Dyslexia and Processing Deficit: A Dangerous Combination for a Pre-Teen

I saw a 10-year-old 4th grade boy and his parents in my office, already diagnosed with dyslexia and auditory processing deficit of greater than 50 percent.

He had a series of severe ear infections as a baby and toddler and learned to speak much later than the parents’ other two kids.

He was reading at a second grade level and his grades were C-D, even with hours of help from his parents with his homework.

His parents had spent thousands of dollars paying for reading tutors out of school and during the summer break.

The public school had already had him in Wilson Reading tutoring twice per week. He also had speech therapy once per week to tackle his auditory processing defect.

The reading specialist had so many meetings in the school, that she had to cancel the intensive reading tutoring multiple times. His teacher said he was not improving in his reading skills.

This happens quite often.

The public school reading specialist, often has multiple meetings, and with the budget cutback, often he or she is required to cover multiple schools.

This ends up with the Wilson reading tutor actually spending less time than allotted with the child. This boy often comes home from school and when his parents ask him what they covered in history today, he has no idea of even what century or what country was being studied because he has a severe auditory processing deficit.

I explained to his parents that their son has a double barreled problem with both dyslexia and auditory processing deficit, and that these often come together in the same child.

The Wilson method of reading is fine, but this boy needs daily intensive help before he gets any older. This type of drip-drip method of helping him will not work.

He will get frustrated with school, and will put less and less effort into it. He needs daily intensive schooling that is like basic training, where all efforts from adults are directed toward fixing his problems before they become worse.

His parents need to become assertive advocates of their boy, or they will find their boy becomes a very frustrated, angry teenager if he feels like a failure.

Michael Kaufman and Madeleine Kitaj: Attorney and Physician