I have a 14-year-old daughter who was recently diagnosed with dyslexia. I was wondering if you would be able to help? I was hoping for training to help her read without being tired.

Dr. Pierson’s Response:

Not knowing your daughter’s profile of strengths and weaknesses, I can make some broad recommendations. Given that she was just diagnosed with dyslexia, I will assume that she has not had any intervention, and therefore, she may benefit from some targeted work in structured literacy intervention. https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/dyslexics/living-with-dyslexia/structured-literacy-setting-the-stage-for-student-literacy-success/

That said, given her age, I would not recommend putting her through an entire program from start to finish, but instead for the practitioner to carefully target structures as gaps in your daughter’s skills emerge. I would recommend work in morphology, especially learning Greek and Latin affixes (prefixes, roots, and suffixes).https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-and-intervention/morphological-awareness/

Improved morphological understandings should help to make reading (and spelling) multisyllable words easier.

Your daughter would likely benefit from instruction in reading comprehension strategies. https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-and-intervention/reading-comprehension/ 

Learning strategies to better learn from texts would also help ease her burden. https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-and-intervention/reading-comprehension/helping-students-learn-how-to-learn-from-written-texts/

When possible, her interventionist should work with texts that your daughter needs to read.

She may also benefit from instruction to better tackle writing assignments.

Writing – Dyslexia Help

It will be important for her to leverage technology.

https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/latest/ncld-assistive-technology-10-tips-help-your-child-work-around-learning-disability/

https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/tools/software-assistive-technology/

Last, and importantly, Your daughter will need to understand her profile of strengths and weaknesses AND learn to advocate for herself. Her diagnosis and accommodations should be explained and discussed with her, and she will need to learn that it is her right to request accommodations, particularly now that she is in high school. We shouldn’t just expect that she will know how to do this. She will need coaching.

https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-and-intervention/accommodations/teaching-self-advocacy/

I’m hoping these suggestions will point you in the right direction. There is a lot more information on DyslexiaHelp. Please don’t hesitate if you have other questions.