Dyslexia, Help!!!
Both me and my husband suspect that our 10 year old (going into 5th) daughter has dyslexia. She is in the Albany school district. I'm looking for information on specialists, organizations, what individual parents have done, what has helped, etc. We have known something is off in her learning since kindergarten and just now suspect dyslexia after years of trying many different things. I would be grateful for any information or recommendations. Its been very trying.
Thank you, Ewa
Aug 22, 2016
Parent Replies
I completely understand. Which school are you in? My daughter is also dyslexic as well as me as I discovered through all my research.
We addended Marin about 2 years ago and had Sara Heller as her learning teacher and her awesome grade 5 teacher Mrs R. Donvon. They were both so helpful.
In grade 5 my daughter was barely reading at a grade 4 level and hating reading, now she reads books that are 500 pages long or more with ease.
She also pasted grade 6 with mostly A's and one B.
I all belong to many Facebook groups that are so resourceful and I am constantly finding out more information daily. Facebook " Decoding Dyslexia CA . Feel free to contact me if you would like to talk as I know the schools will not officially recognize this.
Cheers Tammy
Ewa,
My daughter has dyslexia too, was having great difficulty keeping up with reading assignments, and suffering from self-esteem issues related to hear reading struggles. She has been seeing a private tutor since 2nd grade. If you are looking for a reading tutor for your child, I would highly recommend Nancy Welt (nanwel [at] sbcglobal.net (nanwel[at]sbcglobal[dot]net)). Nancy has really helped to support my daughter turn around her skills and confidence. Nancy has extensive training and establishes an easy rapport with her students. She keeps it fun and focused. I’m really impressed with the progress my daughter has made. Can’t recommend Nancy highly enough.
Ask your school district for an evaluation.(See link at end of paragraph.) They have a certain timeline in which to get this done. Your daughter could qualify for special education-this is a good thing-and get the support she needs to learn and be the smart person she is but that her current learning methods don't show. For some very good and clear guidelines, contact DREDF, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund at http://dredf.org/special-education/trainings/. They have free parent trainings the first part of every month, so this is perfect timing. They will help you immensely. Also, you can go to the IEP Assessment Letter here to use so you can get started with your request for evaluation right away. http://dredf.org/special-education/sample-letters/ Good luck from a mom and advocate.
There are allot of dyslexia resources out there. The first thing is to get an actual evaluation/confirmation. If you don't have allot of money to get a full eval done privately, you can request one be done through your school district. You can also get a "Barton screening" for dsylexia through a Barton trained specialist- Barton is an O-G program (one of many proven to work for dyslexia) that was developed by Susan Barton, and one of the few that is scripted and can be done by a parent as well- check out her website for some really great information about dyslexia, and you can also find tutors that are trained in her program and can do the screening. We started with Barton when we first got diagnosed and then moved on to another O-G program through an educational specialist. Also, we do allot of "ear reading" to keep up with vocabulary- so that they have access to books on their ability to comprehend level and can maintain the high verbal vocabulary while they are catching up on their "eye-reading" level. Look at Learning Ally (google them) as another resource that provides free audio books to kids with differences like dyslexia.