So, what now?

Edit: Apparently, the easiest, low impact way to check for dyslexia is an eye exam. You can ask your optometrist to screen for dyslexia. It's as simple as checking out a different chart with your eye exam. So we'll be doing that soon. In the meantime, Dante has just started a phonics intensive reading group, so we'll see how that goes.

Just got back from a parent/teacher meeting for Dante. It was the usual list of things that make Dante who he is--very social, talks nonstop, has organizational trouble. And that he switches letters around sometimes. And that he sometimes writes his numbers completely backward. 531 becomes 135. Behind the teacher on a section of the chalkboard were the post-it notes the kids had filled out with their predictions on the outcome of the football game this Saturday. The teacher has them all write down their predictions, and then the next Monday, the whole class checks to see who came closest. They love this activity. My son had "WVU: 2P E. Carolina: 13". He had WVU for 29 points. But his 9s sometimes come out like P's.

He's always flipped his letters--especially p, q, b, and d and sometimes g. I made a visual drawing when he was young of the word "bed" to help him figure out which way the b and the d go. I made it look like a real bed made out of the letters, and he doesn't flip them around that much anymore, but it still happens. He reads ok sometimes--hell, he won a medal for best third grade reader last year--but he doesn't seem to be very fluent with reading--mostly seems to be a phonics problem. He got the medal for going through books and testing on comprehension. So he knows what's going on. But if it were a read-aloud contest, he'd be wa-ay behind. It's so weird, because we have books in the house, and he reads of his own free will every single day--mostly Calvin & Hobbes. He can do phonics worksheets, but has an absolute bitch of a time with spelling words. If you give his words out loud to him, he claps his hands over his eyes, like the rest of the room is screwing with his visual picture of the word in his head. He has a really hard time spelling it out loud, but he does better when he writes it down.

Speaking of his writing, he often crams his letters and words alltogetherlikethiswithnexttonospacebetweenthem. His letters can be all different sizes. He doesn't always stay on the line--it looks like a struggle for him. I thought it was because he was a) a boy b) in a hurry and c) didn't give a crap about writing. Now I wonder if it's something else. It's true that he rushes things. He has a hard time sitting in one place for long, as anyone who has met him can attest to. Hell, he has a hard time staying motionless for more than five seconds.

When he was little, I wondered if he was dyslexic. Now I wonder if he's both mildly dyslexic and dysgraphic.

I know he's not ADHD, because he can concentrate on projects for a long time, if he's interested. But if they involve words, they're always creatively spelled. Sometimes he doesn't even spell the same word the same way in the next sentence. The teacher, whom I really like, hesitantly suggested that we get him tested. I think I will. He wants to switch Dante into some other reading group and do some other things with him first, which I was happy he didn't just jump into the labelling frenzy that most grade school teachers like to do. But just the same, this is something I've been noticing, and I think I'll check into getting him tested. It's not like he screws up every other word. But sometimes he does. It would certainly explain why he seems to forget his papers, school bag, planner, something all the time. Now, I'm not panicking and misattributing regular boy stuff to a disorder--I don't think. All the other little boys he knows lose things. He loses things a lot more regularly than other little boys. He also continually switches his lunch number. When he goes through the lunch line, his number is (for sake of argument) 1234. Every day he'll say 1324, or 2134. He switches one of the numbers. The lunch lady is getting huffy with him and threatening to not give him his lunch if he can't remember his number. Mommy is about to take her head off. Why in the hell do adults threaten kids' basic sense of security to get them to do little things? I'll never understand that.

Dyslexia is inherited in 80% of cases. Who the hell has it on either side of his family? Nobody has ever talked about anyone else having the same kinds of problems. But it would certainly explain why his dad had so much trouble in school, even through college. I think my dad had it. They never diagnosed that kind of thing when he was in school in the fifties, though. My sister and I are fine. Dads have a 20% chance of passing it on to daughters. Dads have a 40% chance of passing it on to sons. Moms have a 35% chance of passing it to a son, only 7% if the mother isn't dyslexic herself. Maybe he was 47% more likely to get it??

At any rate, I don't know what to do now. Which is ironically sad, considering that in my line of work, I sometimes encounter dyslexic adults.

I have no idea what to do at this moment.

-- Virgil