Sunday, March 15, 2009

On Dyslexia Testing

Do you think that your child has dyslexia? Do you know that your child has dyslexia but you feel that you need a doctor's professional, medical assessment? Indeed, there is a lot of attention given to testing for dyslexia -- commercials, posters in schools, and pressure from friends. However, most of the testing out there is unnecessary, incredibly expensive, and utterly unhelpful. The child sits through a battery of tests, the parents dish out money they probably don't have, and they have confirmation of what they knew from the beginning: their child has a problem with reading and/or spelling.

Of course, it must be stated that there are some benefits of having the "official diagnosis" of "dyslexia" that must be stated. If the child is in a school system, especially during high school or college, with teachers who are not immediately amenable to making accommodations (such as increased testing time, having a test read to them, etc.), the diagnosis can tie the hands of the school under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, there are some psychological benefits of having a diagnosed label -- the child and parents may be able to place less blame on themselves for the child's inability to read and spell like other kids and instead "blame" it on the dyslexia. Whereas the label shouldn't be used as a "crutch," this can alleviate some anxiety and allow the parents and child to feel better about the problems and move forward with finding solutions.

What does AVKO say about dyslexia? AVKO believes that dyslexia is a rather catch-all diagnosis that ultimately is used to deflect the blame for a child's reading and spelling problems away from the teachers and educational institution and instead place it on the student. With proper teaching techniques, such as multi-sensory methods like Orton-Gillingham (on which AVKO's methods are largely based), students can overcome the "problems" associated with dyslexia.

For more information on dyslexia, including scientific and medical definitions translated into plain English, please see our "What is Dyslexia?" section of the website.

3 comments:

  1. I would love to be a guest blogger.

    -Mary @Raising 4 Godly Men

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great job for publishing such a beneficial web site. Your web log isn’t only useful but it is additionally really creative too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It’s a good idea to use multi-sensory methods like Orton-Gillingham under the supervision of an expert psychologist for Dyslexia Testing.

    ReplyDelete