Dyslexia: A Parent's Travel Guide

By Elouise Kaplan

Dyslexia: a parent’s travel guide by Elouise Kaplan gives an understanding of what dyslexia is. It identifies the main challenges faced by dyslexic children and their parents as the child moves through the education system. The guide provides parents with a wealth of information about how they can help their child to overcome difficulties and to succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elouise Kaplan
• Release date: Dec 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310099328

Elouise Kaplan

Elouise Kaplan is an experienced educator and specialist teacher and assessor of children and adults with specific learning differences. She is the parent of a dyslexic child.

Book preview

Dyslexia: A Parent’s Travel Guide

by

Elouise Kaplan

Dyslexia: A Parent’s Travel Guide

Copyright © 2013 Elouise Kaplan

Cover design by Paul Persen

Smashwords edition

Dyslexia: a parent’s travel guide by Elouise Kaplan gives an understanding of what dyslexia is. It identifies the main challenges faced by dyslexic children and their parents as the child moves through the education system. The guide provides parents with a wealth of information about how they can help their child to overcome difficulties and to succeed.

Contents

Introduction

1. What is dyslexia?

2. The Baby and Toddler Years

3. The Early School Years (5-7 years)

4. Middle Childhood (7-11 years)

5. The Teenage Years

6. Life After School

Copyright

About the Author

Introduction

Before my first child was born, I had been a qualified teacher for six years and a trained dyslexia specialist for two years. I considered myself sympathetic to parents of children with dyslexia and related conditions. I believed I had a good idea of how it must feel to have a child with those kinds of difficulties. I thought I knew it all. Needless to say, I didn’t. Looking back, I had no real understanding of the immense emotional issues linked to having a child who struggles to learn. As a one-to-one specialist tutor, children and adults will often confide in you and tell you about the negative experiences that they have had as a result of their learning difference. Often, however, they will keep hidden the extent of how much upset they have suffered. My eldest child (my son) turned out to be severely dyslexic and had many symptoms of the other conditions that often accompany dyslexia. It was not until he reached school age that I really began to understand how the parents of a dyslexic child feel when confronted with some of the negative experiences they face on a daily basis. Previously, when a tearful parent approached me, I would sometimes think, "Well, I can see why you’re upset, but that upset? I mean, it’s not a life-threatening medical problem, is it?"

My second child was born with a medical condition that would have become life threatening without surgery. This was a totally different experience to dealing with my son’s learning problems. The decisions seemed more in the hands of medical specialists than parents’. Even if you have to give consent for a child’s treatment, they give you extremely strong advice on the best options available. It is usually the doctors who make the real decisions, with the parents’ agreement.

Parents dealing with their children’s dyslexia are usually on their own when it comes to making decisions about how to help them. Solutions and treatments for dyslexia sometimes have little scientific evidence to back them up. This is coupled with the fact that, even today, there is sometimes a high level of ignorance about dyslexia and related conditions among mainstream teachers, as well as college and university lecturers.

This book has been written in the hope that it may provide parents with some company and guidance in their journey through parenting a dyslexic child from infancy into early adulthood. I have used the story of Daniel, a fictional character, to illustrate some of the typical problems a dyslexic child can come up against. The story is a blend of real events from the lives of some of the dyslexic students that I have taught over the years.

Before starting on the dyslexia journey, it might be helpful to describe what dyslexia is and what it will probably mean in terms of the challenges that a dyslexic child will face.

1. What is dyslexia?

Definitions

There are many definitions of dyslexia, and those in the field continue to debate about a definition as well as a single agreed cause.

Dyslexia can be said to be a difference in the set up of the brain, which is associated with an unusual way of processing information. This can lead to problems with awareness of the sounds within words, difficulties in reading, spelling, maths, short-term or working memory and organisation. Dyslexia can be thought of as a continuum from mild to severe, with no clear-cut off points. It occurs across the range of intellectual abilities. While dyslexia leads to certain learning problems, it can be associated with strengths in problem-solving, design, interpersonal skills, oral skills, creativity, whole picture thinking and visual thinking.

According to the British Dyslexia Association definition, dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that mainly affects the development of literacy and language-related skills. It is likely to be present at birth and lifelong in its effects. It is characterised by difficulties with phonological processing, rapid naming, working memory, processing speed, and the automatic development of skills that may not match up to an individual’s other cognitive abilities.

Dyslexia tends to be difficult to overcome with conventional teaching methods, but its effects can be reduced by intervention, including multisensory specialist teaching, the use of technology and supportive counselling. Multisensory teaching means that the teacher will make sure the learner uses as many senses as possible during the learning process. Information is presented so that the learner sees, hears, touches and (if possible) tastes and smells during the learning process. This makes the information more easily understood and remembered.

Having taught and assessed a large number of dyslexic children and adults over the years, I am only too aware that dyslexia impacts in different ways on different people. Every single one of my students has shown a different set of difficulties as well