Dot's Diary from the start

Sunday
I love a glass of orange juice, but I am not sure whether it has an allergic effect on children with ADD or ADHD. A seven-year old boy, David, started coming to me about six months ago. He had not yet started to read, but his main problem seems to be paying attention. He wanted to learn to read, but had great difficulty staying still and keeping his attention on what we were doing. He tapped on the table, looked out of the window at the slightest sound, and generally fidgeted most of the time.

After a couple of weeks I spoke to David and his mother Liz about this. She said that she had tried to stop him drinking Cola and soda drinks, chocolate, crisps and food with additives, but found it hard because he was always asking for them. I explained to Liz that he might be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder - ADD or ADHD. This condition cannot yet be cured, but diet makes quite a difference in many children who suffer from it. Liz agreed that she had been a bit defeatist about this, and promised to be strict about what she bought at the supermarket in future. I also suggested finding some treats that didn't contain sugar, colorings or additives so that David had something positive to look forward to with his new diet. He thought he would like fruit salad and home-made soup especially (but not together!).

Looking forward to seeing a calmer David the next week, I was genuinely surprised to find him equally fidgety and inattentive. "You're buzzing, aren't you!" I said, and he agreed. Whatever could it be, and how was he going to learn to read in this state? When Liz came to collect him, I said how surprised I was at his lack of improvement. Liz agreed and seemed rather irritated that my dietary suggestions had made no improvement. "Tell me exactly what you've eaten and drunk today," I said to David. "Nothing but pure food and drink", said Liz. "Before your lesson with Dot, you had a glass of pure orange juice." "Orange juice?" "Yes - no coloring, no additives, just pure juice."

And then I remembered reading how orange juice can trigger migraines in people who are susceptible to them. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Liz substituted apple juice for orange juice, and David has never looked back. At his lesson the following week he was a different person - calm and relaxed. Six months later, he can read and write and no longer needs the extra lessons from me. Nice to have a success story!

Pay attention to children's ears when they are having a difficult time focusing. They can send a vital clue when they have ingested something to which the child may have an allergy or sensitivity by becoming hot and bright red in colour. This reaction is noticable in one or both ears. You should see mine after a hot cup of Earl Grey! (DML, Canada)

Tuesday
I was visited by a mother with a new pupil today, eight-year old Jack. He hasn't been assessed yet, but he reverses some of his letters, and had to think which way round to write the 'd' when I asked him to write 'dog', so I think he may be dyslexic. When I asked Jack to write one word, he said 'Pardon?' and I asked his mother if he'd had a hearing test. Apparently not. He said that he has difficulty hearing what the teacher says, so I think there may be a problem there. We shall see. I asked his mother to arrange a thorough hearing test anyway. I guess I knew that dyslexia is often acquired though early hearing loss - a lot of ear infections, 'glue ear' and children having tubes put in their ears when they are young to try to clear the ear, but I don't really think about checking with parents to see if their children's hearing is still affected. It won't help them much if they can't hear what the teacher is saying in class. Must put that on my checklist for new pupils...

Thursday
Workmen were in today and I forgot to put away a pile of little letters and word endings on small cards. They've mostly blown out of the window, so I guess the birds will soon be reading now!

I know the feeling, Dot. I spent the day with an electrician drilling a hole through the classroom wall yesterday. Why can't they do these jobs in the vacation? (Ed, Philadelphia)

Friday
Great excitement in front of my house today! I bought a box of small garden gnomes - seven dwarfs - to hide among the plants and tubs that lead up to my front door. I often seem to be chatting to parents at the end of lessons while a bored seven-year old has to kick his heels while we chat! I thought the gnomes would give the children something to search for to pass the time. It's quite important to me to keep up a good relationship with my pupils' parents, and that five minutes at the end of each lesson can be really valuable. Anyway, the gnomes are a great success, not only with the children, but with the parents, who seem much more interested in locating and identifying each of the seven little figures than talking to me about dyslexia!

What a brilliant idea! I always feel awkward discussing children with their parent when the child is bored and wanting to go home. (Val, Sydney, Australia)

Sunday
I was trying to show little James how to count in twos to help him understand the two times table. We laid out a hundred marbles on the carpet in twos, separating them with pencils after each group of ten, and I helped him to count up in twos. Quite hard! I think I need to ask his mum to get him to do each time he gets into the car this week until he can do it smoothly. He's getting the idea, but finds the sequencing quite hard. Anyway, he really surprised me: when I asked him to count the marbles in groups of ten - ten, twenty, thirty, and so on - he did it, and then proceeded to do it backwards! I think those brain cells are beginning to link up

What did you mean by the brain cells linking up? Does anyone know anything about this business of the wiring system being messed up in dyslexic kids? (Len, Texas)

Monday
Browsing in a bookshop, I noticed an eight-year old girl engrossed in a book for about ten minutes, her mom finally dragging her off. What was the book? I went to have a look, and ... it was a Pokemon story book! I had no idea they existed. I know all about the cards and stickers, of course, and how rapturous children get about little Pikachu, but not books to read. I immediately bought the book she had been reading and placed it on my bookshelf. The first child who came through the door homed in on it like a radar beacon, and, although some of the words were a little tricky, knew all the names of the monsters and wanted to borrow it and read it that night. Brilliant! Motivation must be the solution to half of children's reading problems. Anyway, I went straight back to the bookshop for another Pokemon book, put it on my shelf, and - surprise, surprise - the next child to come through the door called out within three seconds: 'Pokemon!', and the book was out on loan. How many more books should I buy? Can I afford it? How long will the Pokemon craze last? We shall see

My son started to read independently thanks to the Pokemon books, and now reads every bedtime and has just completed the Harry Potters. Motivation was certainly the key. (George, Singapore)

You are on to something with the Pokemon books. Motivation is the key here. The material simply has to be good enough to be worth the effort of reading it. A pivotal series for our boy was Harry Potter. I read book one and two to him, but was apparently too slow for his liking by book three, so he took matters into his own hands and read both three and four completely on his own.(He even found the now famous editorial error in book four - we paid no attention!). The birth of recreational reading for a kid that no one would have predicted him to be. (DML, Canada)

It's great to hear of someone else making use of the Pokemon craze. We've got the monsters all round our room, and the children seem to be able to read every one of their names, as well as telling me which monster evolves into which. If I ask them to write a story about one of the monsters, they go straight into it with such enthusiasm. Thank goodness for Pokemon, I say! (Jay, London.)

Hurrah for Pokemon! (Lucky Lu, New York)

Go away, Pokemon. Children should be reading some proper books - Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe - not vacuous stories of cartoon figures. Ban them! (George, Singapore)

Dyslexia Parents Resource - Books

Wednesday
Alan, my 15-year old and oldest pupil, came in to today looking very sorry for himself. The reason? He's got to give a talk in front of the whole class. He's dreading it. I tried to give him a few ideas of more things to say, but with little effect. He's not strong on eye contact yet, and is really frightened that people will laugh at him. One of the things about my job is the lack of contact with the class teachers. I feel really powerless to help. Doesn't somebody at the school know that he needs special consideration because of his special needs? He's dyspraxic and has all the difficulties associated with dyslexia. Couldn't someone arrange for him to record his talk on a tape if it really has to be done? Sometimes I feel we're living in the Middle Ages still in some classrooms

That's all very well, Dot, but when am I going to find time to help someone like Alan? I have a full timetable, meetings, sports, and I spend half my evenings marking children's work. If the resources are not provided, then children like him will suffer, I'm sorry to say. (Ken, Illinois)

Alan's fear of being laughed at whilst having to give a talk, is exactly what my boyfriend had to endure as a child. Now 45 years old he still remembers the shame, the anguish, the pain of the humiliation. He was bashed by his fellow male students, told to wear a dunce's hat, made to be a fool. All because his brain could not make any sense of the words. I have a child with ADD which is very trying to him and he suffers similarly as does my boyfriend. My boyfriend still to this day cries at the lack of understanding he had as a child. It breaks my heart to see this, but reminds me that after 40 odd years my son has to endure the same lack of understanding. We really haven't come far as a society, have we? (Sympathetic grilfriend, Australia))

Friday
The children who come to me respond so positively to praise. I try my best to give them colored stars for their work, ten our of ten (after they have corrected any errors), etc., and I have a certificate for 'Good Progress' which I give them each term. It means so much to them, and it's lovely to see them proudly showing it to their mom and taking it home to hang up on the kitchen wall. I think for most of them it's the only certificate they ever get. I suspect that these children rarely if ever get any good grades for their normal work in class, and they must notice when other people are getting higher marks that they are all the time. I think that confidence-building is so important for them. The fact is that they are experiencing failure very frequently in school, and they are going to get the message that they are stupid or dumb unless we do something about it.

You're so right, Dot! I'm always saying to the other teachers that our dyslexic kids need praise in class. Just one sentence can mean so much to them. (K.K., Seattle, USA). Dyslexia Parents Resourc

Tuesday
I was really struck by one child's difficulties with sequencing today. Tom is eight, and has been having great trouble with math/s, as well as the usual dyslexic difficulties with reading and spelling. I had discovered that he cannot yet count to 100, and have been getting his parents to see that he practices each time he gets in the car to go to school. Today he made it all the way up to 100, and it was lovely to see the satisfied expression on his face. He could also count in steps of ten, as well as in steps of five, so he was pretty proud! I gave him a gold star, and made a lot of this when he was picked up by his dad. He's going on vacation for a couple of weeks, and I've shown his dad exactly how to lay out stones on the beach in pairs so that Tom can learn to count to 100 in steps of two. I hope I don't spoil his vacation, but I just feel that once he's mastered these basics of number work, he's going to find the math/s work so much easier. He may even start to enjoy being in class again. However, we've also got a lot of work to do on the phonics . . .

Wednesday
It must be my week for sequencing! Another boy, Ed, who has been coming to me for over a year now has made a real breakthrough. When he first came to me at age 7, he could not count to 20. I had him count the stairs in my (rather tall) house - there are 29. It took him a long, long time to count to 100, but he made it in the end. Anyway, today, about a year later, I asked him to count in tens - 10, 20, 30, and so on. Imagine my amazement when he did he wanted to count to a thousand. Well, I just sat there and let him do it, all the way to 1090. I was so amazed. it strikes me that when you give those brain cells a chance, they can really link up and do their job!

Sunday
Enjoyed a couple of weeks up the coast. A bit misty, but just what I needed!

Monday
Started wading through the mountain of mail at home. I sometimes review books for an educational magazine, which is really interesting and keeps me up to date. But I must complain about the language in which some of the psychology books are written. Do these people speak English? Or are they trying to boost their ego and appear erudite by using a lot of specialist words that the rest of us won't understand. Listen to this quote:

'The relation between functional lateralization as indexed by pegboard scores and cortical lateralization as indexed by BEAD activity is of both methodological and theoretical significance.'

I'm afraid it hurts my little brain to try to work out what this gobbledygook means! This quote is from a book on dyslexia which you will find in any university bookshop. I won't name and shame the author, but perhaps, when writing her next book, she might pause to remember that those of us who are actually working with dyslexic children need to be able to read the books as well as you lot! Speak in English, please!

Wednesday
I was a little shocked and surprised to hear what had happened to Helen - aged nine - at school. Her mother had requested an assessment because of the struggle Helen was having with spelling, and, to a lesser extent, reading. Anyway, after months of delays, Helen was eventually seen by the psychologist, with mother waiting outside the room. Mother brought a book to read during what she expected to be quite a long wait. Imagine her amazement when, ten minutes later, the psychologist came out of the room with Helen, saying that there was nothing serious to worry about. He had given her a quick intelligence test and listened to her reading. He would have a word with Helen's teacher, and would see that the school kept an eye on her. Helen was sent back to class, and her mother went home feeling utterly let down. Since then she has received no letter, phone call, or any kind of explanation from the school, and Helen is experiencing such severe difficulties with her work that she is now refusing to go to school. How can anyone possibly assess a child in such a short time? It makes me really angry to see children's genuine difficulties being treated in such an off-hand manner. I hope this is the exception rather than the rule.
If Helen's mother lives in the United States, there are laws and regulations that should help.
The IDEA law provides that children's parents be permitted not only to request testing (always do it in writing!)
Once testing is done, parent should request (again, in writing) that school provide details of WHAT tests were used, what the DATA are, and ask that those results be put in writing.
If the school refuses, she should ask them to provide what is called "Prior Written Notice" which forces them to defend their malpractice. (See websites for Wrightslaw.com and www.reedmartin.com for specific legal guidelines and resources on how to seek and obtain appropriate diagnosis and help.
If the parents are not satisfied with the school's testing results, and certainly Helen's mother should NOT be, they may request an Independent Educational Evaluation -- at the school's expense.
At that point, Helen's mother should be asking around, using the internet to fin! ding a really superior location for comprehensive testing, and report the results back to the school.
I hope this helps. Schools tend to get away with "murder" (of a child's hope and future) because parents are not completely aware of the protections that our legal system has put into place for them. Best wishes! (Retired LD teacher, US)

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Dot's Diary from the start