Jamie was diagnosed with dyslexia last year. It was a real shock for me and at first I couldn’t accept it. Once he started on the Easyread course and I worked with him every morning on it, I began to really understand the difficulties he had. I then also read a lot of material, and through understanding the problems he had with his short-term and procedural memory, I fully appreciated that your advice about learning to decode and encode and training Jamie’s brain in a different way. Clearly this was the only way in which we could resolve the problems he had at school.

To begin with I was sceptical and I should not have been. It also helped to read the book “The Dyslexic Advantage” by Drs Eide (in fact I had read that book before I started your course). I don’t know if this might help you with new parents coming to the Easyread course.

Jamie also had his eyes tested by a suitably qualified optician as a result of your guidance (this was the fourth test he had and the three earlier ones said he had perfect eyesight). As such we discovered he has Meares-Irlen Syndrome and a tracking weakness in his left eye. He now has special glasses he wears in class and for reading and this has improved his ability to read dense text with accuracy.

His spelling has improved greatly but I feel he still continues to work on his decoding and encoding and would wish to continue on to level 5.

In addition to Jamie’s spelling problems he had issues with maths in that whilst he understood the concepts, he found remembering some of this difficult. I have engaged a maths tutor who has expereince in working with dyslexic children and she comes once a week. Jamie passed his maths without difficulty last year. He also knows all of his times tables up to 12 as I taught him to learn these using rhythms.

Jamie has really come on in the last year and I am looking forward to this year at school. I know he will continue to require support but now I understand the problems, I can help him. He is in fact a clever child and at IQ testing his standard score in Verbal Comprehension was 134, Abstract/Visual Reasoning was 123.

– D