Dyslexia/Dysgraphia-Any suggestions welcomed please!

You are not alone.  I have a nearly 12 yo ds with dysgraphia.  He was diagnosised mid fourth in PS, but I already had plans to bring him home for 5th.  I can’t speak to dyslexia, or how it inter-relates.  He is a very good reader and is constantly reading.  Writing on the other hand is such a challenge.  Copy work is by far the most effective tool we’ve used for his printing.  You have to be present and make sure he is forming letters correctly and gently catch him about to make a mistake, because having to redo or erase adds to the difficulty and frustration.  We found copy work books unhelpful as they seldom used the exact font he uses, line size can also cause problems for spacing issues, and copying directly from a book was also unhelpful.  It took me a little longer, but if I copied the passage down on to regular lined paper, taking time to exaggerate spaces so that he wouldn’t try to run all his words together, it was more helpful.  I would indicate which lines he was to write on directly below what I’d written with an arrow and we’d make sure the page was double spaced. (My line, blank space, his line, blank space, my line, etc.)

We use graph paper a lot also, especially for math.  He has trouble with keeping colums lined up, too little space on a page, and forming numbers.  I print graph paper with 1/2″ squares from a website that allows me to choose how many squares per inch: http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/plain/

I didn’t even attempt spelling last year (our first year homeschooling) with ds.  I really wanted to focus on the mechanics of printing — letter formation, spacing, alignment, uniformity, etc.– by using a model (copy work) and really getting them down before moving on to more difficult aspects of writing.  You may find if he is still really stuggling with basic letter formation, etc, that holding off on spelling for a term or two, or event the year, is a good idea.  We will begin using Megawords for spelling this year and will ease into written narration throughout the year.  Letter tiles — even Scrabble letters, can take some of the work out of spelling when handwriting is very difficult and can really help a tactile learner.  Bouncing a ball while spelling words orally can help an audio or kinetic learner.  Use as many sense as possible, and lots of repitiotion.  We are also using notebooking.  I will have him dictate to me what he wants to write in his Science or History, etc. and I will write it down.  We will then polish a sentence or two (so it says exactly what he wants it to) which he will re-write into his notebook as copy work. 

I’m always looking for new ideas to help him, so I will be really watching to see what other suggestions people have to offer.

I don’t deal with this with my own children, but I was a Special Ed. teacher in my pre-children days.  I loved the book “The Gift of Dyslexia.”  It was written by a Dyslexic adult, and described in detail how his brain works differently.  I would recommend it to get a grasp on exactly what is going on that causes the things that the rest of us see as ‘problems’.  A very interesting read.

I am dealing with some of this with my DD8.  For any ADD type issues, I would read the book “Stop ADD Naturally”.  I am reading it right now.  It discusses the deficiency of amino acids that can cause these symptoms.  It goes through the different amino’s, what their deficiency symptoms are, etc.

For the dyslexia, I am looking at a program called Dynaread.  They have a free assessment on their website that your kids can take.  It only takes 10-15 minutes total.  With my DD we were probably done in 5 minutes.  We only made it through the first 2 sections when they had her quit.  Her reading is such a struggle that they said it would’ve been too frustrating to do the comprehension part.  It is all online whenever you feel like doing it and Dynaread will email you the results.

A friend of mine found AVKO to be very helpful for her struggling speller.  They are also a help for dyslexia.

Hope this helps some.  You are not alone.  It is frustrating to see our children struggle and feel like we can’t help.

I just wanted to suggest Sue Patrick’s Webinars. She shows you how to put together and find curriculm for all sorts of problems. Her son has Autism and she had to go threw similar problems.  She saw how he grew in different areas and she expanded on those. I have 3 of her webinars and I must admit her style of doing it is much faster and they learn faster then getting out the books.  Use of computers and Dot Pens are a large help. I will leave you with that. I really encourage you to check her out. You can call her and ask her more about how to help him.  

    She also is great at organizing but I think her idea of school is Phenominal. There are different ideas to learning. They could type out their answers. This way they are building on thier English skills ect… and not their handwriting. Work on that seperately. Sue suggests Typer Shark. I also ran across a program that you say the spelling word in your own voice on the computer. They type it in and they see if they get it right or wrong. I don’t remember the site but it was a neat idea that I was going to use with my son’s.  We need a new computer though.  I thought I would wait and go back and get it when I knew if it would take the program. You could probably just google it though.

         I sure hope you find a solution. I hope this helps. 

                                              Blessings on your endevour!

Oh, yes.  We do make sure that there is a book marker or index card in every book she is reading.  It helps her stay focused, hides the rest of the page, and makes it look do-able.

Something else I noticed is that when she comes to big unfamiliar words is not too let her stress too long over trying to figure them out.  I just say it and she keeps on track reading.  She has learned some nice big words this way.  Her reading levels went up 2 AR levels the first year we brought her home.  She is a much more fluent reader aloud now – and a great part of that is that she participates in reading aloud a few verses of our family scriptures every night (everyone take turns reading a few verses).  Also, she is starting to hear when she is not reading something in the correct tense and will go back and look at it again and correct herself.  Loving that she’s not feeling the pressures of being different anymore, so she is willing to work at it in her way/time. 

Sometimes when she is struggling or notices something is “off” we do talk about her challenges so she understands that she has a real issue and is not “stupid” – that has helped her a lot emotionally.  Another thing that has helped is taking my other dd who is a year older aside and explaining what is going on.  She was on her sister’s side before there was any real issues in our homeshcooling efforts and she is a great support and encourages her.