Dyslexia Charlotte

Who are the Educational Specialists at Child and Family Development?

Established in 1980, Child and Family Development has been serving the needs of children and their families in Charlotte. Our pediatric therapy team has over 400 years of combined clinical experience, with expertise and additional certifications in many diagnostic areas.

Our Educational Specialists are trained to evaluate and treat the underlying causes of learning difficulties. Learning concerns may involve specific disorders of reading, writing, and mathematics or problems with attention, organization and study skills.

All of the Educational Specialists at C&FD have advanced graduate degrees in the field of Special Education. They help students understand their learning style, strengthen underlying processing weaknesses and develop strategies for school success.

Educational Specialists offer the following services to maximize growth and development:

• Developmental Screenings and School Readiness Assessments for children 3-5 years of age to help parents plan for the most appropriate learning environment for their child.
• Comprehensive Educational Evaluations to identify a child’s learning strengths and weaknesses
• School Consultations to present a child’s learning strengths and weaknesses to the school to provide the ground work for developing a team approach to meeting the child’s school needs and establishing informed parent advocacy.
• Treatment of Learning Disorders in Reading, Mathematics, Written Expression, Literacy Readiness, Handwriting, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Phonological Processing Delays through an Individual Educational Treatment Plan
• Support for children and adolescents with learning concerns including Study Skills, Homework Strategies, Time Management, Test Taking Strategies through individual treatment as well as intensive small group session available if needed

Looking for pediatric therapy services near Lancaster, South Carolina?

Child and Family Development has an office in South Charlotte that is less than 5 miles from the border and easily accessible from I-77 and the 485 loop.

Our multi-disciplinary clinic has been helping children and families since 1980. The team of experienced therapists can assess and treat a wide range of childhood concerns, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities or special needs.

We participate in many insurance plans.  Also, some of our Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy providers accept South Carolina Medicaid. 

The Contact Us tab on our website will link you to our address and Mapquest. 

Looking for pediatric therapy services near Rock Hill, South Carolina?

Child and Family Development has an office in South Charlotte that is less than 5 miles from the border and easily accessible from I-77 and the 485 loop.

Our multi-disciplinary clinic has been helping children and families since 1980. The team of experienced therapists can assess and treat a wide range of childhood concerns, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities or special needs.

We participate in many insurance plans.  Also, some of our Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy providers accept South Carolina Medicaid. 

The Contact Us tab on our website will link you to our address and Mapquest. 

Looking for pediatric therapy services near Fort Mill, South Carolina?

Child and Family Development has an office in South Charlotte that is just 13 miles from there and easily accessible from I-77 and the 485 loop.

Our multi-disciplinary clinic has been helping children and families since 1980. The team of experienced therapists can assess and treat a wide range of childhood concerns, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities or special needs.

We participate in many insurance plans.  Also, some of our Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy providers accept South Carolina Medicaid. 

The Contact Us tab on our website will link you to our address and Mapquest. 

What are Executive Skills Disorders?

Many students, particularly students with learning disabilities, ADHD, Dyslexia and Dysgraphia, struggle upon entering middle school and high school. All at once, the student must shift from learning the specific academic skills of reading, writing and math to applying their academic skills in the content area. They now must be prepared to do literary analysis, report writing, and the reasoning of higher level math. Tackling this next learning step requires the student to draw upon the executive skills of prioritizing, multi-tasking, and time management. The struggle to garner one’s executive skills is frequently observed in these types of behaviors:

• Does homework, but forgets to turn it in
• Loses assignments
• Forgets materials
• Gets good test scores but loses points on daily homework grades
• Ignores or dreads homework

If this sounds familiar, the child's executive skills are likely not up to these tasks.

The executive control needed to handle these organizational demand increases dramatically upon entering middle and high school. Yet, the organizational support a student needs to learn these skills actually decreases. Consequently, many children with weak executive skills require direct instruction and individualized instructional support to manage the routine of studying, note taking, and homework.

Educators at Child and Family Development are experienced in working with these middle school and high school students who struggle.

Because it is not necessarily considered an academic subject with a grade, handwriting sometimes garners less attention than it deserves. However, there is great value in receiving strong handwriting instruction during the primary years.

• The ability to effectively manipulate a pencil is essential in sharing one’s ideas on paper. Students who struggle with their pencil grip often experience hand fatigue and find themselves unable to finish writing tasks. Also, for children who have difficulty knowing how to form letters, the act of writing even single words can become a chore. Even though these students may have a rich fund of verbal information, they may write very short, choppy sentences when asked to put their ideas to paper. In doing so, they fail to share all that they know.
• Handwriting is also essential in all academic subjects. In language arts, children must spell and write stories and reports. In science, they have to record data. In foreign language, they must write sentences and paragraphs. Especially as they get older, students have to listen to verbal instruction and quickly record notes. If they cannot write in an accurate and efficient manner, they may miss or fail to understand important information that is required for test preparation and papers.
• Finally, handwriting goes along with the skills that are taught in other areas. As children learn to write individual letters, they make associations with sound sequences and whole words. They begin to make connections among the things they are learning.

Difficulty with handwriting may also accompany the underlying struggles associated with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, or reading and writing disorders. As an Educational Specialist at Child and Family Development in Charlotte, I administer comprehensive evaluations to determine the presence of learning disabilities. I also enjoy consulting with parents about their concerns in these areas.

Does your child resist completing assignments that require handwriting?  Does he find ways to avoid writing activities?  

Handwriting is a complex skill that requires postural stability, fine motor strength and coordination, good visual perceptual skills, motor planning, higher level cognitive skills.  There could be several explanations for this avoidance as there are many skills needed to write.



What skills does my child need to be able to write?

1. Your child must have a strong base of support or core muscles to sit upright at a table to complete writing activities.
2. Your child needs adequate fine motor strength, coordination and grasping skills to write for any length of time
3. Your child must have strong visual perceptual skills to allow for visual memory of formation of letters, visual spatial awareness for spacing and alignment, etc.
4. Your child must demonstrate good motor planning or praxis skills and executive function in order to form an idea, organize his/her thoughts, and put his/her thoughts into writing

How do I know what area my child is struggling with?

One of the first steps you can take is to schedule an occupational therapy evaluation for your child.  An occupational therapist will assess your child, focusing on the skills identified above, to determine what area(s) might be impacting your child's success with writing.

An occupational therapist can then provide you with a list of recommendations to address the areas of difficulty that were identified during the evaluation. If your child does not qualify for occupational therapy services, he may be referred for a psychological/educational evaluation to determine if the he may have difficulty with executive function, dyslexia, dysgraphia, or another learning disability.

What can I do to help my child?

• Don't assume that your child is being disobedient or defiant in not completing his writing assignments
• Encourage and support your child, praising him for the work they have completed
• Help your child break down writing assignments into smaller portions so that they can handle them without becoming overwhelmed
• Provide your child with a way to help him organize their thoughts such as a "word web"
• Allow your child to type out his assignments to eliminate the handwriting portion while trying to put his thoughts into words
• Implement other strategies recommended by an occupational therapist, child psychologist or educational specialist

The occupational therapy and physical therapy teams at Child and Family Development offer a number of cutting edge auditory interventions called Listening Therapies:

• SAMONAS
• Therapeutic Listening®
• The Listening Program®

What if my child tests “out-of” her dyslexia?

This is a question recently posed by concerned parents. They knew that their child would continue to struggle with specific features of dyslexia even when older. Although her reading decoding was stable and reading comprehension was fine, the speed or automaticity of reading was an ongoing problem for her. She read accurately but slowly. They were concerned that the accommodation such as extended test time would not be granted if the test “numbers” obtained on a subsequent evaluation did not reveal a learning disability “discrepancy” that would support the presence of her dyslexia.

The research on dyslexia is clear: Dyslexia persists through out the life span of an individual once diagnosed with dyslexia. Longitudinal studies* support the persistence of Dyslexia in adolescents and young adults. Specifically, reading speed remains delayed. Dyslexic individuals continue to require time to input the visual word, decode the word and gain automatic meaning. Although the decoding process may no longer be an issue, the speed of decoding generally remains a slower, tedious process for the dyslexic student and adult. Dyslexia, once appropriately diagnosed, persists through life. Dyslexia does not “go away”!

*Pediatrics. 1999 Dec; 104(6) 1351-9

Persistence of Dyslexia: The Connecticut Longitudinal Study at Adolescence; Shaywitz, et al. Dept of Pediatrics, Yale University of Medicine

Last November 18^th, 2010 was the 35^th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education (IDEA) Act. This federal law has made incredible changes in public education for students with disabilities by mandating free and appropriate public education. Although many more students with disabilities are able to attend public school and learn, there are often instances where state and federal laws are violated and students with disabilities do not unfortunately get the education that their disability warrants.

As an educational specialist at Child and Family Development, I consult with parents of children with disabilities, such as learning disabilities, dyslexia and ADHD.  We can help facilitate the process of special education in public schools. This includes consulting parents with determining special education eligibility as well as the effectiveness of the Individualized Education Program (IEP).

January is National Mentor Month and what a great reminder of the importance of mentors especially when it comes to education! All children benefit from mentoring, but especially those with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and ADHD as many of these children struggle with poor self-esteem and poor self-concept. When they are able to connect with someone else who either has a similar learning struggle and has overcome it, or someone who takes the time to understand them and help them understand themselves, their self-esteem is certainly boosted. There are many ways that adults and even teens can invest in children and mentor them. This might include being a lunch buddy or a reading buddy to a young student. Think about how you can invest in a student’s future today!

National LD Awareness

October is officially National Learning Disability Awareness Month; however, every month some child, adolescent, or adult deals with the effects of their learning disability. Among the learning disabilities, Reading Disabilities, particularly Dyslexia are the most prevalent of the learning disabilities and the most persistent over the life span. Long after a dyslexic student learns how to decode words, the speed and efficiency of reading can remain an enduring obstacle. As a consequence, reading for pleasure is frequently avoided; novels are seldom read to completion; in-depth analysis of texts takes too long; and too often newspapers are abandoned in favor of listening to a TV newscaster’s analysis.

A remedy for “reading avoidance” is available.  CD and digitally accessible books, texts, and newspapers are available to individuals with severe reading disabilities and dyslexia. A diagnosis of a reading disability is required for membership in 2 organizations that provide audio access to print for individuals with a reading disability: The Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic (www.rfbd.org) or BookShare (www.bookshare.org).

The psychologists and educators at Child and Family Development work as a team to evaluate children, adolescents and adults who struggle with reading, math, and/or written expression. Once a learning disability is diagnosed and understood,  a window opens to increased options and possibilities for managing and reducing the struggle of living with a learning disability.

October is an important month!  As educators, we recognize the impact of dyslexia and other learning disabilities both on children and on adults of all ages.  Learning struggles affect not only student performance in the classroom but older individuals’ functioning in the workplace.  To learn more about dyslexia, explore the International Dyslexia Association website at www.interdys.org.  Another wonderful resource on learning disabilities is the Learning Disability Association of America website at www.ldanatl.org.  If you have further questions or feel that your child might have a learning disability, Educational Specialists at Child and Family Development in Charlotte are happy to assist you in understanding more about your child’s learning profile.   

BLAST from the PAST

30 years and counting for Child and Family Development… With longevity comes great joy and satisfaction. Here are a few samplings of recent Blasts from My Past that keep alive for me the passion of what we do at Child and Family Development…

• A young 27 year-old adult who was treated at Child and Family Development for his attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities when he was a teenager called and wanted to share how well he is doing at his new job
• A mother called to say that her dyslexic son whom we saw 10 years ago has graduated from college and has been invited back to the college as a graduate intern in a field he loves.
• A sister whose brother was diagnosed 12 years ago and successfully treated for his learning disabilities called seeking guidance choosing her graduate program. She wanted  to work in a clinical environment like Child and Family Development
• A sister of another client likewise wanted advice on post-college studies so she could become a reading specialist and could work with students like her brother who has dyslexia.

Educational Specialists, Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Language Therapists, and Physical Therapists at Child and Family Development all make a difference in the lives of the children we evaluate and treat as well as in the lives of their families.