Oh, I didn't realize that (obviously)!
In that case, if your school offers any remediation (you don't say whether or how far behind your son is?), make sure the remediation is a research-based program taught by a trained professional. That is a requirement of IDEA, but I think schools need to be reminded of that fact. My son's school wouldn't provide remediation (he wasn't far enough behind), which is why we went with a private tutor who used Wilson. Our school actually laughed at the suggestion of 5x week, which is what our tester recommended as well. The best we could do was a 504, which is supposedly excellent (not that its followed).
I suggest going to Wrightslaw.com and read as much as you can about what the school is required to do for your son. Dyslexia is mentioned under IDEA as a "specific learning disability," so it should be covered, but it must significantly impair your son in order for the school to give him an IEP to cover it. Our school district seems to want to fight a dyslexia diagnosis, and I wasn't willing to wait for evaluations, so we went ahead and got a tutor within 6 weeks of diagnosis. They would have never fully given him what he needed in terms of private instruction anyway, so that was the right choice for him, even though it was extremely expensive.
Our meetings were never negative-- and I was able to site the law (thanks to Wrightlaw) to keep things progressing. Still, we didn't get what I thought my son needed in the meetings. It's much easier for the school to say yes to accommodations (which are free) than remediation (which actually costs the school something).
Great that your son likes reading! My son still says he doesn't. Do you know about "high interest" books? They're written for your son's age group, but at a slightly lower reading level. Also, we had great success getting my son to read after we bought him a kindle. It's much easier for him to read when he can increase the font size-- and the kindle allowed him to access books (at a larger font size) that he hadn't been interested in reading before. Plus, many books are text-to-speech enabled, so if he's tired, he just turns on the kindle speech option and listens to the book.
One final note-- my son has dyslexia without ADD. I know the two are often co-morbid, but it's not always the case. If you feel your son doesn't have it, know that it's possible he doesn't.
Last edited by syoblrig; 04/10/12 05:01 AM.
