I have a child who is dyslexic and has ADHD. Two books that have really helped me are:

Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your Add Child by Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons
and
Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
(also for anybody with reading difficulties)

Dr. Shaywitz suggests going back over the more difficult phonics concepts such as prefixes, suffixes, dipthongs, blends... Hmm… I can’t remember.  Then she says to break down long words into syllables and practice reading them.  I did this with my son, making it a game and timing him to see if he could improve his speed with flashcards of (the same) long words.  He had fun with it and gained reading confidence.  I had skipped over some phonics concepts that my other kids just picked up on their own.  But her techniques turned Josh into a bookworm in about 2 weeks!  He still doesn’t have the comprehension skills or speed that his siblings have, but this really helped.

The “right brain” book is also so practical and wonderful, and it has specific techniques on how to teach almost every subject.  It has really helped me to see how Josh thinks!  It’s funny, though, that the author disagrees about phonics for these kids.  But after having seen how phonics worked great for Josh, I have to agree with Mr. Freed about almost everything except his condemnation of phonics.

He says to ask your child if he can picture a cube turning in his head and imagine each facet as it turns.  Josh can do this, but I can’t!  It’s one way to see if your child is right-brained.

Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World encourages parents to actually teach a few things to ADD kids early — can you believe it??  Because of him I introduced my 8-year-old son to negative numbers, squaring numbers, and a tiny bit of algebra.  This is really motivating to them and again, helps their self-confidence, which is usually pretty wounded in these kids.  Anyway Freed’s techniques are like Shaywitz’s.  They have amazing results.  The spelling one is introduced first because it is usually the most dramatic.

We had my son tested, and I believe it wasn’t an ideal testing situation because my son knew the rest of his siblings were playing, and as soon as he finished his test he could play, too.  This made him totally distracted.  Some of the questions that he got wrong, we asked him the next week.  He got them all right then…

Also the diagnostician (a wonderful Christian lady who did all this for free for us!!) doesn’t believe that my son is dyslexic or ADHD because she’s used to dealing with public school kiddos who had Butterfingers/Snickers for breakfast and are way more hyper than my son is and have much worse reading problems.  But I still believe he is.

Another thing that has helped is a book called Sequential Spelling. I try to do a test every school-day and it has really helped him to become better at spelling.  I read that studying spelling also helps with vocabulary and other areas.

Sequential Spelling is a very unusual spelling book because the writer starts with a root word and keeps adding to it until the child can spell very long words.  The student actually does not study for the tests!  It is like a dictation mentality, except they don’t have to write a whole sentence — just a word.

After he writes his word, I write my version in two colors, showing the parts of the word.  You don’t have to write it perfectly — there is no perfect way.  Just divide it how it seems right to you.

If he got it wrong, he erases and corrects his version.  Then he spells it outloud while writing it with his finger. It’s pretty fun, and it has really helped!

Josh also stopped having cereal, milk, or juice for breakfast.  (Is he still??   I need to double-check him on this.)  He does much better on:

• water
• fruit
• 100 percent whole wheat toast.  This idea came from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association webpage.

We do let Josh have a limited amount of dessert later in the day.  But I read that if the first thing in our mouths in the mornings is sugary, it spikes our blood sugar since it is taken on an empty stomach.

Another thing that helped Josh was to get glasses with prisms. He said his eyes get really tired when he reads without them.  Hannah says he is more hyper without them!  He doesn’t have a prescription for his glasses at all except for the prisms.  Thank you, Dr. Morrissey!

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