From the beginning May 2005-Dec2005

I knew from around 4 years that Matthew was different from his older brother (then 9) and his friends. I knew he was bright, when he played all his older brothers Educational CD-roms to play, loved them and determinedly finished them from start to finish. He taught himself chess with a Lego chess cd-rom. My husband and I looked at him and thought, "We've got no worries with this one". He was also miles ahead empathathicly, knew how everyone was feeling, was very caring. Sadly this was not the case at school he was falling behind at reading. At the age of 5 he was having reading support lessons 30mins once a week, we were told nothing to worry about, some children are a little slower. Matthew at this stage had trouble remembering nursery rhymes, he seemed to be getting th's mixed up with v's and his language was immature.
Moving on to May 2005, barely 7 years old, his infant teacher asked us to consider if Matthew could be Dyslexic, she would watch him closely. After this I read as much as I could about Dyslexia, his reading was slow and painful, he read words on 1 page and then seemed to not know them on the next, he lost words guessed words and read then end to start, his short term memory was poor, he could not remember instructions. From all this I could see he was most probably Dyslexic. I returned to the same teacher in July for some advice and some reading books for the summer. The teacher said no she did not think he was Dyslexic.

Sept 2005 Matthew starts juniors with 2 job share teachers, I wait to see what they think, nobody contacts me with any worries, so I stop worrying. Reading support has stopped. Mid Nov 2005, Parents evening:- the 2 teachers talk to half the class each. The teacher we see says that Matthew is immature, but is OK and hands us some targets and asks "any worries?". We launch into all our concerns, the teacher is concerned and says she will consult with her job share partner (shouldn't she have done this already?). I phone the school in the next week to speak to the other teacher, amazingly the other teacher has grave concerns about Matthew. He has made little progress since Sept. They are going to give him reading support again, the reading support teacher will test his reading age and we will go from there. The first teacher pulls me aside at the Chrismas Fayre as tells me "you must push for an assessment but don't mention my name!!" I consult the SENCO (also the Headmistress) asking for an assessment. She says we will sort it out in the new year.