SpecialNeeds.com

“When do I tell my child he or she has dyslexia?” Many parents agonize over this question. Susan Barton, creator of the Barton Reading & Spelling System and founder of Bright Solutions for Dyslexia, says that children with dyslexia know by the first month of first grade that there is something that makes them different. “Every adult I’ve ever talked to said that the best day of their lives was when somebody told them they had dyslexia and they understood what it meant,” says Barton. It may sound surprising, but she explains that it is a relief for kids when they realize that they are not stupid or defective.

Parents who come to Barton often wonder if telling their children they have dyslexia might make their children lazy or not as likely to try in school. “Are you kidding?” Barton says. “You won’t have anyone who tries harder than someone with dyslexia. They just need to know why it’s so hard.”

Dyslexia has nothing to do with how smart a child is. More and more studies show it is a matter of not hearing sounds as cleanly and clearly as everyone else. “It’s the ears, not the brain,” says Barton, “That’s why they hate it when people say ‘sound it out.” Barton’s reading and spelling method teaches people how to quickly and easily decode an unknown word, without having to memorize what the word looks like or having to guess it based on context clues or knowing the first and second letters. There are ten levels in the Barton System. If a student is consistently tutored twice a week, it will take three to five months to complete a level. Over the course of two to three years (the time it takes to complete all the levels), a student tutored in the Barton System will be reading at least at mid-ninth grade level. The program relies on color-coded letter tiles to demonstrate logical rules, making the Barton System an extremely visual method. It is so visual that as a precaution Barton tested the system on colorblind subjects. There are nine different colors of tiles in use by the time the program finishes. The colorblind participants were able to pick out the correct tiles when asked, because the colors were pure and primary enough that they appeared as distinctly different shades of gray.

Barton, whose first experience with dyslexia was as a volunteer tutor at adult literacy programs, initially designed her system for adults. Because it worked so well, she later rewrote it so it would also work well for children. She specifically created the program assuming children with dyslexia would also have ADD, as it is common to have both. Mild to moderate ADD can be handled through a child’s tutor using techniques such as changing procedures every five minutes or talking less and using hand motions more.

What many parents do not know is that they can request that a particular methodology be implemented in the child’s IEP. Dyslexia must be proven and a parent must have a well-written diagnostic report from a credible source. If a particular methodology or approach has been documented as evidence-based for that child's condition, then they can make it happen. Barton says it is critical that parents learn their legal rights and put aside their emotions in order to be advocates for their children. Barton also trains her certified dyslexia specialists to be able to advise parents on how to discuss methodology at an IEP meeting. Even then, most schools do not have the resources to do one-on-one tutoring, so it is often up to the parents to take control and learn to tutor their children themselves. 

If a public or private school cannot meet the needs of a child with dyslexia, Barton advocates home schooling. “It’s not the right solution for everyone. Not everyone can home school with work requirements, not every parent and child work well together, not every parent has the discipline to do it consistently, but we need choices,” she says. Home schooling can be a good option for a year or two in order to close the gap with the child’s reading, writing, and spelling. “The gift of a year to catch up without daily humiliation is worth a lot.” 

A person does not need to be diagnosed with dyslexia in order for this system to work. If they are struggling to read rapidly and accurately or to maintain spelling words from one week to the next, the Barton Reading & Spelling System can help. Visit their website for further information on the requirements for participation in the system.

As Barton says, “We’re not curing their dyslexia, but once [children] learn they’re not stupid, you see their posture change, their attitude changes. You see them persist longer in other problem situations and try to strategize around them. You see their grades go up. They get less teasing from the other kids.” By removing the barriers that normally stop people with dyslexia from succeeding, “now they can go out and do whatever they want to do.”