Dyslexia and Dysgraphia

[Mom-to-3]

I have a question about the testing done for Dyslexia and Dysgraphia. What types of screenings do they use? How cooperative must the child be? How do they distinguish between a true disability and hard-headedness?

My best friend's son (age 6) is being tested. She and I live in different cities now and I haven't seen him in a while... but... she has been a lenient mom with him from the start. She was much more strict with the first 2, but this last one is the proverbial "baby of the family who gets away with murder." She always has a reason, an excuse for why he disobeys when she tells him to do something. If he nags and whines long enough, he gets anything he wants. His needs and demands determined the plans for all 10 of us the last time they visited.

How will the testers differentiate between a boy who just doesn't like being told to sit down and what to do? Versus a child who's brain actually has trouble processing/producing words and letters.

 

[mom2boys]

A qualified experienced tester will quickly be able to differentiate between "hardheadedness" and a true learning disability. First of all the mom won't be allowed in the room during the testing - so if he's just a pro at manipulating mom, the tester will know. There are many highly intelligent people who have learning disabilities. If this child is highly intelligent with learning disabilities, he is probably extremely frustrated. These kids' frustrations often manifest themselves in behavioral issues. Hopefully she has a tester who will provide follow through - ie: what to do for the child based upon the findings. If so, whether the child has learning disabilities or not, the mother will be told that the child needs structure and discipline.

 

[Deb in IA]

Dyslexia and dysgraphia are, at best, difficult to diagnose in a 6 year old.

These are by definition, disorders of READING and WRITING, and 6 year olds are just not doing that much reading and writing yet.


And what you are describing sound more like mom-created behavior problems than learning disorders. "Giving in" to him after letting him whine and scream only teaches him that if he whines and screams long enough, he will eventually get what he wants.


Six year olds should not be planning family agendas. The PARENTS need to be in charge.

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

My son was diagnosed at age 6 with severe dyslexia. He was tested at Wake Forest Bowman Gray Schoool of Medicine by a nueropsychologist. Thank goodness he was diagnosed so early.

Children need intervention a soon a possible. There is a window of opportunity between 6 and 8 where is it easier to teach children to read. Every year after that it is more difficult for the child and therapy takes longer.

All Kinds of Minds by Dr. Mel Levine is a wonderful reference book for parents with children with learning disablitities. He has been on Oprah and is a wonderful speaker. I recently attended one of his seminars and I left feeling like my child must be a special gift from God because he is so unique. He has such a different take on life. He thinks of things I would never think of in a million years. I can almost hear his brain working.

Children with learning disabilities have high I.Q.'s but their brains work in a different way. It is up to us to find out how best to teach them in a way that they will learn.

Good Luck with your friend,

Lori

 

[Otto's Doll]

My DS was diagnosed with Dysgraphia when he was 9. We did notice when he was in Pre-k that he did not have good fine motor skills, but it was not really an issue until 3rd grade, when more writing was required. My DS is extremely bright (not just me saying that ) and he reads on a 10.5 grade level right now and his math skills are on par with a 7th grader. (He is 10, and in 5th grade.) He has always had all A's on his report card, with the occasional B thrown in, and is well mannered, but he is a boy, and can be very active. His frustration with writing is huge, but he is working hard to overcome this. Our school has been wonderful about working with him, and there are things that can be done to make sure that your friend's child does not get left behind or "lost" due to this disability. (My child does not have dyslexia, although I have heard that the two are related.) There is a true difference between dysgraphia/dyslexia and "just being hard headed" and even if Mom can't see that, a teacher should be able to recognize it.

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

Jeanne,

Dr. Levine told a story about a boy with dysgraphia. He asked him why he couldn't write. The boy said, "the computer (my brain) is on and ready but the printer(my hand) is turned off and I don't know how to turn it on."

Lori

 

[Deb in IA]

pirateofthecarolinas, I'm glad your son was diagnosed early. As with any disorder, the more severe cases are usually diagnosed earlier than average.



Dyslexia is a relative weakness in decoding the symbols of our written language, in this case, the 26 letters of the alphabet that are the building blocks of words and sentences. Treatment consists of using a variety of techniques to help children read more easily, and can include phonetic approaches, using contest cues, paired readings, repetitions, and using auditory pathways to introduce the same materials (Books on Tape, peer readers, dictation of written assignments).


Not all children with learning disabilities have high IQ's. Many average, below average, and even children in the range of mild mental disability can have additional learning disabilities. What is critical is the DISCREPANCY between the child's cognitive abilities and his academic skills.

 

[Deb in IA]

Oops! Mouse must have hiccuped . . .

 

[janette]

My now 9yo DD was diagnosed pretty early, really before 6. Although not officially with dyslexia, they just called it a reading disability. As Deb said it what they are going to look for is a difference in abilities. My DD was tested again this year and still has almost a 20 point difference between her IQ and reading IQ. They use different terms but it can be found even in non-reading children.

My DD at 3 was having behavior problems in pre-school, we opted for a private school that could deal with the problems and help find reasons. Although a LD isn't behavioral some kids don't deal with the frustrations very well. In my DD's case she just refused to have anything to do with things she wasn't interested or that were hard. Learning the alphabet / sounds & symbol relationship was very hard for her. It was very difficult to tell at that age the difference between can't and won't. Some good indicators in her situation were the delays in letter / number recognition but dyslexia has many forms and some children learn to read but have comprehension or other language problems.

My DD hasn't lost her hard-headness but has learned to deal with the frustrations and is making good progress. Support your friend, a complete evaluation might help to find if there are problems and what services if any he needs.

 

[buzzlady]

Thank you all. I think I have just found term that fits my son. I had never heard of dysgraphia until this post. I searched out the information and it describes my DS7 exactly. I had him evaluated last year and he scored average to above average on his testing. I have been told that he has had fine motor skill problems since pre-k. He was also tested by an O.T. and found that he was eligable for 30 mins. 1x a week for therapy. I started the process in Dec. of last year and by the time all meetings were done it was the end of April last year. I had to go to the top of Special Svc. to get him into O.T. because he wasn't classified and the person that I was working with in Special Svc. didn't know how or who was going to pay. By the this time it was May and he had 4 sessions of O.T. I was assured that he would be automatically placed for O.T. this year. Three weeks into the school year he hadn't started. I had to go back to the head of SS and he came right out and said that he would make sure that he started that it was just a matter of bureaucratic red tape. In all of this I have never heard the term dysgrapia mentioned. I will now bring this up to the O.T. (who I have yet to have any contact with - which will be changing soon)

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

My son just had his 3 year evaluation. We are waiting for the results. I hope we have narrowed the descrepancies in his scores.

Deb in IA, he was tested at our neighborhood school.(Not his private school) My son said they were interrupted several times by teachers knocking on the door and coming in. He said the tester started yelling at people. Do you think this will affect his scores? I'm going to bring it up at our conference.

I've had several phd's tell me that most LD children have high I.Q.s. I don't want to give misinformation.

My son is now 9 in 3rd grade (we held him back in pre-k). He is reading on the beginnning of 2nd grade level. This is greatly due to his private school. One teacher to 4 students.


Thanks,

Lori

 

[Deb in IA]

Originally posted by pirateofthecarolinas

Deb in IA, he was tested at our neighborhood school.(Not his private school) My son said they were interrupted several times by teachers knocking on the door and coming in. He said the tester started yelling at people. Do you think this will affect his scores? I'm going to bring it up at our conference.

Certainly sounds like that could affect his concentration, Lori. Yes, I would ask the teacher about this.

Good luck!

 

[Otto's Doll]

bump, in case anyone else has dealt with this and has anything to add.

 

[janette]

I read this in the paper today and thought it interesting on the topic of LD & behavior. My DD is an exception but she also had behavior issues. When she was in the private school she was the only girl in her class for the 2 of the 2 1/2 years she was there. Only the last semester was she finally in a class with other girls.

Academic struggles of girls often go undetected for years

01:24 AM CST on Monday, November 10, 2003

By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News

THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION

Where are the girls?

At Dallas' Shelton School, one of the nation's largest for children with learning disabilities, preschoolers carved jack-o'-lanterns and scooped up pumpkin guts with their tiny fingers. Three-fourths of the children gathered around the table are little boys.

The Winston School, another area school that caters to the learning disabled, graduated 30 seniors last spring. Twenty-five were boys.

In public schools, the numbers aren't much different. Boys make up 75 percent of the state's special education population.

The Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children is one of the premier centers in the Southwest for the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia. Yet the center evaluates three times as many boys as girls.

All this flies in the face of what researchers proved long ago: that learning disabilities are blind when it comes to gender. Independent studies in three states and three foreign countries all found that learning disabilities occur with nearly equal frequency in boys and girls.

So when it comes to diagnosing learning disabilities such as dyslexia, where are all the girls?

In a word: invisible.

This is not new. Educators and researchers have known for decades that the numbers are overwhelmingly skewed toward boys. Yet little has changed for girls.

"You bet, I think we're missing some girls," said Gladys Kolenovsky, the administrative director of child development at Scottish Rite.

Why?

The conventional wisdom seems to be that when a boy struggles in class he becomes disruptive. He interrupts his teacher. He hits his neighbors. He pitches a fit. The chaos often results in a "referral" – a recommendation that he be evaluated by a learning specialist.

Not so with girls.

When little girls struggle they withdraw, educators say. They fake it. They pretend to read, to understand, to keep up. Secretly, though, they're falling behind.

It's cliché, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And girls don't squeak as often, or as loudly, as boys. As a result, only about one-third of girls who struggle get the help they need.

"Parents and teachers are more inclined to say with their daughters 'She's just quiet,' or 'That's just her learning style,' " said Ann Harris, a learning specialist at Ursuline Academy, an all-girls school on Walnut Hill Lane. "It behooves us to pay attention to our daughters and not just sweep it under the rug."

If a girl's learning disability is noticed, it's often not until late elementary or middle school, after it becomes too hard for them to keep their struggles hidden.

"Kids don't grow out of reading problems," said Dr. Patricia Mathes, the Texas Instruments Endowed Chair of Reading at SMU. "We can identify this kind of stuff in kindergarten."

Texas has in place a tool that could help solve this problem. It's called the TPRI – Texas Primary Reading Inventory – and it's a reading assessment that is given to all children up to five times during their first three years of school. Think of it as checkup, designed to catch struggling readers early in their academic careers. And because it's given to every student, there should be no good reason for quiet, struggling girls to continually slip by.

Trouble is, nobody can say whether schools are using the TPRI information to get girls the help they need.

For starters, there's a big difference between identifying a struggling reader and doing something about it, said Dr. Jack Fletcher, who developed the TPRI assessment at the medical school at the University of Texas-Houston. Secondly, when districts report their TPRI data to the state, they do not disaggregate it by sex, Dr. Fletcher said, and so the TPRI's impact on girls may be impossible to track.

Until that changes, many educators say, struggling girls will remain out of sight and, sadly, out of mind.