Dyslexia rules KO!

DYSLEXIA rules KO - a joke that has stood the test of time. But for those who carry the burden it's not funny.

Last week Leigh businesswoman Shirley Longley and mum of a statemented eight-year-old, told of how she spotted her son Tom's condition and how she is now campaigning for a specialist centre to be used by Leigh schools.

This would help to screen pupils at five, and those found to be dyslexic would be taught on a one-to-one basis using sympathetic multi-sensory methods so that they don't fall behind their peer group or perform for any length of time below their real ability level giving them all the necessary skills they will need by the time they reach secondary school.

This week we look at the signs and where help can be sought.

Not every sign or symptom of the dyslexic profile presents itself in each dyslexic person, although there is usually a sufficient cluster of these signs to lead to a diagnosis.

Dyslexia tends to run in families, so there may be a history of it.

Asking parents, however, may not be enough as often a parent would not have recognised it when they were at school. Many only realise the condition once their children are diagnosed.

What to look out for before school:

History of slow speech development

Difficulty learning nursery rhymes

Phonological difficulty with the selection of the odd one out eg cat, mat, pig, fat

Slow in name finding

Some enjoy being read to, but show no interest in letters or words

Often accused of not listening or not paying attention

Poor understanding of prepositions

Difficulty with two or more instructions at once

Difficulty keeping simple rhythm

May not crawl - but walks early

Persistent difficulty in dressing

Difficulty with shoe laces, buttons, clothes the right way round

Difficulty with catching, kicking or throwing a ball

Difficulty with hopping or skipping

Excessive tripping, bumping into things and falling over things

Obvious good and bad days for no apparent reason.

Some of the signs at primary school:

Poor personal organisation, time keeping and awareness

Difficulty in remembering day of week, birth date etc, learning to tell the time, remembering anything in sequential order - alphabet, tables, foreign languages

Inability to b lend letters together

Hesistant and laboured reading, making anagrams of words eg tried for tired

Confusion between left and right, poor handwriting with reversals and badly formed letters

Losing the point of the story being written or read

Messy work with crossings out and words tried several times wippe, wype, wiep and confusion with letters which look similar b/d, p/g, p/q

Confusion with number order and symbols

Seems to dream, easily distracted

Limited understanding of non-verbal communication

May become class clown, disruptive or withdrawn and employs work avoidance tactics

Rests head on desk or right over to one side when colouring or writing

Excessive tiredness due to the amount of concentration and effort required.

That's a lot to go on and early detection is most important.

Where can you seek help?

During regular pre-school development checks, a doctor or health visitor may see children with an uneven developmental profile which shows they may require attention from either

a - a speech or language therapist and/or

b - an occupational therapist to look at fine motor co-ordination problems and/or

c - a paedriatic physiotherapist for gross problems.

It would be helpful if information from all these sources, plus parents' comments and pre-school educators' observations, could be made avilable to the headteacher when the child enters his or her first school

In too many cases it can take several years for a child to be identified as having specific learning difficulty or dyslexia,

By that time failure and the consequent loss of self-esteem may well have aleady led to behavioural problems.

The valuable observations and record keeping of parents and of the early years in education could prevent this sad situation arising.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.