12 yr old dyslexia boy
On L b c radio today mother discussing her sons condition saying he had tried to commit suicide twice,and has had almost nil in support from mental health team and of having to wait 18 months for assessment.
Also her son having to take French language lessons at school ( the mind boggles of this) with having dyslexia.
The sheer bloody mindlessness of this total situation made my blood boil .
Hi Neil,
For some reason I had missed your piece until I just spotted it.
Judging from what you've written, the situation could be described as many things - disturbing and bonkers are the two terms that spring to my mind.
I hope things improve for the boy and his mother.
As someone who has Dyslexia & mental health problems I can relate to this situation. I was not diagnosed until I was in my early 20's. During my school years I was bullied by fellow pupils and teachers because I struggled with the work, I was called lazy, thick and stupid, teachers would say I was a day dreamer and one in particular always singled me out for tasks as she knew I would not be able to complete them. My mum tried to fight for an assessment but was not taken seriously. This doe's have a detrimental effect on your mental health. It made me feel worthless and that I wouldn't amount to much, it makes you feel very self conscious. I became very inward, and self hating, something I still have to deal with today.
I hope they get the assessment's he needs - if not already he needs a Dyslexia assessment to assess what level he is at so school can put measures into place to help with his learning, there are lot's of things out there to help, I also hope he get's the mental health help and support he so desperately needs.
I fully understand the frustration with this. My son is now 20 and also still suffers from the difficulties we had trying to get him the help and support he needed. I had to constantly push for many years to get the first Dyslexia diagnosis. By this time my son had been bullied for many years I had been called into school on many occasions with regards his behaviour. I was also made to take him for therapy as they thought there was something wrong with my son, where we were told he just had a fantastic imagination and they didn't know how to deal with this.
When he started secondary school we then found out he also had Irlen Syndrome (light perception disorder). The school helped with the diagnosis but were useless at following up with any support for this. Because he needed to wear dark glasses to help with this he was then bullied because of this. He then went on to college and did 3 years in Engineering and the support he received there was amazing. But unfortunately despite this the damage had already occurred.
He has days when he is very low and we worry about him all the time.
The education system as a lot to answer for.
But family support and understanding goes along way.
Japan's vanilla air,making a disabled wheelchair user crawl up steps to board plane SHAME ON YOU what a total disgrace of an air line .