Son has dyslexia, What do I do now?

Dyseidetic simply means no memory for the way words look. The underlying cause is usually developmental vision delay.

Frankly speaking, it sounds as if your son had some screening tests done. These can indicate problem areas, but do not constitute a full-scale evaluation.

What I recommend — before you do anything else — is find a good developmental optometrist and get a full developmental vision evaluation. This eval includes about 20 tests of visual function not included in a regular eye exam. You can find out more about developmental vision at http://www.visiontherapy.org, http://www.vision3d.com, and http://www.special-children.org. You can find developmental optometrists in your area at http://www.covd.org.

If there are developmental vision delays, vision therapy is usually extremely effective in bringing visual efficiency skills (things such as binocularity, focusing speed, tracking, field-of-vision) up to age-appropriate levels. Look for a developmental optometrist who is willing to supervise a primarily home-based program of vision therapy, to keep costs down.

Developmental vision delays are a sensory/motor level problem. Once a problem on the sensory/motor level is corrected, a child often also needs cognitive training. In the case of vision, cognitive training is the most efficient approach to developing visual processing skills (things such as short-term visual memory, visual sequencing, pattern recognition, directionality). Audiblox is a good home-based cognitive training program that has a strong visual component (http://www.audiblox2000.com). Cost of book, video, and starter set of manipulatives is about $80.

My own daughter was reading at a preschool level at age 8-1/2, when I bought “Reading Reflex” and started tutoring her at home. Within 6 weeks she was decoding words at a 2nd/3rd grade level, but her reading fluency was terrible. I took her to a developmental optometrist and found out she had severe developmental vision delays. She was in vision therapy for 8 months, which brought all of her visual efficiency skills up to age-appropriate levels. However, her reading fluency had not improved much. A complete speech and language evaluation at this time showed that she was reading on a 2nd grade level, but 2 STD’s below the norm in rate and accuracy. She was then tested for dyslexia. She tested as extremely dyseidetic (0% visual memory for words). When the tests were explained to me, I realized that she would have also tested as completely dysphonesic had I not already done “Reading Reflex” with her. By chance, I stumbled onto PACE (http://www.learninginfo.com), which is a very intense and comprehensive cognitive training program. After the 5th week of PACE, dd was finally able to visually process text fast enough to read with normal fluency. We followed up PACE with a Phono-Graphix intensive to give her advanced decoding skills. My daughter is now 11 years old, in the advanced class at school, reading at an ending 6th grade level.

The most efficient approach is to first reduce any sensory/motor deficits as much as possible, then develop cognitive skills (which build on the sensory/motor foundation), and then do academic remediation.

For some children with test scores such as your son’s, a combination of “Reading Reflex” and Audiblox would be enough. However, because of the very low score in visual/motor integration, I would get the developmental vision eval.

LMB is a good program, but it doesn’t do anything for developmental vision delay. Most children actually learn decoding skills faster with the approach in “Reading Reflex”, which is also considerably less expensive, even if you hire a certified tutor instead of doing it yourself.

Sorry if this seems like a mish-mash. It’s hard to convey a lot of information in one post.

Mary

Your information is very helpful. My son had a full developmental vision evaluation and was diagnosed with problems in automaticity, oculomotors skills and eidetic decoding. We’ve already completed vision therapy (we just had his 6 month check-up and everything is looking great). He is no longer complaining of headaches and seems to be able to track and focus better. While we did see some improvement after the vision therapy, he is still struggling with his reading, which is why we had him tested with a full battery of tests for dyslexia. Thanks again.

It really depends on what kind of struggle you will get from your school,what the time frame will be to get remediation started ,and your financial ability to pay privately for remediation.

While it would benefit many other children after your son for the teachers to be trained on helping and remediating your son’s problems, how long will it take?

If you can get a program designed specificly for him without an act of congress,then I say go for it. If it appears that they are going to drag their feet and give you a hard time about doing this,then it might be better for you to go with the private remediation.

Bear in mind, I have two children,both have a form of dyslexia,( they are dysgraphic) I was diagnosed dyslexic in kindergarten,dyslexia is a type of disability that has soo many variations that not all remediation works for everyone. LMB is a great remediation program for some kids. It didn’t prove to be helpful for my two. While OT helped one child,it didn’t help another.
The issue for my children was getting them appropriate accomodations in class.
Laptops helped my kids tremendously . Once using them a while my oldest started spelling much better,rather than strictly phoneticly. No matter how many spelling words he memorized,he couldn’t utilize this technique to learn those words,like every other kid in the class. He needed accomodations.
He is gifted,and has a great vocabulary,he needed the classroom teacher to accomodated his learning style.

Be an informed consumer. Don’t assume that his disability will be “cured” . If they tell you they can “cure” dyslexia,be concerned. It doesn’t get “cured” and it isn’t a lost cause. It all a matter of how he is taught,rather than trying to get him to learn their way.

I suppose it would be best to have the teacher’s trained. If LMB seems to be the best help for your son’s problems I would utilize the private program.
But the bottom line is,he will always be dyslexic,and he will always need the teacher to learn how to teach him,not the other way around.

I would follow-up the vision therapy with cognitive training to develop visual processing skills — either PACE or Audiblox. My daughter also had phonological delays, for which Phono-Graphix was very effective.

Mary

Dawn, your son sounds like a good candidate for the Davis Dyslexia program. Kids with the profile of being highly gifted with dyseidetic type dyslexia tend do extremely well with that approach, with extremely very rapid gains in reading.

There is a Davis provider in Birmingham - this link has details:
http://dyslexia.com/cb/state.cgi?AL

Lindamood Bell is an excellent program (though always it depends on the person doing it!), best done intensively, as your doctor recommends. I would definitely try to do something to ease up on other homework and school in general while he’s doing it. The long-term goals will be worth it as he’ll be able to get *so* much more out of school. LMB works on a broad range of language skills so that he’ll get more than just reading work, and he will end up knowing a lot about language and about how he learns.

I’d hate to pass up on the chance to improve the teachers’ training though — the Scottish Rite folks use an Orton-Gillingham approach that is a cousin to Lindamood Bell and also effective, and I can guarantee that your kiddo is not the only one with this problem! The programs will support each other. (Reading Reflex would also not conflict — all three programs include work on the sound-symbol connection.)

We just started the LMB program Mon(17th) with my daughter who is dyslexic. If you’d like I can give a progress report at the end of week 1.
Day 1 went pretty good, she goes 4 hours a day 5 days a week, Day 2 she was very excited to go she(my daughter) gave me a tour of the stuff they did and how it works. I’m happy with that alone because she never showed that much enthusiasm in her regular school.
My daughter goes to a private school and they were not real supportive of us sending her to this program, If I had the opportunity to request the teachers learn a method to help my child as well as others I WOULD HAVE BEEN THE LOUDEST VOICE THEY HEARD! If you don’t do it for your own because of time lapsing then do it for all the other children who will get lost in the system and never will be at grade level. My school said that my daughter is getting good grades so she must be doing well. But that only looks good on paper for them, she struggles everyday, is feeling stupid because other kids finish their work before her - so she just doesn’t finish the work in class and we do it at home. Her self-esteem is starting to get low, she’s become more confrontational with classmates, on and on and on… I didn’t want to wait for her to hit depression before we or they did anything about it. And this school prides themselves in their special needs department but did not help my daughter, instead she is probably going to be labeled a problem child, because she is being forced to do things she cannot do .
If you have patience and can work with your son with some of the programs suggested I would do them get him on the right track before he starts feeling less than worthy of himself and still go after the teachers to learn the program too.

Another suggestion is a program called Kuzweil 3000. My dau is also dyslexic and vision therapy wasn’t an option (major eye/vision issues) and this program has helped her keep up with the rest of her class. It is a scan/reader program that you scan in the text and the program reads it back. It can also be use for the web, emails etc. My school district has it loaded on at most of the middle and high schools so the kids can use it all day. They loaded a read only version on my computer so I could scan her text for studying and tests. The voice on it is not great but it allows her to have some independence.