Strengths

So I am not writing today about Tom Cruise strengths!  I thought we would focus on the strengths of people with dyslexia.  It's that time of year to be cheery and bright.  Many people with dyslexia have so many strengths, in fact, many of them can hide their reading struggles because they are so skilled and smart.  I wanted to include a list of strengths

• artistic skills
• athletic ability
• people skills
• musical ability
• mechanical skills
• 3-D visual-spatial skills
• vivid imagination
• intuition
• creative and curious
• global thinker

Now your job is to get on google or bing or whatever search engine you prefer, and look up famous people with dyslexia.  The lists will blow your mind.  That is where Tom comes in, you see he has dyslexia!
Have a merry holiday season.

Dyslexia....in your family tree?

Here is a staggering fact from the book Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz:

 "Between one-quarter and one-half  of the children born to a dyslexic parents will also be dyslexic."

You could say that dyslexics keep it in the family.
The first place to look when trying to decide if one of your children have dyslexia is your own family tree.  Do you or your spouse struggle with reading?  How about grandparents or siblings?
Dyslexia doesn't go away in adults so the adult in your family will still have dyslexia.  Look for these things to decide if dyslexia runs in your family.   

• Start by asking about the ease with which the adult learned to read.  If the adult has dyslexia, then learning to read would not have been easy.
• Their phonological weakness is still with them, so they will be readers but usually slow and laborious.
• They probably hate to read out loud for others, and find themselves making mistakes when they do read out loud in a group.
• There comprehension of what they read is not effected at all by their slow reading.  Usually comprehension is a strengths.   

Support Group

Although, I don't have any kids old enough to read I do know how difficult it is to find help for your child that struggles with dyslexia. I have a good friend, whose daughter has dyslexia, and I saw her look for answers on-line, at the local university, with the schools, and come up empty handed. Her search for help was the reason I decided to start tutoring students with dyslexia.  How frustrating to not know where to turn for help. I wanted to post today another place to find answers....a parent support group. Unfortunately, the group doesn't meet here in Cache Valley.

Here are the details:

Dyslexia Center of Utah

4^th Wednesday of each month

At the South Jordan Library

website: www.dyslexiacenterofutah.org

Early Clues to Children with Dyslexia

I am reading a book by Sally Shaywitz called Overcoming Dyslexia.  One of the things I wanted to share from this book was the earliest clues that your child might be dyslexic.
Listening is key!
Clues that your child might have problems with their phonologic skills come through listening to your child.
Here is a list of things to listen for:
-Is there a delay is speech? Did your child not start talking until they were a year and a half? two years old?  This could be a sign of future reading problems.
-Pronunciation problems, they leave off the first sound of a word (nana for banana), they mix up sounds in a word (aminal for animal).  Pay attention to these pronunciation problems when the child is five or six, because they should be able to say most words correctly.
-Difficult time rhyming, most four and five year old are happy to find a word that rhymes with ball...children with dyslexia struggle identify words that rhyme.
-Hard time coming up with words they want to tell you about.  They might know the word jungle, but when they are telling you about their picture of the monkey in the jungle...they just can't remember the word jungle.  As children become older they learn to avoid using the words that don't come to their minds quickly.
-Probably the easiest thing to identify in young children is difficultly in learning the names and sounds of the letters.  Most preschoolers will master this before entering kindergarten, but a child with potential dyslexia will have a hard time learning to associate the shape, name, and sound of letters.

Parents are most keyed into their children.  For this reason, a parent is probably going to be the first one to observe that their child might be dyslexic.  Hopefully this helps you parents that are wondering what signs you should be looking for in your child. 

How this all started

I recently told my husband that I was retiring at the age of 32.  He chuckled, but I thought it was a great thing to do since I was expecting our first baby.  Quitting teaching was bitter sweet.  Staying home with my baby girl has been a wonderful, but I miss teaching school.  The thing I miss the most is helping kids that struggle to learn.  There is nothing better then seeing a student that is lagging behind catch up to the rest of his class.  My desire to continue to help students that struggle has made me decide to try something new...I am going to be a tutor for students with dyslexia.  I've taught a lot of students over the last eight years that have dyslexia, and I know how challenging school and life in general can be for them.  So here is my blog to share with you about what I learn about dyslexia as I start this new endeavor.  I also hope that this can be a place for parents of students with dyslexia to connect with each other and with me.