Encouraging article about rewiring the brains of kids with dyslexia

[Laurie4b]

http://www.newsmax.com/health/dyslexic_brains_rewired/2008/08/06/119484.html

This article is in line with other research, but was very encouraging about the effect of remediation on the brains of dyslexics. By extension, that should apply to other parts of the brain as well.

[Jodie]

Very good article! I believe it completely. My Dad and my brother are dyslexic, when we were growing up my brother had a very hard time reading and was not diagnosed with Dyslexia until he was 13. He read at an average 5 year old level. My dad thought the best way to help him was to have him read every night out loud to the whole family, we would sit in the living room and each take a turn reading a paragraph from a book. At first it was torture for him and us. It would take him 10 mn just to read one paragraph. But within a couple months he cut that time in half and a year after we started he could almost read as good as the rest of us. My dad is an avid reader and reads all the time. But when he reads out loud he has a little difficulty. But he is much better than when he was young and he attributes it to the fact that he has always kept up his reading through all these years. My brother does not read outloud anymore and regressed a little bit but he is still able read and write pretty well.

[Laurie4b]

What a great story! We might try that at our house!

[She]

Yes, Yes, Yes! Thanks for sharing this article!

My daughter had all the signs of deslexia, but was never tested. We tried all the "tricks". They helped somewhat, but what has really helped her was getting TOPGTTR. She is going into 6th grade, yet we started her back with the basic phonics sounds. We've worked on this since April, and her reading has improved by leaps and bounds. I gave her the K12 placement test for reading. She missed one more than was allowed for her age level! I was so pleased. Apparently she has improved 3 grade levels. She is reading so smoothly and never flips words around anymore.

I read all the tips in the back of the book for using it as a remedial reading program. Two things that really helped her with flipping words was to make her sloooow down and not allow her to look at the rest of the sentence. Apparently these kids have problems when they see the words too many times. If they've looked ahead in the sentence their brain tells them the've already read some of the words. Also, when they look back to where they left off, if they can find their place, they've seen the words from right to left and their brain detects the words backward, thus saw becomes was.

I'm very glad to hear about this study with the hours worked on a remedial program. We've spent so much time over the years, doing tricks and reading and rereading passages. At one point we got rid of the readers because if she was going to memorize everything she read it may as well be the Bible.

Anyway, I just wanted to testify that this is exactly what is working for us! Hope it helps someone else.

[elegantlion]

That is the same terminology I used when we repeated phonics last year. I said we were 'rewiring' his brain. We had just studied a unit on how the brain works and it was so helpful in making him receptive to remediation without feeling like he was failing somehow.