Dyslexia

A Complete Guide for Parents and Those Who Help Them

Gavin Reid

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781119973560
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Learning Disabilities

The new edition of Dyslexia is written for parents of dyslexic children and the professionals who work with them, and provides information on the role parents can play in supporting their dyslexic child. This updated edition contains new material and up-to-date discussions of current research and programs.

• Empowers parents by providing them with strategies for dealing with a wide range of concerns including dyspraxia and dyscalculia
• New sections cover post-school issues, the emotional needs of young people with dyslexia and information on how parents can help at home
• Features information on some of the more popular interventions for dyslexia, and critical evaluations of 'alternative treatments'
• Includes first–hand accounts of parents' hopes, successes and setbacks, and extensive lists of organizations and resources

Chapter 1

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a term that most of you will have heard of and will have some idea of its features. Many professionals you deal with will claim they know what dyslexia is. Yet in reality there are many misunderstandings and misconceptions about dyslexia as well as a fair amount of controversy. This has a direct impact on parents, and particularly those parents finding out for the first time that they have a child who is dyslexic. In the United States and Canada we often use the term ‘learning disability’, an umbrella term, which also includes dyslexia. In the UK and Europe the term ‘dyslexia’ is used more openly − governments recognize it and legislation and educational policy take it into account. Similarly in New Zealand and in Australia, there have been considerable advances in the use of the term dyslexia in recent years. In the Middle East and Asia, both US and UK models are used and the term is also applied more openly there too. Dyslexia is an internationally accepted term and the condition affects children and adults in every country and in every culture irrespective of the language or the education system.

Every day more and more parents are told that their child is dyslexic and immediately alarm bells start to ring. They ask themselves, ‘Could we have found out about this earlier? What are the social and emotional considerations? What are the educational implications, how might it affect exams, college and careers? What exactly is dyslexia? What can we do to help?’

Having been in the position of assessing and identifying many thousands of children with dyslexia, I am fully aware of the questions, anxieties, concerns and the hopes of parents. I am also aware that there has been good progress in acceptance and support for dyslexia. But there is still a great deal to be done and in many areas parents are left confused and concerned. I have also been in the position of being told by a professional that my son has severe special needs and although this is difficult to accept, one of the first feelings one experiences is that of relief − relief that your ‘gut feeling’ that something was not right was not just a figment of your imagination but was in fact correct. With this knowledge parents have a clearer idea of what they have to deal with, and at last can set about doing that. This last point is important because this book is not intended to be a catalog of despair, but rather a ‘lifeline’ and source of hope for many thousands of parents who may find themselves searching for answers and desperately seeking guidance and advice.

This opening chapter provides a straightforward account and description of dyslexia. It also touches on the overlap with other disabilities such as dyspraxia, dyscalculia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This potential overlap can be confusing and often prevents the most appropriate intervention from being put into place.

Shannon Green and I run an online course on dyslexia for parents which includes a discussion forum. It is interesting to receive communication from parents in different parts of the world regarding their concerns. In many cases I am struck by the similarities no matter where they. Consider this parent’s experience:

We have a nine-year-old boy and for three of his school years he displayed signs of dyslexia. This was only brought to our attention at the end of last year which was quite a shock as, if we had been told earlier, maybe I would have handled situations differently with homework and so on. It took until this year to have him assessed.

This is not unusual, many parents wait a long time for a formal diagnosis. Most education authorities operate what might be referred to as a ‘wait to fail’ model. That means the child needs to be have fallen quite far behind before an assessment takes place – essentially, the child has to have failed. This is a reactive model and one that can cause considerable problems, frustrations and a sense of hopelessness. Some education providers are now attempting to redress this situation by developing more proactive policies. For example, in the US the policy known as ‘response to intervention’, in theory at least, is intended to be proactive and identify children with difficulties at a young age before the difficulty becomes too entrenched. This policy, although theoretically commendable, is not without its critics.

There are other examples of early intervention and school-based assessment procedures in the US, Canada and UK which seem to be successful and will be discussed in chapter 3 (Crombie, Knight & Reid, 2004; Dyslexia Scotland, 2010).

So, what is dyslexia?

My view of dyslexia is that it is a difference in how children (and adults) process information. That is, how they take information in (input); how they understand it, memorize it and organize it in their mind (cognitive processing); and how they demonstrate they know this information (output). Children and young people with dyslexia can have differences (which can take the form of difficulties) at all of these stages – input, processing and output. Generally, these differences can be seen in relation to print, but other areas of learning can also be affected. That is why dyslexic difficulties can persist even when reading skills improve. Dyslexia can have an impact on all areas of learning. As children go through school they often use compensatory strategies to deal with challenges and can become quite adept at this.

Characteristics of dyslexia

Dyslexia relates to how information is processed

This means that dyslexia involves more than reading, but affects learning, including understanding and following oral instructions, as well as reading accurately and fluently and presenting written work.

Children with dyslexia can have difficulty learning through the auditory modality

The auditory modality refers to listening. This can be problematic as much of the teaching in school is through the auditory modality. It is important therefore to ensure that teaching and learning is multisensory – auditory, visual, kinesthetic (experiential) and tactile (through touch).

Reading, spelling and writing difficulties

Reading, spelling and writing difficulties are characteristic of dyslexia. This includes reading speed and writing speed.

Reading

The common view is that children with dyslexia have difficulties with sounds (phonemes) – that is, the smallest unit of sound in a word. They can have difficulty in distinguishing between similar sounds and sound combinations. They may also have difficulty in identifying where in a word a particular sound comes and recognizing the same sound in different words. This is referred to a phonological awareness and is often one of the early indicators of dyslexia. It can sometimes be noted in a difficulty with nursery rhymes.

Spelling

Although spelling and reading use different processes they are both features of dyslexia. Spelling can often take bizarre forms and even after many years of tuition some children still experience difficulties with the same word. They may have difficulty in remembering and applying spelling rules so the word ‘easier’, for example, may be spelt ‘easyer’. They may also make visual and phonological errors. Spelling can be problematic but with specialized spellcheckers such as TextHelp™, spelling can usually be quite readily corrected.

Writing

Writing can be difficult on two counts. Handwriting can be a problem and this will be discussed later in relation to the possible overlap with dyspraxia. But it is strongly advised that the young person with dyslexia, as soon as possible, becomes proficient in the use of a word processor. There are many excellent computer programs available to help with this (see Appendix 2).

Some – in fact quite a number of children with dyslexia − can become quite expert and very creative in writing. But this can still be a problem as often they have difficulty in expressing what they mean. This can be frustrating and can result in under-accomplishment. With a clear structure for work this can be overcome. Indeed, many successful authors are dyslexic!

Dyslexia is individual

Children with dyslexia may have slightly different characteristics from each other. They may all have some common core difficulties, for example reading or spelling, but the actual characteristics and the nature of the difficulties can be different. It is important to view each child with dyslexia as an individual.

Children with dyslexia can have difficulty remembering information

Memory can be problematic. This can apply to working memory and short-term memory as well as long-term memory. This means that remembering oral instructions can be challenging, especially if a list of items is presented at the same time. The short-term, working memory can only hold a limited amount of information at any one time, and children and adults with dyslexia can have difficulty in remembering accurately even a limited amount, so it is best to provide one instruction at any one time.

Long-term memory relates to recalling information that has been learnt some time previously. Much of the success of retrieval of information learnt depends on how well the information is understood and organized at the time of learning. This will be followed up in some detail in later chapters.

Difficulty in organizing information

Whether we are aware of it or not, we always make some attempt to organize new information. We might group new items to be remembered into one familiar category. Organizing information is important if we are recalling a sequence of events, and children with dyslexia can have difficulty with this. This can also affect their performance in examinations unless some supports are in place.

Overlap

There may be an overlap between other learning difficulties such as dyspraxia (difficulty with coordination and movement), dysgraphia (difficulty with handwriting), dyscalculia (difficulty with numbers) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; attention and focussing difficulties). Children with dyslexia can experience some elements of the other difficulties, but this would usually be secondary to the main difficulties relating to dyslexia.

Phonological difficulties

This is one of the main difficulties associated with dyslexia. These difficulties can be seen at various levels. Adams (1990) identified at least five levels of difficulty:

• knowledge of nursery rhymes, which involves only an ear for the sounds of words;
• awareness of rhyme and alliteration, which requires both sensitivity to the sounds and an ability to focus on certain sounds;
• blending of phonemes and splitting of syllables to identify phonemes − this demands an awareness that words can be subdivided into smaller sounds;
• phoneme segmentation requires a thorough understanding that words can be analyzed into a series of phonemes;
• phoneme manipulation requires a child not only to understand and prod...