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Kindle or other device for dyslexic child?
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Have any of you used a kindle or other e reader or tablet with your child with learning difficulties? I’m specifically wondering about text to speech capabilities or audible versions that are linked with text as it is read vs. a simple e-reader.
We have a standard 10 year old birthday gift that we give in our home- a kindle paperwhite. Two of my children have received this so far and our nine year old who is dyslexic has started hinting about her 10th birthday and how she is anticipating this gift (which has not been promised to her). Since our nine year old is likely far more interested in owning the gadget than she is in reading on it, my concern is that it would just become a toy.
I do want to encourage her in her personal reading (we do read alouds mostly since her reading level is far below her ability to comprehend), so I’m tempted to go with a model such as kindle fire which would have audible capabilities. However, since my goal for its use is solely for reading I am loathe to give her something that I would normally deem as only appropriate for “electronic time,” which we monitor very closely. The beauty of the basic kindle paper white is that it is simply an e-reader and I know that is what it is being used for.
Thanks for any advice!
Valerie
Our dyslexic daughter is currently 10yo and is in Level 4, Lesson 13 of the Barton Reading and Spelling Program, so she has 2 lessons to do before she’s “allowed” to go read anything she wants. So we haven’t given her a Kindle or other device for reading.
However, she does have access to a Kindle Fire and both my Samsung Tab A and my husband’s Tab A for listening.
If you use the Fire on the kid side (under a profile for a kid), there is NO access to the parent’s Audible or Amazon music. Read thru the questions and answers before buying it for that reason (we were sorely disappointed. And I still feel like I wasted my $40).
Also, the Fire does not support the Learning Ally app. We bought a subscription to Learning Ally bc of all the living books they have as audios, and my daughter enjoys listening to those. And I assign them as her history reading.
On top of all that, I did finally find a music playing app for the Fire, but in order to listen to their stories and songs, I had to hook the Fire up to the computer and drag and drop all the music/stories they wanted. And the Fire was very finicky about which folder they got dropped into. It was a long, stupid process.
So, from a listening point of view, in our opinions, the Fire is NOT what you want to buy.
I don’t have a Paperwhite, mine is an older Touch model, and this particular daughter hasn’t even asked to read on it. When she’s reading on her own, I will definitely consider it, because I think making the font bigger and the touch-dictionary are just fabulous.
So, if she’s not reading on her own yet, perhaps a listening device would better serve her needs. In my opinion, NOT a Fire. ?
I forgot to say that while the beauty of the Fire is the kid mode, other tablets have kid mode as well, or you can set up a profile for the kids.
The Fire allows you to control which books in your Kindle library the kids have access to. Another tablet will just either allow or not allow access to the Kindle app.
The Fire has great parental controls – you can say how long they can play games (and which games), how long they can read, can block the whole internet or allow certain sites (you pick), and the Fire will turn itself off when the kid has reached their limit.
Now, several months into this, our Fire is being stupid and won’t recognize my parent password (!), so the controls on ours are messed up and just a pain.
On the other hand, our Tab A’s, which were more expensive, I can lock a kid into an app, and they can’t get out without my password. But all my music playing apps and most important, Learning Ally is available.
I wouldn’t recommend the Kindle Fire either. We had one briefly and it was so incredibly un-user-friendly and their parental controls were such a pain that it was well worth sending it back and spending an extra $50 for a Samsung Galaxy…Tab 4 I think it is. I downloaded an app called Kids Place and I can put whatever apps I want from the tablet in there for my kids, including Audible or the Kindle app, (and have a different profile for each kid) and that’s all they can access on the tablet. Plus I have access to all the apps in the Google Play store, whereas the Fire has a very limited selection of available apps in comparison, and you can’t get others unless you side load them from the designer’s websites in which case you can’t put them in the kid accounts anyway.
I don’t have a dyslexic child, but ds12 is not an avid reader and reads more slowly than my girls. He has a kindle and it is useful to him. This year I put the kindle app on his phone and the bonus with that is that I can also get the audible whispersync version. He can read along while it’s being read aloud. This is tremendously helpful to him! We don’t do this with every book, but with a good number.
This article maybe could be helpful-https://homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com/how-the-amazon-kindle-can-help-the-dyslexic-reader/
Thank you so much for all the input. I really appreciate it and it has helped me narrow down what I’m really looking for in a device.
My husband thinks we should stick with the more basic kindle paperwhite that will still allow her to change the font and type settings to better suit her needs.
In the meantime, I think I’ll look into apps and things that will make my own iPad or android phone something I could allow her to use from time to time.
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