Falling Out With
 The School

  Dyslexia Parents Resource

This year we found out that our 8-year old daughter Jennifer is dyslexic.  It took a while to realise this because she does not really fit the mould.  It turns out that there is no ‘mould’ but we did not understand that when our daughter was being told by the teachers at her private school, that she needed to ‘apply herself’ or when we were told that she simply ‘could not be bothered’ with her written work in class.

We knew that dyslexia was a common condition unrelated to intelligence.  But when we started to question why our daughter seemed to struggle so much in her written work, all the websites we looked at seemed to emphasise poor reading skills as the prevailing symptom, which did not fit our child.  Jennifer reads more than two years ahead of her chronological age.  In the early years at school she scored high and even off the scale in standardised, independent tests (in retrospect this was probably because the questions were in multiple choice format).  She is also funny and articulate; skills she used to consummate effect to dazzle and distract when she was floundering.  Even when the dyslexia really started to ‘kick in,’ and our daughter was writing almost nothing or complete gibberish in class, she never fell below average in her attainment levels as assessed by the tests. 

You can therefore imagine the ‘rolled eyes’ we encountered, when we first asked Jennifer’s school whether it troubled them at all, that a child they themselves described as ‘talented and gifted’ struggled to copy a simple sentence from the blackboard.  Towards the end of her time at the school, Jennifer’s teacher made no secret of her view that any issues our daughter had were our fault for making her ‘self conscious.’  Underlying all of this was their barely concealed view, that we were simply ‘pushy’ parents.

Our daughter’s inability to string a sentence together on paper, continued over a period of four years (Nursery to Grade 2). In the early days, we were baffled by Jennifer’s inability to carry out apparently simple tasks at school, such as putting pictures into a sequence.   Individual teachers were helpful and sympathetic.  We were told it was probably just that Jennifer’s hand worked faster than her brain, which seemed entirely plausible.  Reassured, we put our fears to one side.

As Jennifer progressed through the school we took comfort from the fact that The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) at the school knew Jennifer well because she ran the school’s ‘talented and gifted’ program.  Beyond saying that Jennifer ‘drove her mad’ through her inattention levels, she too felt that there was no issues. 

However, as Jennifer entered her fourth year at the school, a fairly clear pattern was starting to emerge.  Not only was her written work impacted but she was also highly disorganized and would frequently come home without her coat or bag, having lost these at school in the day.  On one occasion when she was holding up the other children because she had lost her coat, her teacher told her that she was being ‘selfish.’  She tired easily and our, hitherto sparky and enthusiastic child became bored and unmotivated in class.  When her books came home, the few sentences or sums she had managed were covered in a sea of corrections. 

When Jennifer was seven her father attended parents' evening and again emphasised our concerns that Jennifer was still transposing her letters and was, by this time, developing coping strategies for her difficulties, such as sticking up her thumbs to distinguish ‘b’ from ‘d.’ Following this meeting the SENCO gave Jennifer a computer test for dyslexia.  They described this as a ‘precaution.’  Jennifer scored in the 99th percentile under most categories until right at the end where she had, according to the SENCO, ‘got bored’ and scored poorly (in fact, this was probably a classic sign of dyslexic child disengaging because her brain had been overtaxed).  For the school’s part Jennifer’s high score in the computer test drew an end to the matter; there were no underlying issues and never had been.  It was around this time that the Jennifer’s teacher started marking her spelling tests ‘down’ when she did not form her letters correctly.’ Hence if she wrote ‘pabble’ instead of ‘paddle’ then this would be marked as incorrect. 

At the advice of a friend, we asked a Paediatric Occupational Therapist to undertake a handwriting assessment.  She told us that Jennifer needed an immediate referral to an educational psychologist.  Following this we attended a half hour meeting at the school to discuss the situation.  Slightly surreally, when we told staff at the meeting what the Occupational Therapist had said, they refused to believe us.  After the meeting, we received a phone call from the school headmistress.  She informed us that, since we obviously did not trust what her staff were saying about our daughter, we should now consider removing her from the school.  When I pointed out that all we had ever had was a difference of opinion, politely expressed, she stated that we were ‘exhausting’ the staff by ‘worrying all the time about everything.’  She again emphasised the fact that Jennifer was ‘absolutely fine.’ Following this, we felt that we simply could not go on; more than anything else we felt like we were failing our daughter.

Happily, we were able to place our daughter in another school better suited to her personality.  The SENCO at our daughter’s new school, Heather, had trained at the British Dyslexia Association and had a son who was, himself, dyslexic.  She quickly confirmed that Jennifer was indeed highly dyslexic.  Heather was the first person to ask Jennifer what she experienced when she tried to form letters.  I wanted to cry when I read Jennifer’s characteristically articulate description of how the words became ‘blurry’ (Why hadn’t we thought to ask her ourselves?).  Re-visiting the computer test with Heather we noted that the time taken to complete the tasks varied dramatically although the scores were high.  The longer timings mirrored closely difficulties identified with our daughter’s short term memory and visual sequential skills.  Ironically, Jennifer is not even that good at reading once the context is removed.

We were very lucky in that we were able to find a parachute for our daughter when she started to fall.  We accept dyslexia as forming part of the amazing, unique child we have, but I do wonder what happens to the children who struggle with dyslexia whose parents are less ‘pushy’ and ‘exhausting.’  Had we accepted what we were being told, Jennifer would still be at her former school being marked down for poor handwriting and told to apply herself.  For many parents changing schools would simply not be an option. I am very aware that we were the lucky ones.

A mother

2010.