If your child is struggling with reading, and perhaps you're beginning to wonder if they are dyslexic, it is important to act fast. There is no biologically critical period for the learning of literacy as it is a man-made, cultural activity, but there is a window of opportunity between the ages of about 4-7 when children pick up the skills most easily and quickly. The window never closes but the older the child the more difficult it will be to remedy any deficiency, eliminate the guessing habit, replace unhelpful strategies and prevent a general apathy for education and reading. The key to success with reading difficulties is early and appropriate intervention, though PREVENTION is preferable -see Ruth Miskin's advice, below.

Most children start school enthusiastically, bright, keen and eager to learn but, typically, those who are failing to learn to read will become deeply unhappy after only a year or so and may suffer from frequent 'tummy aches' or other stress symptoms. Some children become rebellious and disruptive as an outward show of distress, maybe even receiving the 'ADHD' label, whilst others become unnaturally quiet and subdued and do their best to avoid all attention; the dreamers at the back of the class.

''The signs are there for mums and dads who care to look out for them. If you have a child who brings books home but doesn’t want to read them; a child who is suddenly either too quiet or too aggressive at school; a child who has clearly memorised her early books or who is being described as “possibly dyslexic” or “plateauing” by her teachers — be alert to the possibility that, no matter how old, she may never have learnt to read properly.'' (Miskin.Sunday Times 26/03/06)

'The role of the Senco, the special needs coordinator, is crucial in most schools. The Senco leads on special needs teaching, attends case conferences, liaises with children's services. Yet there's no qualification for the job; Sencos can be appointed without any specific training. How many parents realise that the professional advising them about their child's dyslexia...may know less about the condition than they do?' (Guardian Education 8/03/05)

Do NOT accept any of the following excuses for your child's difficulties:
- Your child is lazy / isn't trying / doesn't pay attention/ needs to concentrate/ watches too much television
- S/he is overly anxious due to the pressure of your unrealistic expectations
- S/he hasn't memorised the list of essential sight words yet
- Boys are often slow learning to read
- His/her brain is wired differently from other children
- S/he's got an auditory/phonological processing problem
- His/her learning style doesn't suit phonics
- S/he's still at the whole word / logographic stage
- Don't worry, s/he will catch up -s/he's just a bit slow developmentally
- S/he's not academic
- It's because s/he's left handed
- It's because his/her diet is deficient in essential fatty acids
- You haven't read to him/her enough at home
- S/he's inherited your dyslexia genes
- It's because English is his/her second language...

Note that all these excuses place the source of the problem with either the child or their parent, never with the teaching, yet we know that, 'If a child can speak in whole sentences and participate in everyday conversation, the child has adequate prerequisites to be taught how to read' (Schutz)

Dr. Galen Alessi, Professor of Psychology at Western Michigan University, conducted a fascinating study on school psychologists. He asked 50 school psychologists to list the causes of the learning difficulties of about 5000 students. According to the psychologists, zero percent of the 5000 students’ problems were the result of bad teaching, while 100% were the fault of the students: www.societyforqualityeducation.org/newsletter/archives/blame.pdf

You are your child's best, sometimes only advocate. If your child is still at the primary stage, approach your child's school and find out what they are using (or have used) to teach your child to read. Until recently, the programmes provided by the DCSF (NLS, PiPs and Playing with Sounds) were a damaging mixture of methods, but these have now been withdrawn and replaced by the DCSF programme 'Letters and Sounds' (May 2007); a very basic, synthetic phonics programme in line with the Rose Report recommendations. N.B. Its use is not mandatory; schools are free to use a commercial, high quality phonics programme with their beginning readers (L&S FAQ) Unfortunately, even if your child's school is now using Letters and Sounds, Jolly Phonics or another genuine, synthetic phonic programme, there is no guarantee that their teachers know how to teach it properly.

Many teachers, due to poor training, a disinclination to change their ways or, possibly, an ideologically-based aversion to the explicit and discrete teaching of phonics, use synthetic phonic programmes incorrectly; they'll still expect your child to learn the high frequency words (HFWs) as whole units, under-emphasize teaching the skills of sounding out and blending and use non-decodable books for early reading practice. If your child is just a 'beginning reader' yet brings home colour-banded books with predictable/repetitive text to read, such as ORT's Biff and Chip, then s/he is still being taught with a 'mixture of methods'; beginner readers have no choice but to use whole language guessing and memorising strategies in order to 'read' this type of book. Bonnie Macmillan calls it dysdidaxia -a problem with the teaching (Macmillan p134). But, 'Don’t shoot the teacher. Teachers are mis-trained, mis-advised, and burdened with pointless paperwork as never before' (Burkard)

An additional problem, in some schools, is their ill-advised use of a government promoted and funded, whole language intervention programme, Reading Recovery (RR), or one of its many clones -see Room 101, despite the Rose Review's recommendation that additional support should be fully compatible with mainstream (synthetic phonics) practice. Shockingly, RR teachers are actually trained to use the hugely damaging, multi-cueing strategies 1-to-1 with those children in Y1 who are slowest to develop confident reading skills. Parents will be told that 'phonics hasn't worked' (Douetil. Independent 30/10/08) for their child, and they now need intensive teaching using mixed methods in the context of 'real books', see- What's wrong with Reading Recovery -scroll down. A school's willingness to employ a Reading Recovery teacher (or use one of the RR-clone, intervention programmes) reflects extremely negatively on the quality of literacy teaching throughout the school.

Parents will find the following document useful for evaluating their school's 'phonics' programme:
www.syntheticphonics.com/pdf%20files/Criteria%20for%20evaluating%20a%20phonics%20programme.pdf

For a multitude of reasons a child can have difficulties learning to read even though the school is using a genuine synthetic programme first, fast and exclusively. It is absolutely essential that the school implements some one-to-one tutoring immediately it is noticed that the child is failing to keep up with his/her classroom companions and that the tutor uses MORE of the SAME synthetic phonics programme, NOT something DIFFERENT; PREVENTION rather than intervention.

Ruth Miskin, past-head teacher and early reading expert, explains, ''I think there will always be a small group of children who will need one-to-one tutoring - even with the best synthetic programmes, best training and best implementation; there are some children who have particular needs that cannot be met in a group - and not just SEN children. We tutored some children with SEN at my old school forever until they could read well. We also tutored children with behaviour problems, long term absentees, new arrivals just to mention a few. These children were always given more of the same and not something different. No amount of group teaching helps a child once they fall behind their peers - though you can sometimes teach in pairs if they are at the same level. If we want to be truly inclusive schools must plan for these children as a matter of course and not just hope for the best. Synthetic phonics is not a simple panacea - it takes determination to get every child reading. As soon as a child fails to learn the first letter on the first day - quick tutoring should take place''.

If parents want their child tested for 'dyslexia' (BUT-see below) they can write to their Local Education Authority (LEA) themselves and request a free, statutory assessment. To avoid delay, parents can arrange for their child to see an independent, educational psychologist. They charge a hefty, professional fee for their services and the results will not necessarily be recognised by the LEA. In addition, it appears that many educational psychologists, including some employed by LEAs, still subscribe to the belief that many children are simply incapable of learning to read with phonics due to their 'phonological processing' difficulties. They usually recommend that these children carry on learning words by sight to fit in with their 'visual learning style', are given coping strategies and, when older, various accommodations in exams.

The problem with assessment for dyslexia is that research has cast serious doubt on the validity of the various diagnostic procedures. The Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is a popular, professional assessment tool. Typically, a child tested for 'dyslexia' will achieve very uneven scores on the subtests of the WISC. This is known as an 'ACID profile' as the low scores are usually in the areas of Arithmetic, Coding, Information and Digit Span. The 'ACID' profile has little predictive value; many good readers have an ACID profile (Mortimore p54) A professional assessment will include an intelligence test despite the fact that using IQ tests as an integral part of diagnosing dyslexia has no real research base. 'The diagnosis for many years was based on these assumptions: if a child has a serious reading problem, but normal or above normal intelligence, the child must have a special type of reading disability- 'dyslexia'. Children with low reading scores and low intelligence are supposed to read badly because they have low intelligence.' (D. McGuinness WCCR p134)

Nowadays, the way most educational psychologists and researchers get around the irksome 'diagnosis problem' is by saying that dyslexia is not a discrete, "all or nothing" phenomenon, something one either has or doesn't have; diagnosis, they will tell you, is based on the level of reading difficulty a person has, measured along a continuum from mild through to severe. This is the bogus 'Bell Curve' diagnosis, where struggling readers found at some arbitrary point, (say, the lowest 10%) on the normal distribution curve for reading ability may, if the professional doing the assessing deems it to be useful, be given the dyslexia label. ''Literacy difficulties exist on a continuum. There is no clear or absolute cut off point where a child can be said to have dyslexia...(W)hether or not to describe a child’s literacy difficulties as dyslexia will be a matter for professional judgement'' (Devon LEA Dyslexia Guidance) or 'an intuitive clinical impression' (Prof. Frith quoted in Miles. p171) Kerr, rightly describes this as 'throwing in the sponge' (Kerr p98) and goes on to say, ''(I)t is not legitimate to claim that simply because they all find themselves in this bottom 10% they must all share any particular characteristic, let alone all suffer from the same syndrome, without further evidence that this is so. We have no evidence as to why these poor readers are in this group...All we can properly say from contemplation of the bell curve is that they all seem to be poor readers. It is improper to claim more than this on this evidence – especially to claim that membership of the poor readers group per se indicates possession of a neurological deficit – indicates that all these people suffer from dyslexia'' (Kerr p99)

The second principle used by 'educated professionals' to identify dyslexia (used alongside the Bell Curve diagnosis) is whether the student's problem 'is severe and persistent despite appropriate learning opportunities' (British Psychological Society, 1999) What precisely constitutes 'appropriate learning opportunities' or 'quality instruction' (Reid Lyon) is not stated. It relies solely on the judgement (personal opinion) of the professional involved.

After criticism of her comments on 'The Dyslexia Myth' programme, Professor Snowling declared that '(D)yslexia can be readily identified by educated professionals'. Presumably, being aware that there is no way this can be done legitimately when there is no operational definition, she added, 'It is no longer relevant to ask ‘who is dyslexic and who is not' (www.myomancy.com/2005/09/response_to_the) Professors Stanovich and Elliott are more honest; 'The underlying difficulty appears to be the same, the way these children respond to treatment appears to be the same, there appears to be no justification whatsoever for going in and trying to carve out a special group of poor readers. This is what 15 years of research, all over the world has shown  can’t be justified on a scientific or empirical basis (Stanovich in Mills. The Dyslexia Myth) 'After three decades as an educationalist, first as a teacher of children with learning difficulties, then as an educational psychologist and, latterly, as an academic who has reviewed the educational literature, I have little confidence in myself (or others') ability to offer a diagnosis of dyslexia.' (Elliott. TES)

''The power of the label is rooted in:
a) our natural desire to have a diagnostic term for our difficulties
b) its ability to foster a more positive conception of self
c) its leverage with teachers and the gatekeepers to resources''(Prof. Elliott ppt)

Parents need to ask themselves if it really is a good idea to spend a great deal of time, effort, emotion and usually money, to get their child professionally labeled as 'dyslexic' when there is no genuine science behind the diagnosis. More importantly, obtaining the label certainly does not guarantee that your child will, as a consequence, receive expert 'in school' tuition with an evidence-based intervention programme to remediate his/her reading difficulties.

Possession of the label can make parents more vulnerable to the purveyors of snake oil cures: '(W)hen a child has problems, parents often feel guilty, and they can to some extent assuage that guilt by doing something. So alternative interventions are especially likely to be taken up in situations where the mainstream options are seen as ineffective and parents feel powerless to make a difference (Prof. Bishop. BDA 2008 ppt) And once they've gone to all the trouble of obtaining the label parents and students may be very reluctant to discard it, even if new information comes along which might make them question its legitimacy and usefulness: 'There’s a psychological phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance which is the tendency to filter out information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs. In the context of intervention, it is uncomfortable to conclude that one put in a lot of time and money into a treatment that has not worked. There is likely, therefore, to be a cognitive bias to paint as bright a picture as possible. This seems supported by studies that find a mismatch between people’s perceptions of efficacy and objective evidence.'' (Prof Bishop.BDA 2008. ppt)

Don't expect a 'Dyslexia Friendly' school to provide anything more than various accommodations (adjustments to the learning environment) to aid your child with his/her reading difficulties. If a school says it can provide remedial tuition, parents should ask for details so they can check the CONTENT (see What Not to do) and the TIME FRAME (15-25 hours one-to-one is usually all that is necessary) of the remedial programme themselves, carefully.

Children do some, or all, of the following as a result of flawed, insufficient or absent instruction NOT because they are 'dyslexic':
- Use alphabet letter names.
- Add or miss out sounds in words.
- Change unknown words to familiar words.
- Say the first sound/s and guess the rest
- Mix sounds around in words eg. 'girl' as 'grill'.
- Use the pictures or context to help with guessing words.
- Continue to be confused by the shapes and sounds of letters eg. b/d e/i
- Reverse words eg. saw/was pit/tip.

You may be able to remediate your child's literacy problems yourself if your child is in the first years of primary education and their reading difficulties aren't too serious.To fix-it-yourself: first, use the free tests in Resources 2 to assess your child's reading, spelling and alphabet code knowledge and then select an suitable programme from those listed here. If the task seems overwhelming then a sympathetic, remedial-reading tutor may be the answer, see- Choosing a remedial tutor

See 'Teenage Dyslexics' if your child is at the secondary stage.

http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2008/12/diagnosis-diagnosed-by-galen-alessi.html Diagnosis diagnosed.

www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall04/latebloomers.htm Waiting Rarely Works.

www.ednews.org/articles/2480/1/Miscue-Analysis-A-Critque/Page1.html Miscue Analysis -a critique.

www.donpotter.net/PDF/Solomon%20or%20Salami.pdf Solomon or Salami?

www.rrf.org.uk/print.php?n_ID=41&n_issueNumber=46 Special need or Can't Read? This is a precis of Dr. John Marks' paper 'What are Special Educational Needs?' where he puts forward the hypothesis that the main problem with the 20% of children with unstatemented SEN may be that they have not been properly taught, (and in particular not been properly taught how to read) in their early years at school.

Link to The Options/Choosing a tutor

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