A response to Abigail Marshall and the Davis Dyslexia Association International
Posted by gimpy on October 8, 2007
Abigail Marshall, author and Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI) employee and co-founder has had the good grace to write a lengthy and polite response to my previous post criticising her organisation. I offer a lengthy response in turn to each of her points below.
For the purposes of clarity I will colour Ms. Marshall’s post maroon and will leave my responses as the default black. Ms Marshall’s post will be presented unedited and only broken up by my responses.
Someone pointed out your article to me, and I think there are some points to clarify, so I hope you don’t mind if I try to do so. Because you have posted a rather long critique, this will be a somewhat long post.
My name is Abigail Marshall. I am the author of a book about dyslexia and I also work for the Davis Dyslexia Association to run their web sites in the US. I also am the parent of a dyslexic kid. In 1994 when my son was 11 years old and couldn’t read, I bought Ron Davis’ book and we tried out the methods at home. It worked for us. My son started reading much more easily right away. Now my son is a university student getting straight A’s and an avid reader. So that’s my story of how I came to Davis.
I am curious to know if your son was diagnosed with dyslexia by a qualified Educational Psychologist (or the USA’s equivalent) or if it was a case of self-diagnosis? If it was self-diagnosis how do you know it was dyslexia? If he was formally diagnosed what remedial technologies or training were offered? I am genuinely interested as many organisations such as yours arise from the USA where healthcare is privatised and parents would generally be expected to pay for any remedial assistance for their child. I have often wondered if there is a link between a country that encourages self-sufficiency and sees government interference as generally a bad thing and the rise of self-help organisations. If I may contrast your anecdote about your son with my own experience. I was diagnosed with dyslexia and other specific learning disorders in my early-teens. Prior to that it was the usual case of being told I was lazy, careless, useless, etc so I am well aware of the stigma that is often attached to non-diagnosed dyslexic individuals. Eventually some of my teachers were sufficiently concerned to recommend that I be evaluated by an Ed. Psych. And the rest is history. What worked for me was the school providing a laptop. I wouldn’t claim that everything has been easy after that but it did solve the most serious problems.
I want to clear up some points you raised in your blog.
First of all, here’s a simple factual error — one that you can check with any whois utility:
Davis Dyslexia Association International (DDAI) has indeed registered the domain dyslexia.com, but not (as you say) dyslexia.org. Dyslexia.org is owned by a company called “Reading from Scratch” We have nothing whatsoever to do with them.
My apologies. A whois search reveals that DDAI have also registered dysgraphia.com, dysgraphia.us, dysgraphia.org, and I’m sure many others. This doesn’t allay my fears that DDAI are trying to drive people interested in specific learning disorders to their product, in fact it reinforces them.
Also, just to be clear, DDAI does not take any fees from dyslexic clients for services; rather, DDAI is in the business of conducting workshops for teachers and other adults to teach them how to use Davis methods, and also we sell books, kits, videos, etc.
A full DDAI course costs in the region of ~$14,500. This does nothing to allay my fears that you exist primarily to make money, in fact it reinforces them.
We also license people who have successfully completed our year-long training program to allow them to use the “Davis” trademarks in connection with their work. Those people may in turn charge fees for their services, or they can choose to work for a school or charitable organization.
This does nothing to allay my fears that people are seeking to profit from dyslexic or other specific learning disabled clients, in fact it reinforces them.
Part of our training program requires each prospective Facilitator to work successfully with multiple clients and submit detailed case reports. So we actually agree with you about the need to prove a technique works before charging money for it, and we make every Facilitator prove themselves with at least 4 clients before licensing them. When Ron Davis published his book in 1994, he and his associates had worked with about 1,000 clients since 1981.
All this does is prove that your Facilitators can communicate your ideas to your satisfaction, it does not prove that the technique actually works.
I realize that’s not the same as having some independent researchers come in and do controlled studies, but I don’t think it’s immoral for us to market a service that we ourselves have tested again and again — especially if we stand behind it. And we do.
I think it is immoral that you charge for a service that has not been independently shown to work. Simply stating that you stand by your technique does not make it work. Independent verification in properly controlled trials is the very least that you should subject your technique to. We, as a society, don’t allow drug companies to push medication on to a market without them showing that the medication does what they say it does and is acceptably safe. Why should your technique be different? You are asking us to trust you when you say it works yet you offer nothing but anecdotal evidence, strongly suspect to cognitive bias and subjective validation, to support your claim .
I say all this because I think your concern about people being charged money for phony promises of a “cure” for dyslexia is a legitimate one - but that is not what we are doing. As you noted after visiting our web site, we don’t claim to “cure” dyslexia. We provide an intensive one-week educational program with support training and limited followup services. Usually by the end of the week, the client knows if it is working or not.
Also our program has been checked out in the UK by an agency of the Department for Education and Skills, which is now called the Department for Children, Schools and Families. They arranged for some clients to work with Davis Facilitator and observed the programmes and conducted some interviews, and they included these case studies in a publication called “A Framework for Understanding Dyslexia”. I think all British parent would be well advised to read that publication before choosing any method for their child.
I found the case study. It uses a sample size of two. The report doesn’t condone or condemn the method, it merely reports participants opinions. Anecdotes if you like. No meaningful conclusion can be drawn from it. I have skimmed the transcripts from the interviews with the teachers and while they are remarkably enthusiastic about the method they repeat the inaccurate and dramatic claims about ‘picture thinking’ that I criticised in my previous post. At no point has the method been judged by an Educational Psychologist or similarly qualified individual.
You questioned what could be done with plasticine to “fundamentally alter the properties of the brain and cure disability”. We don’t claim to change brains; we use clay modeling to help students master letters, words, and concepts. For example, if a student wanted to master the word “from”, she would first look the word up in dictionary. She would model both the meaning of the word and its letters in clay. She would say the word and its meaning aloud; she would practice making up sentences using the word; she would learn to spell the word backwards and forwards. Our program has the students model more than 200 small words like this, which happen to comprise about 80% of the words usually seen in print. We also have some exercises to go along with reading to improve reading speed and comprehension.
I think the point where we diverge is that you seem to see dyslexia as a medical problem that would need to be cured before a child can read. We see it as an educational problem, and we think that dyslexic children and adults can learn to read and write well, but need a method tailored to their unique learning style. So we have no interest at all in changing the brain; we figure its easier to change the teaching method to fit the brain than the other way around.
I certainly don’t see dyslexia as a medical problem that needs to be or can be cured. I see it as a medical problem that can cause difficulty in this modern society where so much value is placed on literacy and written communication. I see it as a medical problem that can largely be made irrelevant through technological interventions, such as computers, and greater understanding and patience from teachers. I do not reject your claims that dyslexic students may benefit from different learning styles. However, I do demand reasonable proof that such learning styles can benefit dyslexic students. This is where the bulk of my objections lie. There is simply no proof that the Davis Methods work and the logic they are based on lies firmly in the realm of pseudoscience. You charge money to train people, and they in turn charge money to treat people, based on unproven methods. I regard this as immoral.
In that regard, I noticed you complained that you couldn’t find the Reading Improvement journal in PubMed — well, PubMed is a database of medical journals. You would have to find Reading Improvement in a database of educational journals. (It is indexed online in the WilsonWeb Journal by the way; you can use their index for free but they charge money to access the journal content.).
I would expect research on dyslexia, a medical condition, to show up in PubMed which does include all credible publications related to health (and many dubious ones too). Is Reading Improvement a peer-reviewed journal? Why wasn’t the research published in a credible medical journal?
On the other hand, there is a way that you can find out how Davis Orientation Counseling works for free. (That stuff you referred to as a “Jedi mind trick”, which actually is a kind of a cool way of describing it — I’ll bet my son would have loved that!) Just check the book out from your local public library. Then, if you want, you can try it out on your own.
I suppose I should do that if I want to find out more about how you claim it works. On your own head be it. 
The most important question that remains unanswered in your response is, if you have such confidence in your methods why won’t you let them be subjected to controlled trials and the results published in peer-reviewed journals?
October 9, 2007 at 12:07 am
Gimpy, we have and would welcome any and all interested researchers to investigate our methods. Ron Davis went to the leading dyslexia organization in the US in the early 1980s, then called the Orton Dyslexia Society (now “International Dyslexia Assocation”
and practically begged them to look into what he was doing and was rebuffed. I spent months this year in correspondence with one of the leading brain research labs associated with a top US research university, who was interested in possibly doing a Davis-specific study; but I have now been informed that the lead researcher has decided not to do any more dyslexia/brain scan studies after finishing the current study.
The Rene Engelbrecht study came about because the researcher, a teacher in South Africa working on a master’s degree in psychology, approached us and asked permission to research our methods. We had no prior connection with her, certainly no financial ties, but we gave her our full blessing and a few suggestions; the only thing we asked in return was that she make it clear that she herself was not a fully trained and licensed Facilitator and to describe with specificity which Davis methods she chose to use. One of the problems with a controlled study is that the Davis program is both very complex (a combination of many different techniques) and very individualized, so it is hard to control for variables if you do a full program with students; but of course if you break it apart and only do pieces of the program you will not necessarily get the same results as doing everything together.
But absolutely — the answer is we welcome studies, and if you know of any qualified researcher in any part of the world who wants to do a study of any kind, please feel free to give them my name as a person to contact.
October 9, 2007 at 12:41 am
I hope you don’t mind my answering your various questions in different posts — I am not trying to monopolize your blog. I think all of your questions have merit so I want to answer them, but it will be easier for me to do it in a series of short posts.
You asked:
Is Reading Improvement a peer-reviewed journal?
My answer: To the best of my knowledge, it is. When the article was submitted I was told that the researchers had to await peer-review- there was a long interval between submission, acceptance, and publication. It is listed in the WilsonWeb database under peer-reviewed literature,and the publication description on Amazon.com as being refereed.
I would expect research on dyslexia, a medical condition, to show up in PubMed …Why wasn’t the research published in a credible medical journal?
The research was not about dyslexia, it was about the implementation of Davis methods in a classroom environment. The question was, would children aged 5-7 who were taught with the Davis methods in addition to the regular reading program do better than children in matched classrooms who were not taught with Davis methods. By measuring pre & post test results of both groups you could ascertain whether the Davis strategies had an effect, and if so the strength of that effect and whether that was positive.
The children we not diagnosed as dyslexic because the aim of the program was preventive — to reach children before they are diagnosed. Most US schools still use the discrepancy model for identifying children with learning disabilities and almost uniformly US schools refuse to use the term “dyslexia” but instead use terms like “reading disability.” Reading is not taught until 1st grade and generally children are not identified as needing special education services unless they are at least 2 years behind in reading level — so that means that by the time children are even offered special services in school, they have already fallen behind.
Also, in the US, there 30-40% of children fail to gain reading proficiency by 3rd grade, so in any random grouping you could theoretically expect 1/3 of all children to be below-proficient by the time they reached that level. In the Davis study, two of the 3 matched classroom sets were lower SES groups, meaning that their parents were lower income and thus most at risk for reading failure - at least the way things work in the US, where rich kids generally do better than poor kids in the schools.
So the idea behind the Davis study was to try to catch the kids before they failed, by giving the kindergarten through 2nd grade kids the same Davis techniques (the clay modeling, the reading exercises, attention-focusing exercises, etc.) - and at the same time leaving in the old curriculum that worked for the other 60-70% of children, and see what happens.
And what happened was that all of the kids in the study gained proficiency — so instead of 30-40% of the kids falling behind, we had 100% of the kids doing well enough that none had been referred for special education services by 4th grade, the time when that would ordinarily happen in US schools. But the part I found most intriguing — and quite unexpected — is that there was an extraordinary spike in the number of kids referred to the gifted program - way beyond the norms.
Obviously, that is one study. If you read the study itself, it kind of ends on a note “this is interesting, we need more studies.” No scientific study means much until it is replicated, and ideally it ought to be replicated by different researchers — and that has yet to happen. The Davis Learning Strategies have now been implemented in many schools in the US, but most don’t want their kids and teachers used as guinea pigs for a study, so I don’t know if another formal study is likely to happen.
But the point is, this is not a medical question - it is an educational one: what methods are best for teaching young children to read? With the case of the Davis strategies, our goal isn’t to replace other methods but to fill the gap for what we think may be missed by those other methods.
October 9, 2007 at 2:14 am
OK, now I am going to answer some of your money questions.
As to web sites: DDAI does own about 75 different domain names, many of which are not currently being used for independent sites. For example, we bought dysgraphia.com with the idea of developing a small site about our program for handwriting (discussed in Ron Davis second book, The Gift of Learning) but never got around to developing it. We started reserving *.org web sites whenever we registered a *.com site, simply to avoid confusion such as the mistake you made thinking dyslexia.org was the same as dyslexia.com. I am always getting email meant for dyslexia.org and dyslexic.com, which is not a good thing for those companies, and rather a nuisance for me when it is an irate customer wondering why they have not received their order from some other company. We have also registered some common mis-spellings of the word dyslexia, but not all of them — for example, dylsexia.com. This practice of reserving domain names is pretty common among various companies. In any case, *.org domains are not legally reserved for charities or nonprofits these days — that is something that was the case when the TLD was first authorized in the 90’s, but now anyone can use them. If I ever design a site for a charitable organization, then I put the exact nature of their organization on their home page or an “about us” page.
DDAI is a commercial organization and it provides professional, career level training. So yes it does cost almost $15,000 to complete the course — that includes 7 workshops taught by an instructor. Class size in the introductory workshops is limited to about 30 (but often much smaller), the pods and practice meetings usually have about 6 students, with a 2nd instructor on hand if there are more. The instructors need to be paid for their time (after all, this is how they earn their living); DDAI needs to pay rent on its facility, the venues where we have the larger workshops or workshops away from our main site all charge money, we provide various materials with the workshops, we serve refreshments, etc. Anyway, we are selling a service that is expensive to run.
I realize that in the UK students are able to attend University for far less than in the US, and perhaps it is not so common for private entities to offer educational services for a fee. But that is what we do, and while we may differ on the value of those services, I hardly see how it is “immoral” to
offer to teach adults career-oriented information.
What do you do for a living? Do you get paid for it?
I used to be a lawyer. I hope you will believe me when I tell you that my earnings potential was much higher in law than as a web site manager and writer, but there is another difference. Since I began working for Davis — and this was in 1995 when our web site at http://www.dyslexia.com first went live — every week I get at least one email, sometime several, thanking us profusely for the difference our book or program has made in their lives, or in their child’s lives. I find it this gratifying. I have followed some of these families for years; sometimes a child who did the Davis program writes back years later, a teenager, to thank us again.
Am I saying that our program is a miracle cure that will work for everyone? No, I have never said that. But we have a lot to offer families who want our services and whose kids are a good fit for our program. (more to come)
October 9, 2007 at 2:52 am
Now I am going to respond to what I think is your most intriguing and apt comment: I am genuinely interested as many organisations such as yours arise from the USA where healthcare is privatised and parents would generally be expected to pay for any remedial assistance for their child. I have often wondered if there is a link between a country that encourages self-sufficiency and sees government interference as generally a bad thing and the rise of self-help organisations.
I think you are absolutely correct — that US parents are accustomed to paying for services, although not because of the situation with health care. In the US, dyslexia is not viewed as medical or health-care related problem — if it were, the private health insurance companies would cover the cost of such services, but almost none of them do.
In the US dyslexia is considered almost exclusively as a problem learning to read (certainly no one offers remediation for other dyslexia-related symptoms) — and as such, something to be dealt with in the schools. US law requires schools to provide special education services for all who need them, but historically the Congress has not provided the funding to implement those laws fully — and the reality is that the parents often have to fight for years to even get their children approved for such services, and the services that are provided are almost always inadequate. Often children who are placed in special ed end up doing worse rather than better than they were doing in the regular classrooms. So definitely there is a need for private services simply because the schools are not doing their job.
I also think your comment about encouraging self-sufficiency is particularly insightful, especially because the Davis program is philosophically very strong on the idea of personal responsibility. The idea is to give the dyslexic client or adult tools that they can use, on their own to confront and overcome learning difficulties, and also to encourage the creative (and individualistic) process. So it is very important to us, for example, the the client make her own model of the meaning of a word, an not copy someone else’s. We won’t even publish more than a few examples of word models, for fear that some teacher will set about directing a classroom of children to merely copy what is in the book. So yes, American notions of self-sufficiency are a big part of the Davis approach, and probably part of the reason a man like Ron Davis set about doing his own research and setting up his own clinic in 1981, rather than simply giving up when the major dyslexia organizations told him they were not interested in researching his approach.
That being said - there is certainly a high demand for our services in the UK. I hear from just as many UK parents complaining that about being unable to get meaningful help for their children as any other part of the world. I think that on paper, the LEA SENCO system is wonderful — but in practice, there are many children being missed. And of course they are the ones casting about looking for help on their own, who end up coming to us.
In some ways the UK system seems to be worse. In the UK, reading instruction generally starts earlier, at around age 5 — so there are many more stressed-out 5 year olds who simply are not able to keep up to demands for learning material that they are not developmentally ready for. While this is a matter of educational philosophy with which some may disagree, we at Davis would favor a more gradual approach toward language arts during the early years — we feel that a huge part of the problem stems from emotional blocks formed in early years when the child learned in school to think of himself as stupid or inept, simply because he was unable to form his letters the right way round or had a hard time with books. Once a child gives up on himself, it can be hard to turn things around.
October 9, 2007 at 7:17 am
I have waited until the last to answer your questions about my son. When my son was 11 years old, he could stumble his way through text that could be read easily by a typical 7 year old. At age 10, he would bring home his school text books and, ask his sister to read the assigned chapters to him every day, as he could not read them on his own. She was happy to help. She was age 5.
Getting his written homework done each night was alway a big disaster and drama. It would take hours and hours to do the simplest task; there would be tears; there would be shouting.
Once, that year, they had “author’s night” at my son’s school. All the children had been working on stories and had their work posted on the wall, and read excerpts from their stories to the parents. But hen I got to the classroom none of my son’s work was displayed on the wall. I asked the teacher why not; she told me he had never turned in anything. He was required to have a story written for that night, and he had written two very short sentences on a little scrap of paper — the other children had pages and pages and had put together little books. When it was my son’s turn to read, he stood up and read only one of the two sentences on his paper, perhaps 5 words at most. All the children were supposed to leave their stories in a stack for the parents to look at after they read, but I saw my son sneak up behind his teacher’s back and take back his paper, tear it up, and put it in the trash.
One day my son got into a big fight with his sister at home over a word she had written down, “up”! “That’s not a word!!!” he screamed. “P, U, is NOT a word!!” That’s when I decided that I had better get help for him.
You asked:
I am curious to know if your son was diagnosed with dyslexia by a qualified Educational Psychologist (or the USA’s equivalent) or if it was a case of self-diagnosis?
The answer is no, I could not afford to pay for such an evaluation. I had asked the school about testing for dyslexia when he was age 7, age 8, age 9, age 10 … and always they told me he was “too bright” to have any problem like that, that he would “grow out” of it, that he was “lazy” and would be able to read if only he would “try harder”.
If it was self-diagnosis how do you know it was dyslexia?
I know it wasn’t a problem with his vision, because I did have that tested. It wasn’t a problem with his schooling, because at age 8 he was taught by the school’s reading specialist.. and surely she would know how to properly teach reading, right?
What would you call it when a child has difficulty learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and sociocultural opportunity? (Trick question - I just gave you the definition of dyslexia propounded by the World Federation of Neurology which was the most commonly accepted definition at the time I would have been asking; this definition was also enacted into law in the state of Texas in 1995, the year my son turned 12.
When I bought the book, The Gift of Dyslexia, I read the parts about picture-thinking to my son. He became very excited: “That’s exactly how I think, Mom!” “That’s exactly like me!”
So I listened to my kid. Maybe I should have waited until I had an expert diagnosis, but instead I simply asked him did he want to try the exercise in the book (that “Jedi mind trick” that I paid $14.95 to learn). He was eager, I had my doubts - but what the hey? The surest way to prove it didn’t work, I thought, would be to try it.
Only it did work. Twenty minutes after we started the exercise I had my son sitting in front of me, reading fluently, without hesitation or stumbling, from a chapter in a book written at close to the grade level appropriate for his age. And he didn’t want to stop. He started wanting to read everything he could get his hands on.
And the other change: he turned into a happy, enthusiastic kid, instead of the morose, angry little boy he had been. Instead of always staying to himself and picking fights with everybody, when he went to school that year he had friends. A lot of friends. And his teacher that year put him in the most advanced reading group… which, admittedly was a little bit hard for him to keep up with at first. But he wanted to stick in that group, and by the end of the year he was reading material far above his grade level.
The next spring the teacher asked the students to write an adventure story. She said that the story should be about 3-5 pages long. My son wrote a story that was 20 pages long.
So no, I don’t know if my son had dyslexia. It could have been some mysterious malady that has no name. But he couldn’t read and then I did the stuff in the book and then he could read. And since that time I have heard from hundreds of parents and adults with the same story. (Many of whom did have formal diagnoses of dyslexia)
You think its immoral to charge for services without independent, outside proof that it will work. Well, I will tell you, here in the US there is no such program for dyslexia.
Most specialists in the US will advise that children get tutoring with a program called Orton-Gillingham, which was invented in the 1930’s. In 2006, a state-funded agency issued a report saying, “A search of the research literature for studies examining the efficacy of the Orton-Gillingham Approach did not identify any empirical studies of this approach implemented specifically as described in the Orton-Gillingham training materials….there are no studies available at present to provide an estimate of its impact on the reading growth of young children.”
So that’s the best that we have in the US. Maybe you have something better, in terms of research, on your side of the pond. I’d love to see the peer-reviewed research articles about such methods if you can provide it.
I have to tell you, as a parent if an 11 year old who couldn’t read the word “up” in 1994, I really couldn’t wait for research. I think it is immoral that my son had to suffer the way he did up to that point. What do you think parents should be told? “We’re sorry, your son has dyslexia, but there are no independently researched programs that are proven effective to help him, so there is nothing we can do for him”.
How about: “Your son will never learn to read”. Or how about, “Your son just isn’t college material.”
No one ever said anything like that to me, fortunately. But I have had many, many parents come to me and that is exactly what was said to them. Then I referred them to a Davis Facilitator… and then the kid learns to read.
If you have a better solution, I’m sure many parents would be happy to hear it. But please don’t tell them that they are not allowed to think for themselves when looking for a program to help for their kids. You may think they can wait for definitive proof; but I think that we have a program that we know from experience can help almost all of the people who come to us… and it would be immoral not to offer it.
If your gripe is the money that is charged for the program, the answer is simply that the people who offer it have to eat. If they could not earn a living offering this program, then they would have to go off and do something else. Alternatively, the government could fund the program, just like it does with health care — but you don’t want to see that happening until there has been published, peer-reviewed (and, I assume, replicated) research published in medical journals…. so by your own standard, a government-paid program won’t happen soon. So it’s either private tuition or nothing.
(That’s it… no more monopolizing your board - unless you have more questions for me.)
October 9, 2007 at 7:49 am
Abigail, thank you very much for taking the time to write your responses. I’m afraid they were caught in my spam filter overnight but I hope I have released them now. If you think I’ve missed any please let me know. I will respond later in the comments to your points.
October 9, 2007 at 8:31 am
Gimpy, thank you for that note. I just want to say that I appreciate your courtesy, and also I forgot to acknowledge that you are fully entitled to your opinions. I appreciate the opportunity you have afforded me to express mine in my response.
October 10, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Abigail, first of all I’d like to apologise for a couple of things I have written. I was wrong to suggest that your organisation exists primarily to make money. Based on your responses to my posts it is clear that you have a genuine desire to help dyslexic people and you have been forthcoming and honest. It also seems that you clearly would like more research into methods to help dyslexic (and other specific learning disabled) people deal with and potentially overcome their difficulties. However, I stand by much of my original criticisms.
Until such investigations take place I stand by my statement that you should not be making grand claims for it.
Obviously as a commercial company you have an interest in registering as many domain names as possible, now I fully accept that you believe that DDAI’s methods have merit and I am not arguing against commercial organisation exploiting domain names in general. Personally I believe that some domain names incorporating various disabilities should be kept free for charitable and government use. However, I recognise that that is impractical (and possibly illegal). The practice certainly isn’t restricted to dyslexia, the domain ADHD.com is owned by Eli Lilly (pharmaceutical manufacturers of ADHD drugs) for example.
I also think that the description of dyslexic individuals as ‘picture thinkers’ is a statement that isn’t based on scientific evidence but on the intuition of some people. Now there is nothing wrong with intuitive statements as a starting point for scientific investigation, as long as the research is based on sound scientific criteria. But, as you acknowledge, there is no research on the ’science’ behind the Davis Methods. However, I do accept that there is not yet a satisfactory theory of the causes of dyslexia and other specific learning disabilities. The symptoms, however, are sufficiently well recognised so that it can be diagnosed reasonably accurately within the broad definitions of the term. I also think that DDAI haven’t provided proof that their methods work better than other methods or than doing nothing. Although I do find your explanation that there is little assessment of various methods convincing both from literature searches and personal experience. However, this should not be used as an excuse for doing nothing. As I have made clear earlier I fully accept that there is a possibility that there is some merit in the Davis Methods, just think what your earning potential would be if you could prove it was an effective technique to rigorous scientific standards.
I am interested and slightly appalled by the difficulties parents in the US seem to have in getting approval for special education services. However, as a Brit with no experience of the American education system it is not my place to judge. In the UK it was hard to get assessments until the 1990s. Certainly I was undiagnosed until I was 14 as I mentioned earlier. I understand it is better now although, as you point out, a lot of UK parents still have complaints about assistance. Again though I think that assistance should be approved by Educational Psychologists or similarly qualified individuals because of issues of expertise and accountability.
But thank you once again for your contributions and I’m sure we both agree that more research is needed.
October 23, 2007 at 7:37 pm
What a refreshing change! Good manners do still exist.
This exchange should be shown to the bully-boy buffoons who claim to be a learned society for homeopaths.
November 8, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I have watched my son struggle, do everything possible to avoid reading, and make the same spelling mistakes since first grade. Only one of his teachers has ever raised a concern when he was a third grader, while the rest pushed him along telling me that all was well (he is a boy, etc..), despite my concerns that I expressed at every teachers meeting. He is a great kid, and very respectful of his teachers. He is a very good athlete and well liked by his peers. In no way ADD, hyper, or “dumb”. This year, however, it seems as if his learning problems are catching up with him. He cannot comprehend what he is reading, and feels “ill” after trying to read. He asks me to help him study for tests, which equates to me doing the reading and spoonfeeding him the information, which will often put him in a mid-B range on tests (and not an A as his mistakes are due to problems reading and comprehending the questions). If he studies on his own, he will usually score very low, D or F. The grades are not my primary concern, rather it is the knowledge that he cannot learn on his own. This is beginning to take a toll on his self-esteem and creating a great deal of stress in our home during homework time. Yes he has been tested twice by PhD psychologists, and neither said they showed signs of dyslexia, although both admitted that they were not experts in dyslexia diagnosis. They could not provide me with anyone who was expert in dyslexia diagnosis. However, my observations as his dad since first grade have had me convinced that this is what he has. I have wondered if this was all due to parental expectations being too high as we are both educated, in fact I am a physician. However, as I watch his first grade brother breezing through books that he could not read in 3rd grade, and reading words he has never seen or been taught before,I realize that anything, even if not formally peer reviewed, must be seriously considered. I read the Davis book about two years ago and contacted a facilitator, but did not follow my gut instinct to try ’something’ due to the lack of scientific study and fear that this was all a big scam. I have recontacted a facilitator yesterday and will pursue this program over the next few weeks. My wife remains quite skeptical and is not yet on board - she still feels all of this may be due to us putting too much pressure on him. I just worry that I will regret it if I choose inaction over action. I will provide followup and let you know the outcome in this case.
November 8, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Hi Lin, you might be interested in reading this and this for a sceptical approach to another pseudo-scientific dyslexia treatment, Dore, with useful links. I assume you are based in the states and I am not familiar with the education system there so can’t provide specific advice. I would recommend that your child is seen by a registered child psychologist who specialises in learning disabilities though, if you haven’t done so already.
The problem I have with Davis and Dore is that their explanations for how they are purported to work are not based on science and they do not seem interested in proving their methods work in proper trials. I do not doubt for one moment that there is a possibility that the techniques used by Davis and Dore may be of benefit to dyslexic children but both Dore and Davis seem reluctant to critically appraise their techniques, they seem to prefer charging money. It is this that I object to most.
However, there is very little research out there on learning techniques for dyslexic (or similar) children so I think if Davis and Dore could ditch the pseudo-science and be prepared to change and adapt their techniques in response to critical appraisal then that would be a good thing.
One final thing, if your son does improve after concentrating on Davis how will you know if the improvement is due to Davis or to the increased time you have spent helping him concentrate on learning?
I wish you and your son all the best.
November 8, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Gimpy,
I agree with you 100% re: the concerns about lack of controlled studies and proper trials. This is one of the big factors that has kept me from moving forward. However, what is out there that does work? Anything peer-reviwed with statistically significant positive outcomes? And avalable in small market (I am not in a big city, and not close to academic centers)
I have spent and lost greater sums of money on ventures much less important than my sons welfare. I am fortunate to have some extra money that can be spent. As it is the middle of the year, I do not look forward to pulling him out of school to dothis, but I think doing this over his xmas break will only demoralize him. He really is trying so hard.
As far as knowing if this works, I can assure you that I have spent HOURS trying to help him learn. The only teacher he had that came forward spontaneously (very experienced private school educator, by the way) has been his tutor for a few weeks now, and I can even sense her frustration. She has said what is obvious - “there are no shortcuts - he just has to work harder than other kids”. I have had him read the same paragraph 4 times and he still cannot tell me what it means. He will add in words from the sentence below, leave out small words, and even skip entire lines, thus rendering what he is reading complete garbled nonsense. He struggles just to get through the material, and feels sick afterward. Yet if read it once he gets it. He is a smart, sweet, normal cool kid - but this process is taking a toll on him, especially as he sees his peers movve along with little effort, and his younger brother as well.
I am putting a lot of hope on this. If it doesn’t work, then I am out money I would have probably lost in the upcoming stock market debacle anyway, and he will be a week behind in school - not good for him.
I will also post my experience on the internet in a way that others can find it. On that note, I find it incredible that I cannot find anything really negative about this program, specifically in the way of negative experience or testimonials. Can you? - and of so please let me know. My wife remains concerned that this my brainwash him and make him worse somehow. However if this works, not only will my prayers have been answered, but I will let you know first, as you are the only skeptic I have found in over an hour of googling..
November 8, 2007 at 10:18 pm
What works? Tough question. Because dyslexia is a diagnosis that covers a broad range of learning disabilities I don’t think there is one single solution to coping. Based on personal experience I found that writing on a computer with a spell checker made a huge difference for me. Also little things like learning to plan assignments in advance or developing a routine help some aspects. Oh and patience and understanding in other people was always appreciated. There are plenty of forums out there where parents share their experiences with their children so you might want to have a look around.
As for negative expeiriences, I don’t think there is any danger that Davis will do harm which is why people probably don’t get too upset if it doesn’t work. If you were to keep a sceptical mind over the explanations behind the techniques but try the techniques anyway I think you could safely avoid any suggestion of brainwashing. You never know they may well work (just not for the reasons Davis say they do).
November 9, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Pretty amazing to me how your recommedations are almost exactly where we have evolved to, specifically
1-Computer with spell checker. I have seen where other parents say this has helped. Of course, first one needs to learn to type. We have been doing so via an excellent online course called Peters online typing course. Progress has been slow and steady, and will probably take at least to the summer to get to where his fourth grade hands can type fast enough to go to typing over writing.
2- We now “preview” school assignments rather than “review” them. Fortunately the teacher posts the upcoming assignments on the web so we can see what to preview. We have been doing this for about 2 months, and he appears he is able to understand more the next day. Problem is that this needs to be done on top of homework, which can be a quite a challenge - and easy to see how a 9 year old can get frustrated and overwhelmed. He frequently comments how this seems unfair as he is sure none of his classmates have to do this (and he is probably correct.)
Both of these extra efforts, of course, take time and I strongly fear that this can cause a “burnout”. A big part of me wants to say “the hell with it all - he is a great kid, so what about the academics - just let him be himself”. Meanwhile, our society has allowed a great deal of power in the hands of the school systems in determining the value of our children - with that value tied directly to their academic performance. The kids feel it and for those who underperform it does begin to reflect in self-esteem. I can tell him over and over that he is a wonderful and smart kid, however I can see in his eyes that he is beginning to doubt me as the influence of the schools value system is taking a greater hold on him (and to be honest, this is really wired into me, no matter how much I try to deny it). Bottom line, another case of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, or in a housefire. In such circumstances, doing nothing is the worst choice, even if the available choices appear as longshots.
I am throwing this out here not only to vent (thanks by the way for opportunity) but also for others that may be in the same boat can see that they are not alone.
November 9, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Dragon Naturally Speaking might also be worth a try - some people find it useful to be able to dictate their work. Oh yeah, and I imagine this is obvious - but if headaches are a problem when reading, worth seeing an optician if you haven’t already.
If looking for other things to try, you could also try changing the colours on your computer for more or less contrast etc, to see if that helps with making text clearer and/or avoiding headaches. You can do this either with Windows settings, or something like the free version of screen tinter here (don’t get one of the paid-for versions: they’re expensive, and you don’t need them). No trial evidence afaik - and not any kind of miracle cure - but some seem to find it useful (I prefer using LCD screens with the colours slightly muted myself) and this has advantages of being free, easy, quick, harmless, and with vaguely plausible mechanisms by which it might be useful…
July 15, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Lin,
I was curious about the outcome for your child as I too am looking into the Davis program for my son.