Some tips for Dyslexia

A fellow homeschool family resonantly asked for some advice on homeschooling with children with dyslexia. Here is my reply. Hope it is helpful to others as well.

As for dyslexia, here is some info that I have learned along my journey and a website with a lot of good information. If you have specific questions, feel free to send them my way too and I can share from my experience. I have two daughters (now grown) with dyslexia.

1. Both of my girls were tested when young at Pacific University in Oregon. They explained that there are different types of dyslexia - visual and language. A child can also have both. The visual can be treated with vision therapy and the language is treated with special reading/spelling programs. One of my girls did very well in their vision therapy and it did not help the other too much.

2. They will progress with education as they get older, but in the early elementary age do not expect them to read a grade level. My girls are now 21 and 19. One of them has grown out of a lot of her dyslexia and reads very well now. The other probably reads at like a 5th or 6th grade level but has been a master at learning how to accommodate for herself with video instruction, just videos or movies in general, spelling apps, audiobooks while reading along in a regular book so the mind does not stray, taking jot notes, teach the subjects based on their interests, a lot of hands-on, active education, summarizing long information text for them, etc. They are both now in college based on their program only (one Vet-Tech and the other Biblical studies for missions work); although the one that struggles more is doing college online at home so we can help her as needed.

3. As they get older and reading is getting a little better, I learned that they can comprehend much better with silent reading instead of out loud reading. Even if their silent reading is not completely accurate, they are understanding it.

4. A couple of curriculums I found that really help with dyslexia reading and spelling are Barton Reading and Spelling System (although expensive; it does work) and All About Reading and Spelling System.

5. We tried text-to-speech for writing papers, and although I have friends who loved this, we couldn't get it to work for my girls. There are also pens that will read to you now as you hover them over texts, etc. Sometimes, it helps them to listen to instrumental music when writing papers. This helps some kids, but not others.

6. For my girl who struggled the most especially, we would do oral quizzes and tests, as I felt it was not fair for her to do badly on quizzes/tests, etc when it wasn't because she did not know the curriculum, but was instead that she wasn't efficient at reading the questions and choices. Again, this works great for some, but now others.

7. Finding accommodations is a lot of trial and error and is unique to each child/person. What works for one may be different for another.

8. Here is a website with a lot of useful information. I signed up for their monthly newsletters and they have had some helpful articles throughout the years. https://www.dys-add.com/