dyslexia

[dorothy]

my daughter is 8yrs old in the third grade.
she has an incredible vocabulary, comprehition,memory and retention.
the problem is she cannot copy words down correctly from the board they are not only incorrect but sometimes letters are missing and some that dont belong are there.  her writing is much neater now but she still only prints, her spelling tests are average missing 2 or 3, reading level is at 3.8 math 3.0. her teacher says she is bright a pleasure to have around and is a take charge person who is also very caring.
she rushes to finish and her concentration is easily broken.
the teacher thinks she is dyslexic, is this a possibility or is this normal?

[Bev]

Dear Dorothy,
I can't believe how much your daughter sounds like mine.  As a baby she repeated her first words at two months.  She spoke fluently by eighteen months.  How shocked I was when kindergarten rolled around and she began having trouble with letters.  By first grade she would know all the answers at home, but do poorly on the test because she couldn't understand the printed directions on the test.  Her handwriting was poor, and copying from the board was a problem.  Some teachers would let her copy from their books or notes, which helped some.  Over the years she struggled, at first with inversions but mostly and always with spelling.  Luckily she is a hard worker, and though diagnosed with a reading and spelling disability, has excelled.  She is now a senior, and in the National Honors Society.    I helped her more that average through the years, especially if she had a lot of reading to do.  She still is a poor speller, but thank goodness for computers and spell checkers!  Now she copes completely on her own.  She loves science and plans to major in biology and go on to med school.
I'm telling you this to let you know that disabilities can be compensated for and your daughter has an excellent chance of doing anything she wants to do. God bless you and her and good luck.
Bev

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Dear Dorothy,

This is not normal for a third grader, though it's not possible without testing to determine precisely what is occurring.

Dyslexia is a generic term; it refers to a variety of learning disabilities that are related to verbal functioning. Indeed, your daughter may display a learning disability related to visual processing. This is possible, even with her good reading level, comprehension and memory. It could be that her good auditory processing ability compensates somewhat for a limitation in visual processing. To be frank, though, I'd expect her to be struggling more than she is if she had a serious visual processing difficulty. Only testing can determine this.

Another possibility is simply that she is not working with sufficient deliberateness and is making errors due to speed.

It would be wise to pin down the nature of her problem. Some focused testing for learning disability would accomplish the goal.