My Girl

[Supermarket Slave Girl]

From here on in I'll refer to my daughter as little miss.

I got a not from little miss teacher today that read.

Dear SSG

I would like to get little miss tested by our school counsellor to asses her learning styles and ability. Little miss is having some difficulty with reading and retaining her sight words, testing may help to develop an individual program for her in this area. Please sign the parent consent form and feel free to come up and see me if you would like to discuss this further.

regards liittle miss teacher.

Now I do know that little miss does have problems retaining information and is sometimes incredibly hard to understand when she speaks, I've had her hearing tested and that was normal, I then took her to a speech therapist who told me she is below normal for her age (she is 7 this year). We have speech exercises which we do every night but she gets very frustrated when she can't read a word and cries and gives up while I'm there encouriging her to keep going.

I thought she may have Aspergers but I'm not sure, her father is very dyslexic and has trouble spelling even the most simplest words, he usually gets me to write out any notes or even his resume because he can't do it so I do believe little miss is dyslexic.

I'm going to see her teacher tomorrow and will mention this, hopefully they can figure out what the problem is and I will go from there.

But this does worry me, typical mum I know

[MaggieTheCat]

I'm sure that if I was going through school today, I would be diagnosed with dyslexia or something. I was a horrible, HORRIBLE speller in grade school. "The" was "teh" in my mind, "dog" was "dgo" or sometimes "god", etc. I just didn't understand spelling. My speech was apparently pretty messed up too, and I did go to speech therapy lessons, which I absolutely hated, because 1) the teacher was a bitch and 2) they took me out of normal class for it, so everyone knew I was going to some special kids' lessons and I got picked on a lot for it.

In middle school, the spelling thing clicked with me. I have no idea what happened, but it was like one day I woke up and I could spell. I was the best speller in my grade in sixth or seventh grade. My speech had naturally cleared up by then too. I had trouble pronouncing my "r" and "s" sounds, and the speech therapist teacher was very frustrated and annoyed with me in grade school because I wasn't making progress like I was "supposed" to be. But by late grade school/middle school, most of my speech problems had corrected themselves.

It probably would be a good idea to have your daughter tested for a few things if she's struggling...but hopefully she's just the type who takes her time learning stuff like this and will catch up on her own.

[Magpie]

Make sure that you are comfortable with whatever the diagnosis is. DH would have been diagnosed as ADD had his mother not been stubborn about it. He had childhood epilepsy (hence him not knowing what the teacher had said) and a severe learning disability in spelling, which led to it really looking like he wasn't trying/paying attention. His mother wasn't comfortable with this though, because he really didn't fit the profile, and his seizures were eventually discovered, because she kept pushing.

[Geek King]

Honestly, I wouldn't trust the school's diagnosis. Take Little Miss to a specialist to have her checked by a professional. When I was a kid (admittedly, a while back) the tests given by the school were basically a checklist run down by someone who had no idea how to spot things that weren't covered on the list.

[Evil Queen]

Get her vision checked.
I had the same problem and "guessed" at everything until I got glasses. Little Miss may be doing the same thing.

[DH] had childhood epilepsy

Oh, he had Petit Mals, huh? I had it too. The medication I was on (Tegritol) is what caused my short term memory lose. I'm still suffering from it 17 years later.