dyslexia and fatigue?

This can be a symptom of more that just dylsexia. Have you explored Irlen Syndrome? (http://www.irlen.com) I also found reading The Light Barrier by Rhonda Stone quite helpful.

My dd still gets exhausted when she has too much reading or writing to do because it DOES take a lot of energy for her to process all that information. If you try to break down everything that goes into doing those tasks, its an incredible amount of work. It has gotten better since she was dx’d with Irlen Syndrome and we are accommodating that appropriately. She can sustain attention on her reading for longer periods but it still is tiring.

I actually seem to have a lot more sypmtoms of Scotopic Sensitivity than Gavin does. He has a couple of the symptons, but I don’t think enough where I would consider the Irlen thing to be an issue with him. He doesn’t seem to have a problem reading printed material, though, so I don’t see what getting him overlays for reading would accomplish. I’ll read up on it though. thanks for the link.

My problem is Senseory Integration Disorder. The Scotopic part is just one facet of my problem. Now if the just made filters for my ears and my tactile nerves……

Many kids with SSS can read at grade level or above but do experience difficulty with sustained reading, physical reactions to reading, etc. I have an adult friend who is an avid reader and recently found out that she has SSS. She said it explained a lot of physical symptoms she had when reading but had never put together. I’ve also heard stories of avid readers who thought that everyone saw words dancing on the page. :)

I guess the benefit for your son would be to decrease the physical stress of reading so that he isn’t tired.

he doesn’t get tired from reading. He gets tired from spelling . He can read for hours on end and be fine. (andhe does… for hours and doesn”t get his piano practiced, LOL).

I have asked about moving letters or word or backgrounds and he says they don’t, but I guess sometimes you don’t know there is a problem until you experience it the way it should be.

It’s when it gets down to having to figure out how to spell words he’s writing or sound outnew words outloud/on command.

But I have been reading about the Scotopic stuff at a few different websites. I am thinking if we tried them we’d do lenses, not overlays. But I guess we may have to start with the overlays (haven’t had time to read much today, but I got started…. anyway, somedays I just tired of micromanaging all these different DXes… I could find a dozen or more disorders/syndromes online thathe has 85% the symptons of.

I usually just skip all the DXes and just look into what therapies/treatments work for his different ‘issues’ without much regard to what DX is being used.

I hear that. Ms. 14 has multiple LDs on top of mental health issues. We spent years trying to untangle all the different things and provide therapies for everything. I think we finally have it all under control. lol

Just for fun, you might have him try different color backgrounds on the computer screen and see if any of that makes a difference. :)

Spelling was, and is still, a big issue here. Ms. 14 uses a word prediction program on the computer. Suprisingly this is also helping her spelling. lol

Good luck finding what works for him!

Kimberley,

IMO your working hypothesis should be that the work is very hard for him, not that he’s trying to get out of it. I’d also question how well he is really reading to himself if he is having trouble reading out loud. If I were you, I’d look into the following:

1) Using the Sopris West REWARDS! program for reading multisyllable words. This is very easy for a parent to do, can be finished in a couple of months, and has a good track record of significantly improving children’s reading. (There is also a new lower level intermediate program. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard many say they prefer the original Rewards program, which is pitched towards children with at least a fourth grade reading level. Due to a confusing website, it is best for you to phone in your order to the company.)

2) Using Sequential Spelling by AVCO for spelling. It’s approach is to re-enforce spelling patterns. It also is very easy to administer; conventional wisdom is that it takes about 60 lessons (spelling about 20 words a day) for spelling improvements to become evident in everyday writing.

These are very reasonably priced programs that many homeschoolers have used with success.

There is a good chance that your son’s brain is working harder than a ‘normal’ childs brain.

One reason for this is that many people with learning difficulties process reading, spelling and speech in the frontal ‘thinking’ parts of the brains. Were as a ‘normal’ person handles these with different, more instinctive parts of the brain.

The best analogy is driving a car. When you are learning you are having to pay attention to everything and this is hard work. Once you have been driving for a few years everything becomes automatic, instinctive and you can drive for hours. You son could be stuck in the learning stage.

The good news is that there is hope. MRI studies have shown that between 40 and 100 hours of 1-to-1 phonics training is enough to move it to the instinctive level.

There is more on my blog Myomanacy [ http://www.myomancy.com/ ]. You may want to check the archives in the auditory [ http://www.myomancy.com/auditory/index.html ] and visual sections [ http://www.myomancy.com/visual/index.html ].

Chris

Interesting about the theory about 40 to 100 hours of phonics training moving it to the instinctive level. This is exactly what I do, and I have seen it work over and over.
One student is astounding me; eighteen months ago dragging painfully through Grade 2 books with the little duckies, a year ago the Boxcar Children, six months ago Hatchet, now reading — fluently I may add — a book for adults “Caught Stealing” and although the language is a bit strong, mom and I do not care a bit; last night he decoded the insult “batsh*t” without the slightest pause — it works!!

I have big, big questions about the whole Irlen/scotopic/overlay thing.
Neither reading nor personal experience have turned up any real support for the theory.

Reading about it, I find no actual scientific backing; in fact the one unbiased study I read found that different “qualified” testers assigned different colours and intensities to various students, apparently at random.
From experience, the students I had who were assigned overlays read better without them. Sorry, but that is what a simple test came up with — read one page with overlay, one without, and measure speed and errors, and there were fewer errors and more correct words without the overlay.

I have many students who illustrate fatigue symptoims the minute anything to do with reading appears. Book opens, yawns start. Or book opens, hands rub eyes. I am fairly convinced that in *most* cases it is a learned response, a Pavlovian thing; the “symptom” appears *before* the work starts, or withing ten seconds. It also stops instantly as if switched off the minute we digress and talk about something else. Real fatigue doesn’t sure itself in a millisecond.

Kim — about your original question below — you have asked and answered your own question.
Not being able to pronounce unfamiliar words, finding reading very fatiguing, inserting sounds that are not there into words, spelling problems — every one of these is a sign of weak decoding skills. He has apparently memorized a large number of words by sight but it takes *so* much work to go over that bank of several thousand words each time you move your eyes, so of course he finds it exhausting. He can decode but it is not his preferred approach; he guesses fairly wildly until you insist and make him actually look at the letters. He does not think of letter-sound codes when writing so of course he muddles letters. And so on.
I work with students like this all the time. What has been proven to work is re-teaching phonics/decoding/encoding from the ground up. You review single consonants very quickly, then dive into vowels and blends and digraphs and do them thoroughly, then syllables and do them very thoroughly.
This does *not* need to be exhausting or overwhelming or expensive. The ideal would be twenty or thirty minutes a day. Due to time and money constraints, I usually see my students two hours a week and that works pretty well. You can get some very inexpensive programs: AVKO spelling is very good but you need to *keep at it* for several months; I use a phonics workbook series that costs around five dollars per book for four books, a minimal price cpompared to almost anything else, the only issue being that again you have to *keep at it*. Handwriting and directionality are also vital — if you are working consistently forwards you will write and read in an organized fashion, but if you are going every which way the reading and spelling get muddles too. You can get a real turn-around, les fatigue, more reading progress, better spelling, better handwriting, and a good foundation for later, all in about six months to a year. Start now and by next year building up a little pice at a time you can see what looks like a miracle when it all adds up.

Hi, my son is 12. He has dyslexia. He didn’t read much (besides something like simple, basic Dick and Jane) until mid 4th grade. He is 6th grade and reads pretty much on grade level now. His dyslexia really shows when it comes to speling and writing. *like today he was doing word morphs. He had the word CAST and knew he wanted the word CART next, but he couldn’t figure out which letter to change for awhile… Also, when reading his word lists, he would change a letter and not really know what the word was. Like he has the words: wind-wink-wisk-wish. (and we won’t even mention al the ones he got wrong because he can’t spell and he can’t pronouce, so things are spelled wrong…)

He got to the word WISK and read it as ‘wrisk’ and ‘rinsk’ and ‘winsk’.. He finally got is as I had him point to each letter and make the sound. (yet he reads on grade level….. but he can’t read outloud very well).

Anyway, my main question is fatigue. I notice when he does things that require writing/spelling, like above, he basically slumps over and is half asleep. Is this just because it is so much mental effort for him? (Or is it a ploy to get out of work? …LOL)
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Kimberly

homeschool mom t 3 boys

IT really does sound like it’s when he has to think about the sounds that he gets exhausted… when he’s just reading he’s okay.
THe general solution to dealing with this is to make sure it’s not interfering with all the rest of the learning agendas besides getting automatic with the sounding-out process. So when you’re working on the weakness, work on the weakness… but when you’re trying to learn something else, work *around* the weakness so that you can focus on the something else *and* so you aren’t practicing the bad habits and undoing the working on the weaknesses.

you know that automatic thing you talked about. I don’t have it. I asume my son fatigues, because I know how fatiguing simple things are for me. I can’t even use that automatic thing to turn on lights or screw open lids. I stillhave to stop and think about wich direction. And I can get lost driving to a place Ihave driven many times over yrs…LOL. So, I figured it probably was the brain fatigue from trying so hard to process. But it’s good to hear it confirmed fromothers.

and abot this 40-100 hrs 1-to-1… well, I’ve home schooled for the past 5 yrs, you’d think I’d have surpassed the neede dhours for this stuff to stick! Well, he is reading on gradelevel and it took until 4th grade, but thenit just clicked. So I guess theere has been improvement. and spelling and letter sounds will come next.

This is pretty much what I do with all the kids. When we are working od reading or spelling, we work on just that. But when we are working on math, sceince, etc (esp new) I don’t bother with the speling and reading much. Because I know the brain strain for he is weak in would get in the way of the other learning.

Thanks for the response.

The homeschool one to one is a good thing — but it also matters a lot exactly *what* you are doing in that one to one. There are approaches that work a little bit, and other approaches that help a lot. Lots of people here will suggest losts of programs; I personally go for simple and basic and low-cost, and you can feel free to ask for info on things that really work.

As far as getting lost — last night I drove home to the same highway exit I have taken fifty times over the past two months since I moved here, not to mention several hundred times over the years before. So I somehow took the left branch of the Y instead of the right and found myself heading out towards the bridge out of the city; had to take the exit and spend fifteen minutes getting turned around.
I used to have a hard time with what direction to turn things in, but have improved with several decades of practice.
This is the pattern seen in NLD (non-verbal learning disability) and I’m pretty sure I have it, although at this stage of my life I’ve already learned all my coping skills and a diagnosis would be just for amusement.
You may want to get yourself tested, and definitely heredity may have something to do with yur child.

I was very sceptical until I read some good research on it and that convince me to go and try it out myself. I ended up with rose tinted glasses and it did make a real difference. I got a lot less eye strain. they worked for about two years and then I found it was easier to read without them.

This link offers general background plus a link to a summary of research [ http://www.myomancy.com/2004/08/coloured_lens.html ] and here is a link to more recent research [ http://www.myomancy.com/2005/11/mearesirlen_tre.html ].

Chris

Tregenza, this is exactly the problem. Something that is published by the very organization that is selling something is not research at all, much less “good” research. Everything I have seen or heard about the tinted lenses and overlays is either a very minor glare reduction plus placebo effect. Youe own experience sounds like placebo effect, sorry.

Sorry I’m confused.

The research pointed to by [url=http://www.myomancy.com/2005/11/mearesirlen_tre.html]Meares-Irlen Treatment More Effective Than Expected[/url] is [url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046%2Fj.1475-1313.2003.00144.x]Predicting the continued use of overlays in school children – a comparison of the Developmental Eye Movement test and the Rate of Reading test[/url] is work that has no connection to Irlen or similar.

The [url=http://www.ceriumvistech.co.uk/Recent%20Research.htm]Coloured Lenses[/url] summary link does point to a firm with a comerical interest but the studies themselves are studies conducted by independent researchers and mostly published in the peer-reviewed journal [url=http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0275-5408]Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics[/url]. Hopefully this link will list [url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/doSearch?searchText=Meares-Irlen+Syndrome&filter=single&journal=opo&searchbutton.x=42&searchbutton.y=10]all studies on Meares-Irlen[/url] in that journal.

I spotted this study from the journal [url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1475-1313.2002.00079.x?prevSearch=allfield%3A%28Meares-Irlen+Syndrome%29]Coloured overlays and their effects on reading speed: a review[/url] found that:
“[i]Coloured overlays can reduce symptoms of visual stress and improve reading speed. These benefits are reliable and are not attributable simply to placebo effects. Five percent of children in mainstream education read at least 25% more quickly with an overlay, provided they have chosen the colour. The suboptimal design of children’s text and the high level of classroom lighting may be partly responsible.[/i]”

So for at least some people they are effective.

Chris

[quote] Five percent of children in mainstream education read at least 25% more quickly with an overlay, provided they have chosen the colour. The suboptimal design of children’s text and the high level of classroom lighting may be partly responsible.”
[/quote]

It could also be that the kids got to choose it on their ownand it is anew experience.

I do think it could help some kid. And anything you can do to help reduce eye stress will be of benefit.
I read through a couople different websites on this syndrome. And i just don’t see it as another syndrome. from everything I read it is just the same as certain areas of dyslexia or the visual area of Sensory Integration Disorder. I see it more as therapy techniques for dyslexia or SID, not yet another disorder.

I like trying out diffferent things and finding new things that help my boys out and helo me teach them, but i am leary of things that seem to imply they are THE answer….. We use some Brain Gym, it is very helful. Some people basically say that all you really need is Brain Gym, like it’s the end all answer. These things are just one more building block we can add to our program.

(I do wear sunglasses even at night, esp at night in the rain, eh glare drives me insane, LOL)

Any treatment that claims to be the single answer to dyslexia / ADHD / LD is wrong. Many of these treatments work but not on everyone. Sometimes, the order in which treatments are tried can have an effect [ http://www.myomancy.com/2006/01/the_log_jam_hyp.html ].

Chris

I agree with Victoria. And I’d go all the way back to the advice given by Marie…use REWARDS and Sequential Spelling (AVKO). This child likely has weak decoding skills.

My son is dyslexic and has exactly the same problem with sleep. He tends to go to sleep when he is reading, writing or trying to solve math problems. I’m having him evaluated by a developmental pediatrician for this, to see what we can do to keep the work from being so mentally exhausting for him. He has had a year of Orton-Gillingham, but he’s going to need a couple of more years because his dyslexia is pretty severe. I wonder if the sleep is related to how severe the dyslexia is? I don’t know. I will ask the doctor all of these things and let you know what the doctor says. You’ll have to wait a month, though :)