it would be best to wait on doing the testing until after he has had a good amount of vision therapy and his vision problem remediated before testing for the learning disorders. I liked the neuro as did my DS - and allegedly my insurance would cover most of the testing by her. We were planning on going to her this spring and get him also tested on the WISC IV again (in addition to testing for the learning disorders) to see if there are any changes in his GAI/FSIQ as a result of getting the visson stuff treated.

However, last night I contacted the Sarah Barton website for info and she/it informed me that if my child attends a public school, I need to hire a "Certified Dyslexia Testing Specialist" to get a diagnose that the school will acknowledge... and I am not sure my neuropsych has that qualification so may have to just get him tested specifically for dyslexia by a Certified Dyslexia Testing Specialist.

I watched the Sarah Barton videos http://www.dys-add.com/videos/dyslexiaSymptomsSolutions_Part01.html and my DS just has SO many of the signs. Except that as a small child he not only never had a speech delay or any kind of pronunciation problem but he excelled in that area. He was speaking in correct grammer and full sentences well before two... He never did much "baby talk" he was always very articulate ---- people always commented (and still do) that he sounds like a a 40 year old in a child's body. I don't remember him having trouble with rhyming and he never had an ear infection.

However, he has most of the other signs:

1. great difficulty with left from right
2. can't tie shoes
3. had great difficulting memorizing address, phone number, days of week and months (he still can't do phone numbers. Still. He just recently seems to have mastered his address but he does seem to get the order of the numbers wrong). He does now know all of the months and days of the week but I definitely think he was 'slow' on those.
4. He has all of the dysgraphia writing symptoms. All of them. Every one. But he also has hypotonia so that's often to what we attribute the writing problems; hwoever, he does things like starts writing letter from the bottom up that probably do not have to do with hypotonia. And the reversals - reverses pretty much constantly.
5.Reading symptoms: skips small words (like the prepositions, etc), ignores suffixes (I have noticed he has great trouble with suffixes and will often ignore them - had no idea this was common with dyslexia), guesses at words, reads "was" as "saw" and "on" as "no." Last night he read the word "spot" as "stop" and then went back and corrected himself when he realzed "stop" must be wrong b/c it didn't make sense in the sentence. He also read "also" as "laso," reads slowly, reads through punctuation (but this has been improving). regarding spelling, I have no idea how bad Ben's is ... on the WAIS he cored very hiigh on reading and math but the spelling portion was "average." However, the dyslexia screenign tester noted that on their test DS had great difficulty on the encoding section - buit it didn;t say his score or even whether he did poorly or not.

The only other big monkeywrench is that DS actually reads and is on "grade level and above." It seems like when certain people see that the decide right then and there he must not have dyslexia - he can read! This is common with highly motivated and/or highly intelligent/gifted kids, though, right? They can still have dyslexia even though they are not below grade level but even above, right? He also excels at math - he does very well at math and dyslexics apparently often have trouble with math.

Oh and now that I have been educating myself about dyslexia... I am convicnced my husband is at least mildly dyslexic. As I went through all of the symptoms with him, he kept saying "Oh come on I had that trouble - it's normal - especially for us boys!" I was like "uh no." And he has many of the symptoms of an adult with dyslexia. He was in remedial reading in grade school for a few years - it's well known that in the early years of school, my husband couldn't write, read or spell (his spelling was atrocious no matter how hard he studied). Spell check and computers saved him in middle school and he excelled. He still avoids "reading"... he listens to books on CD all of the time but I have actually begged him to read different books on parenting and he will hand them to me and ask me to read it to him. He CAN read but he finds it so uncomfortable and fatiguing he avoids it a lot ... a lot more than he realizes and a lot more than he realizes is "normal".

So, I am not sure what the school will do. I am not angry at them - I can see their point. I contacted them about the screening results and they were all "your DS is completely on grade level - he reads quite well he is above average in many of his studies...etc.." They did say if they get me copies of the screening test and the doc's opinions/interpretations they will discuss with me what they can do. I figure that's nice - So we'll see.

It's just ironic to me - last year they (the school) was all like "there is something wrong with Ben!" - and it felt (to me) like they wanted him to be adhd/add/or maybe even ASD... So I get him evaluated and I start seeing that he seems to have some learnimng differences and this year I am like "I think there is something wrong too! But I think it's learning problem!" and they are all suddenly very much of the opinion "Ben is doing great! He's doing so well! He has no problems!" ESPECIALLY when I keep saying I think he has a learning disorder. They seem so anxious to keep assuring me he's doing so well he couldn't possibly - he's no "different than his peers." Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the positivity... I love that people are saying good things about him for a change - instead of "we need to talk to you about DS." And it trickles down to DS who is much happier at school this year. But I have to admit it makes me wonder... Do some schools 'like'(or find it easier MAYBE?) to deal with adhd/add or spectrum disorders rather than physical disabilities or learning disorders like dyslexia? I really think that if I were like "please test my kid for ADHD or ASD they'd be more willing" They seem to love "behavioral experts and plans" and social skills classes and such... It just seems that way to me. But mention a learning difference and they get kind-of cagey weird.

Anyway, if they won't test him (or test him properly), I will get him tested myself. But the tutoring is expensive - I'd love to be able to get them to do that. However, I see their point that they wouldn't want to spend money tutoring a kid who is not only not behind but ahead. Nevertheless, as his mother that can not be enough for me.