Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Stealth dyslexia - how do you know?

An update on DS6 and request for other thoughts. We took him to an Orton-Gillingham tutor Wednesday, and she did an assessment (Gallistel Ellis) to determine what phonics skills he does/doesn't have, but it didn't really help us determine if he has any type of dyslexia or not. He did fairly well on the phonics rules he's already learned in school, although was laboriously slow at it, and not so well on things they haven't covered.

If we go forward with tutoring, it would be beneficial regardless because he misses his 1st grade FAST phonics when he goes to 2nd grade for math. We've been trying to do a little of the phonics lessons on the weekends with him, but we haven't done a great job making time for it, and he's very resistant to us teaching him anything.

If we do the tutoring, it would be twice a week with some homework. We'd need to ask his teacher to waive some of the homework she gives out (he has nearly an hour a night, which is ridiculous and not in line with school policy, but that's off topic). If we could go to her and say he has dyslexia, we'd feel comfortable asking her to work with us on the homework. Without that, we feel uncomfortable asking for another accommodation - thanks for putting him in 2nd grade math, but now that he's missing phonics, he needs phonics tutoring, and can you waive some of his homework so he can do it? She'd likely be willing to work with us either way, as she's been very collaborative and supportive.

We're leaning toward not tutoring right now, and waiting to see how his reading and phonics skills come along over the year. We're debating whether to do the formal testing (looking into whether insurance would cover it or not), which would hopefully provide a real answer for us - although previous posts in this thread sound like it's not so clear a lot of times. We just asked him his opinion, and he said he'd prefer to go to the tutoring so he can learn to read more quickly.

We're back to our original question - does he have some level of inherited dyslexia and would OG tutoring be beneficial, or is he just slower with reading than his other skills and needs a little more time for those to catch up. He spends so much time in school and on homework already, we're not interested in adding to that if it's not really needed - although he did just say he'd like to spend the extra time so he can learn faster. Sounds like a number of previous posters have kids in similar situations where it's borderline whether your children really have any learning differences or not. We'd be happy for other BTDT thoughts.