The Uninitiated - Zachary

Zachary is my eldest. At 8+, he is in Primary 3 this year. I never dreamed he'd be diagnosed as Dyslexic.

Zach zoomed through his Phonics program, which he completed in just 10 months. He was in K2 when he began with the teacher who taught Montesorri Phonics from her home, and he blazed through the word lists that she gave for practice.

Even as he went through Kindergarten, he had very little (noticeable) problems with his worksheets when it came to English. Maths was significantly more of a struggle, while Chinese was non-existent (his command of it, that is... not the homework. Homework he had plenty of...)

So as he entered into Primary School, his struggles with all things arbitrary and his weakness in Mathematical concepts became more obvious. He struggled with simple concepts that came naturally to me growing up. His younger sister would often blurt out answers way ahead of him, and this despite the fact that she was one whole academic year behind.

Chinese was a mystery to him... he couldn't, even at P2, string a sentence together... he had so little vocab that his youngest sister way surpassed him in terms of vocabulary and understanding Chinese.

So even as I was sharing with the Educational Psychologist about his difficulties (when I was seeing her for Stacey's problems), she noted that it was a very unusual thing for a child to not pick up at least a little Chinese... despite having been in school since he was 3 and learning the language from 20mths old, when he attended childcare.

End of last year, he went to see the Educational Psychologist, because I was getting increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate information clearly, and his apparent inability to remember what teachers had said in school. Compounded by the fact that they had a nightmare of a teacher in P2, his struggles became glaringly obvious. I thought he was only Dyscalculic. Or that maybe he had Chinese Dyslexia.

But it turns out that he is dyslexic. He also has a great visual memory. Which is how he had been coping all this while. He had not been decoding words or blending them. He had memorised how they were spelt. And he used his memory for the words that he could read. So he struggled this year when he was faced with Science and its unique set of vocabulary, never before encountered.

He also has other issues, like a poor verbal memory - he literally is unable to remember what has been said to him, and retains only about half what other people are able to retain. Given the passing of time, he only retains about a third.

All this explained why he had always been the hands-on kid I knew him to be. He also has some social issues it seems... being too literal in his interpretation of things, he is unable to fit in perfectly. He used to get teased or "bullied" by "friends" - they would tell him tall stories and laugh at him because he believed them... he always fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.

So it has been recommended that we begin OG lessons. My 4th student. One I never imagined would need OG.

And honestly, I don't really know where to begin. Getting him to blend and sound out words instead of just relying on his memory will be, in itself, a challenge. Maybe we just have to use more non-words instead to force him to sound out instead of drawing from his memory bank. I really need to sit down and figure out this one.