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Topic: tears over reading

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LLMom
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Posted: March 26 2014 at 9:21pm \| IP Logged

My just turned 9 year old dd was diagnosed with dyslexia. For the past several months,and especially this week, she has been crying over reading. She says its too hard and she hates it. I am in the process of researching how to help her. What should I do with her about the tears?

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Lisa
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JodieLyn
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Posted: March 26 2014 at 9:59pm \| IP Logged

Different problem.. I had a child that could not learn from phonics and she was horribly stressed by the thought of reading when we switched to sight reading techniques.

But what I found was once she got the least bit frustrated it was time to stop whatever we were doing.. even if that meant only 2 minutes of working on reading. Because doing more didn't help.. she would lock down and be unable to do it anyway. But that let us work on it before the tears and then we'd stop.. BUT we'd come back to it several times a day. And then as she gained confidence the length of time we could work on it got longer and longer.

I would start by stopping. I mean I would stop reading instruction for a bit of time. I would use that time and foster love of reading.. love of books.. reading out loud, audio books, movies about books.. especially ones you can make the occasional comment that "that's just like in the book" or "that's so much better in the book", "oh that makes me want to reread the book".

Not pointed but just a break at the work of reading and focusing on why we love to read.

Then once the tension has lessened.. it probably doesn't have to be more than a couple of weeks.. I would explain that we were "doing it all wrong" that different people learn in different ways and that NOW you know what will work better for her. That it'll still be work but she can do it.

Be positive, it's hard when something other people can do easily is so hard for you. Lots of positive "you can do it" while still agreeing that it's going to take hard work. AND I would also put in that it doesn't matter what other people do, or how fast they do it.. what's important is that she is doing the best she can for herself. (we've done that with a younger sibling being a better swimmer than the older one).

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SallyT
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Posted: March 27 2014 at 7:20am \| IP Logged

I know that a number of moms with dyslexic children lean pretty heavily on audiobooks. Obviously you don't want your child to stop reading if she does read, but if the effort wears her down so quickly that she can't cope, the immediate challenge would seem to be to figure out ways for her not to stop learning (and not to hate books) while also working out some longer-term solutions.

I've been dealing with some of this with my 10-year-old, who's in the process of being evaluated for vision therapy, after years of "something's-not-quite-right-here." I am reading things to her that I wouldn't normally read to a child her age, and I am using audiobooks and the text-to-speech function on her Kindle, to help her keep up with a normal reading load for her level without just crushing her with reading fatigue.

Of course, now that she knows that therapy is in the offing, it does occasionally happen that this situation gets milked with some drama -- "But I *caaaaaaaaan't read! At all! I neeeeeeeeed viiiiiiiiiiiiision therapy!" In other words, it can become a bit of a victim card! I do encourage her to read on her own -- some, daily. Because she *can.* She *can* read and comprehend, perfectly well, what she's reading. And I don't want her to think she can't. But I also have to recognize that it really is a far more exhausting and confusing process for her because her eyes don't work together properly, so I look for these alternative ways to offer her a rich diet of reading without its being this titanic burden.

I hope that helps. People with dyslexic children can speak to the specific resources they've turned to, but it does seem to me that for a child with a reading difficulty like that, you do have to accept that it is a hard and exhausting process and at least for the time being look for other ways to offer good books that don't overwhelm her with that process.

Sally

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myheaven1967
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Posted: June 16 2014 at 7:21pm \| IP Logged

Have you read The Gift of Dyslexia? My very good friend suggested it to me and I am currently reading it as I have one that was just discovered as well.
It really explains HOW they see things. It is so much more than just reading and writing. It is their whole thinking process. How they see the world.

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