Dear all, How and who can advice us as parents, on how to help a child with Dyslexia? Are there specialists or websites which you personally recommend. We are concerned, and not sure where to start. Thanks

Try:

Dyslexia

dyslexia; seek therapy, treatment, advice, etc

http://www.englishforum.ch/tags/special-needs/

Hi, I am dyslexic, It's probably more of a problem for the parents than for the child. My elder brother got a scholarship to Cambridge & I left school at 16. By 21 I was earning more than my father & my brother was still at University. Some children cope better than others, I was always good at maths which probably mattered more than being able to read & write.
To put this in some perspective, I have not read a novel for 25 years, I read & write far more in the last 10 years due to the internet. I became a photographer, had I been able to read & write I would have been a Lawyer.

I suspect you will need to give your child some private coaching, I had an hour a week from age 6-10, without I would have never been able to write at all, I would have just been labled stupid & been a drop out.

Good luck & drop me a PM if you want a chat.

My mum and sister have it. My advice is to just read-read-read to your child, find their gifts, and be confident that they will eventually find their own way.

How old is the child ? A good early childhood teacher should be a starting point for some basic literacy strategies.

My sister who has dyslexia is the third child in our family. She never read a whole novel until she was nearly 13. My parents kept her back an extra year at primary school, and the principal famously said, at a parent-teacher conference "you know, she's just not as academic as the other two"...

She's currently doing her PhD in Psychology. She danced her way through high school (literally, was a very gifted dancer and went to a performing arts high school) I can't say for a moment that it was easy for her - she fights every day with her reading/writing, but that doesn't mean she's not hugely intelligent. She's published several papers and gives lectures at the university as well as coordinating a research team.

My mum was told, at 50, by a university professor, family friend, upon hearing that mum had just completed her university degree in early childhood "Oh, so you're not stupid after all".

Point is, they certainly have both had to swim against the tide, and show in other ways that their literacy problems are not 'intelligence' problems.

I don't believe there is a 'cure' for dyslexia - I think it's a structural brain problem that we don't really have an answer for - because I reckon my sister, would have found it by now - she certainly has all the latest research at her fingertips.

My personal advice - get to a school psychologist ASAP and get proper testing. Dyslexia is not a vague problem, it shows very obviously in standard testing...

My mum knew that she had dyslexia as an adult. My brother and I do not have it. Mum did wonder whether us kids would have the same problems with school that she had....

Then one day, when my sister was just 3-4 years old, she read out a car numberplate from the centre to the left and then to the right - all jumbled, on the way to school one day, and mum went "Uh Oh...we have a problem here"....

For my mum and sister, dyslexia has a very distinct effect on just one part of their life - reading and writing. Their spelling is shocking and they struggle to read - it's very tiring for them. Mum's emails are amazing - poorly constructed, lacking in punctuation, not logical, spelling errors - but she can talk for 1-2 hours in front of a bunch of parents, about child development, education in the home...and without notes.

I also found out I have dyslexia as an adult. One fine day a nice Psychology student asked me if I didn't mind doing a couple of tests for his classes and next I know the guy was asking me if I ever had help for dyslexia.

For me, it was a relief to know that I was not so dumb after all. All those spelling mistakes, numeracy confusions and short term memory difficulties were not a question of me not putting enough attention into things. It all had a perfectly good explanation. I have to say that I have a very mild dyslexia.... Now, I know have more problems to memorize strings of numbers (dialing a telephone number for the first time it is a bit of an effort, for example), I am not a good editor and I slip typos in almost every thing I write. The good side of it is that I sort of trained myself to recognize patterns both with words and numbers, as it seemed to work better for me.

What I recall from my early days in school is that everything was harder for me than for the other kids. Everything seemed to take longer and never be perfect enough - if this makes any sense to you.

I cannot tell you how to deal it with your kid, of course. But, having been there, just don't treat her as she "not academic", "has less intelligence potential" or simply "lazy". She is probably doing her best effort and intuitively knows that she is not up to par. Probably private coaching will help her - there are a number of exercises she can do to improve her skills.

http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/
This website is a useful starting point for anyone from the UK. There is a section on the site specifically for parents.

The term dyslexia covers several different literacy ( and numeracy) difficulties and it would be useful to be able to know exactly which aspects you are dealing with before starting to look at possible support and solutions. :-)

On Facebook, i friended or liked "dyslexics rights" - lots of interesting info, although it has a US perspective. Good links.

Also google for "stealth dyslexia." as biff just said, there are lots of different aspects to dyslexia. I was diagnosed as an adult, and it's been helpful to understand that what I thought was sloppiness and superficiality was more an issue of perception. My issues have to do mostly with reading down a page and missing chunks, poor handwriting and transposing letters and numbers. I'm crap at spelling and arithmetic, but write a lot, have a fairly high language and mathematics aptitude. Learning language rules is difficult, but once I see a pattern, it's easy.

I listen to books sometimes, I use voice recognition software to dictate writing occasionally, both are very helpful. Typing rather than handwriting has really saved me.

My kid is almost 13, just diagnosed. Great lid with a really big heart. He struggles at school, wkith math, reading and is gaining a lot of weight...

Thank you all for your great advice. I now read a school report and understand it is a mild dyslexia. Talking to school teacher soon to better understand. Now, I cant but feel guilty about not finding out before nor asking for help before. Am I wrong in feeling this way? Your POV?

TBH the school may or may not have any real experiance of dylsexia, you need to talk to someone who specialises. My teacher told my parents everything would be OK when I was 6, unfortunately she did not have a clue but thought she could cope.

As you say it's just been discovered at 13, it's probably very mild, what is the 'reading age' , presumably can read & write to some extent?

I have mild dyslexia, most of the time I don't notice it, however it did prompt my mother to specialize in reading disorders.

Tom

Hi
in Vaud there is the ADSR (association dyslexie suiss romande) http://www.adsr.ch/

there are also some schools in the region which have "charts" for children for dyslexia and I know for a fact that the public school in Blonay has recently introduced one.However it has not really been taken on board by many of the teachers
- if he is at this school then I would meet up with the logopediste and form teacher to discuss what support can be given.They can for example give your child extra time in exams etc
jo

Hi again
this is the chart that the one at Blonay school was based on. It is from a school on the Gros de Vaud-

http://www.echallenspoliezpittet.ch/dyslexie.html

Apart from that there are some excellent UK websites about

http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/

http://www.beingdyslexic.co.uk/

If you need an assessment done- either local logopediste if he is French speaking at his school if he's fluent in french ( at Blonay they are very supportive) if English speaking ,Bethan Gollut Jones in Villars can do one ,

http://w ww.psychologie-coaching.ch/

better to do it in his mother tongue I think if he is not fluent in French as results will not be accurate
Jo

Don't feel guilty. Be glad you found out now, and learn about the positive aspects of dyslexia, be an advocate for your kid.

It's certanly nothing I have ever had negative thoughts about, is much more a 'parents issue', I remember a school when I was 6, someone in the class could not spell the word 'the' he knew the 3 letters but had zero idea which order they went in. His sister also dislexic became a internationally sucessfull actress, shes been in 4 of the Harry Potter films, it's just a matter of finding out what you want to do.

Actually, it was only when I was in my early 30s that my mother bothered to tell me that I was dyslexic.

A friend of mine was (and still is) very dyslexic, and, seeing as she is the expert, I asked if there was anything to do for someone in their early 30s. She offered some ideas, and then "oh, by they way, you are dyslexic". Well, it DID explain some weird things (classic is misreading autoroute exit signs (names of towns), reading a page of a book to realize it was all nonsense, etc., but these are rare). Clearly my SATs showed this, close to 800 in math, but lower 600s in English (and 510 first time around). Probably explains why I can play instruments, but can't read music in real time (obviously, I can read it, but not play and read at the same rate)

Tom

Found a great book on line... THE GIFT OF DYSLEXIA. by Ronald D. Davis..... Here is something I didnt get... dyslexia is a disorientation? I will keep reading

Hi guys,
I'm a dsylexic too. I got diagnosed fairly early at 9 or 10, luckly I think? I remember I had to a therapy for a few years, all this hand and eye cooridination stuff... and I got to join in 'riding for the disabled'. Riding horses in school time, who could say 'no' to that. It was recomended that I learn an instument too. Unlike Fantafilm, I had trouble in comprehending even the basic levels of math. Fuuny enough though, I love to read, even if it takes me a month to read a book. If I lived near one of the Cities here I could almost open my own small Library. I had no problems in learning Schwiizertütsch or High-Germanas they all run as seperate paralel languages in my mind. I don't really think that it's something to be overly concerned about, but a therapie will help... if they still do anything about it?
Cheers Mal

Which sport is good for a Dyslexic boy ?

Any recos?. Thanks

I suspect very few if any as coordination is usually not that good.
I ski to a fairly high level off piste, thats after more than 1,000 days practicing.