What to say and how to approach it
As a parent while you might not be realising that your child is experiencing dyslexia most parents do generally have a feeling that something isn’t right with their child’s learning and starting a conversation with school can feel tricky and overwhelming.
How you approach it can rely on many things, from how confident you feel yourself, to the relationship you have with the school, how accessible the teachers are and how much you trust your gut! It might be that you do actually suspect dyslexia and you want to open that conversation up straight away and that is okay, but here are some things to consider and hopefully help you get the result you want for your chid.
1. Look on the school website to see what their offer and process for students with dyslexia is.
School website sites should have a page dedicated to SEND and somewhere on there it should outline the process and support that they give to pupils with dyslexia. This is always the place to start.
2. Parents’ evening or a separate meeting?
Waiting for Parents’ evenings isn’t necessarily the best time to bring dyslexia up. Parents’ evenings can feel rushed with not enough time to have an in depth conversation
My advice to parents if you want to raise dyslexia concerns is to do this at a separate time.
If your child is in primary school try and catch the teacher and arrange a separate meeting at the start or end of a school day, or even a telephone conversation would be a good place to start.
At secondary school you will need to email the Senco and arrange either a telephone conversation or meeting to share your concerns.
3. Collect evidence
When I say collect evidence, I don’t mean you need to get a formal diagnostic assessment at this stage but jotting down some examples of why you think your child may be experiencing dyslexia and maybe even download and complete a free dyslexia checklist to share will help you formulate your thinking and give school a clear picture of your concerns. This makes it easier for teachers and if they haven’t spotted any evidence, it also gives them things to look out for that can help decide whether a screening is helpful or not.
4. Dyslexia screen
Depending on how the meeting goes when you discuss your concerns it may be that school are going to decide to monitor and just track your child’s progress. This will depend on the individual school and whether school have already spotted things initiating whether a dyslexia screen straight away is necessary. Whatever the action make sure you take notes as a parent so that you know what school are going to be doing so that if for any reason this doesn’t happen or if you continue to be concerned about your childs progress, you’ve got a record of the conversation that you’ve had enabling you to move it forward quicker at the next meeting
5. Dyslexia interventions
Even before a dyslexia screen if there are concerns regarding a child’s progress, confidence and self esteem, a school will have interventions to support these areas. As a parent you can ask what interventions your child will be able to take part in to improve spelling for example and you can also ask what you can do at home further to support your child. Make sure you ask what they would be offering in terms of discrete interventions, these are specific evidenced based interventions that work on reading and spelling but I would also be asking what the dyslexic friendly practise in the classroom looks like.