Helping People With Dyslexia

Video Transcript

"Often parents ask how can I help my child who has dyslexia. The most important recommendation that I can make is to accept the fact that your child has a condition that he can't help. He is blameless or she is blameless. And so if we start from the position of helping, of supporting, the child has a much better chance of continuing to put forth effort. The second thing I can recommend is that you recognize that the child needs lots of opportunities for repetition. While children in the class may only need to repeat or be exposed to a repetition of a new concept two or three times, a child with dyslexia may need six to ten times. And so what we have to do is remember that what was learned in school should be brought home and practiced. Children often with dyslexia have an enormous amount of homework to do, and they are and their parents are working for hours every night. The important thing to remember here is not all homework is the same. Work on those things that support learning that took place or teaching that took place in the classroom, so that learning to mastery can occur with your help at home. Some of the assignments can be modified so that if there are ten math problems to be done, you and the teacher can agree that only five of them are really critical. To demonstrate that the child knows the concept, and can apply it. And so reducing the amount of homework through conversations with your child's teacher is a really important thing to remember. And this follows all the way through to high school. Finally register your child for books on tape. Every public library in the country has access to books on tape that relate to often the assignments in literature classes and so forth. But also there's a organization Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic. And this organization can take your child's history textbook, math textbook, science textbook, whatever it might be, and put it on a CD or on tape for the child to listen to the text. Children with dyslexia are slow readers, it's laborious for them to go through a chapter of text. If they have it on tape they can listen and read along in the text, see the graph, see the chart, see the examples while they're listening to the text being read. These are ways in which parents and school systems, by making these books on tapes available, by cooperating with parents, and reducing assignments to the most important elements. Are ways in which we can help children with dyslexia learn and be comfortable in the learning environment."