A talk to the mother of a dyslexic child
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The family I (Torjus) stayed with in Witney had 5 children. Their youngest son is twelve and suffers from dyslexia. We'll call him "Simon" through this text. The idea struck me that it would be very interesting to have a talk to his mother and get her view on the treatment and backup he’d received through the years. Also, we asked the staff at the schools we visited on what they offered their children with learning difficulties. |
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When this boy was around seven she could see him having problems. He was misreading a lot, and he had problems organising thoughts. She took it up with his teacher, but was just sent further through the system. At last she got to talk with the headmaster, who took a surprising stand on the condition of dyslexia. He in fact denied that there was anything called dyslexia at all. He though it only had to do with lack of intelligence. "There’s nothing you can do about it," he said. Not surprisingly, she was shocked by what she heard. So for the next two years she fought to convince the school that her son was suffering from dyslexia. After two years, a new teacher started in the school, and she was appalled when hearing the story. She started the process of making the school aware of this problem some students had, and at the same time she had lessons with Simon on her spare time. He was already 9 years old now, and it was about time he got some proper aid. After a while she received funds to start a program for the children in this school with learning difficulties. Simon is now reading novels and he has improved his reading a great deal the last 2-3 years. On our schools visits we were of course very interested in this topic. How early did they take notice of children with disabilities? What supportive programmes were available? On the Primary School visits they could tell us that these children were usually noticed at the age of 6-7. Then special logical tests were conducted to determine if the child really was dyslexic. If there were any problems they were sometimes taken out of class. The schools had special trained teachers for this purpose. In secondary schools these children were followed further. The schools were very optimistic and improvement with these children was very important to them. We got the impression that these children were taken good care of, but unfortunately it still happens that some are being left out because they fail to be recognised as dyslexic. |
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