Michael and his Dyslexia..

At school Michael hates reading out loud, he often stumbles over words. He finds reading difficult because he struggles to attach the right sound to the right letter - he may pronounce a "d" as a "b". These difficulties also appear in his written work; he reverses letters when he is writing.

He may be able, through dint of hard work, to say the words he sees on the page but he may not understand them.

He may be good at Maths but he will fail his tests because the questions are written in English. When he is reading he will often skip a line or skip a word.

Michael's Dyslexia is as a result of an Auditory Processing difficulty -a listening difficulty-and this means that he does not connect a sound to a particular shape in other words he hasn't learned that 'd' sounds like 'd'. There are sounds that he struggles to distinguish. He is unsure whether it is a 'd' or a 'b'. He also confuses 'b' with 'p' and 't' with 'p'. During testing Michael said the word 'hip' for 'hit'. Therapy at Cluas has enabled Michael to distinguish between the sounds of the letters. He is now more certain what each letter sounds like, and is able to use his considerable effort to understand and analyse what he is reading rather than for the actual task of reading.

Michael's short term memory difficulties causes him great problems, especially taking down his homework quickly and accurately. He regularly fails his spelling test on a Friday and his home work appears to take forever. Therapy at Cluas has started a process of neural development which has greatly improved Michael's short term and his ability to commit things to long term memory. Now when he learns his spellings he really knows them, rather than remembering them for just the 5 minutes after he has learned them.

Michael had mixed ear dominance - so the pattern of his hearing between one ear and the other was not consistent. This means that it takes him longer and he has to put in much more effort into; processing auditory and language information. Therapy at Cluas establishes right ear dominance and this allows him to process language more efficiently.

After therapy at Cluas, Michael's parents reported that recently he has shown a spontaneous interest in reading. His teacher is very pleased with his progress and he has caught up with his classmates.
In addition his self esteem, confidence and concentration has improved a lot.He is also a lot more cooperative in that he follows and understands instructions better.