Last school year, my son’s school district held a meeting with the Dyslexia teacher team and the parents of kids in the program. The meeting was super helpful because they showed us in depth the tools they were teaching our kids daily and shared helpful things we could do at home to support their instruction at school.
As a mom who has been on this journey with my son for almost half of his life, I felt like a veteran. You could tell which parents might have recently gotten a diagnosis; I recognized the wide-eyed stares and the fear for what kind of future in education their child has. It can be daunting, especially if you have been fighting for a diagnosis.
Related Reading:Dyslexia Awareness Month: Our Story
Even after two years in the program, my son has struggles, but because we have tools and tricks we have implemented early on, it has gotten so much better! So I wanted to share some of the dyslexia hacks we do in our home to make daily life easier, help support the learning happening at school and make our son more independent in his daily life.
Speech to Text
Funny story. We have an extra cell phone called the “Kids Phone.” It is a phone that stays in our house and works like a landline for our kids, or they take it with them when they go play with friends in the neighborhood so that we can call them home. One day my son was texting me while I was at class, and he was home with his dad, and I couldn’t believe how well he was typing everything out! I got so proud, and when I asked him about it, he said, “oh yeah, I just used the little microphone, so it typed it all for me.” I had to laugh and then told him how proud I was of his ingenuity.
But the phone is not the only place he uses this tool. He also uses it on his school Chromebook when we are working on homework and he needs help with a word. He will open a Word document and use the dictation option to figure out how to spell the word he was stuck on. He knows he is not allowed to use this for writing whole sentences, but it is to be used for single words that he needs help with. This saves him from constantly having to stop and ask us how to spell something.
Audiobooks
I love when parents of dyslexic children share how their child overcame their struggles and became a lover of reading. I really do. I personally love reading and want ALL kids to fall in love with reading books. BUT it can be hard when your child is struggling, and they have NOT fallen in love with reading. While reading has improved for my son with the tools we gave him, he does NOT love reading. He would rather do ANYTHING if it means he is not made to sit down and read on his own.
Being READ TO is another story. If you are willing to sit and read to him, he is willing to listen. And that is something we do a lot as a family. I will pick a series, and we will read it together. But sometimes, I need them to have quiet reading time independently, ESPECIALLY during the summer months. That is why we have an Audible subscription, and I just learned that an app called Learning Ally is free for Texas schools with “qualifying students.” Learning Ally is an app with tons of books read aloud to the student. At the meeting the school held; they informed us that the app was already loaded on our students’ Chromebook and it could be accessed in the evenings and weekends. {I will also need to see if we can get access over this summer.}
All this to say…. GET AN AUDIOBOOK subscription and let them listen to stories and find the ones they love.
Related Reading:Fill your kid’s bookshelf with our comprehensive book round-up!
Toobaloo Auditory Feedback Reading Phone
This is one of those tools that is so simple you wish you had come up with the idea! My son has one that he keeps in his backpack so that he can use it both at home and school. He isn’t a fan of using it that much because it draws attention to himself, but he admits that it helps when he does decide to use it. I could not tell you the science behind it other than it allows him to hear himself sounding out things and significantly increases his reading time. Which then also helps increase his comprehension. You can get one on Amazon here!
And Finally…
Take the pressure off and make it fun!
There is a reason kids gravitate to video games and technology. It’s fun, and most of the time, unless they are on some sort of professional Fortnight team, there is no real pressure when they are playing.
Parenting for me has always felt a whole lot like keeping up with the Jones. Always trying to do all the things so that my kids don’t fall behind in school, or feel left out socially by their peers. But the truth is, they are a lot like that horse that you can lead to water. You can lead them to all the books in the world, but if you are trying to FORCE them to do anything, it is not going to be a whole lot of fun for anyone.
In our house, the word “challenge” can turn a really un-fun chore magically into something fun. So we do a lot of “reading challenges,” we have rewards like picking dinner or getting to go do something with mom or dad solo.
Find ways that engage and transform reading into something that is no longer a chore or something that is going to make everyone miserable.
Side note: if you have ever been to a Hibachi grill, you will know a big part of the show is usually throwing some type of food at the people sitting around to catch in their mouths. At our local favorite restaurant, broccoli is their choice of food, and let me tell you, because this transforms broccoli into fun, I have never seen my kids willingly eat so much broccoli in one sitting! So be like the Hibachi grill of books!!!
