> I believe (I may be wrong though) that in
> the States the state will pay for special
> schooling for kids diagnosed with this.
> You'd have to find out more, cause I'm not
> in the States, but my step-mom was thinking
> to move to the States just so she could put
> my sister in a special school that the
> government will help pay for.

In California, the public schools offer special education for learning disabilities.

Both of our older kids went to public school for this reason.

There are ten years between Erin and Casey, so by the time she came around we were used to the drill, but we really wanted to put her in a local private Christian school.

We went and spoke with the Principal and told her that we already had two kids with reading problems, and we had no reason to expect that Casey would be any different (she was three months early, born at only 26 weeks, which made it all the more likely).

The principal told us about their in-house "Powerline" program that they used for kids having reading trouble. It sounded a lot like the special Ed in public school. She said that if Casey didn't respond to that program, then they would send her down the street to the public school for their resource program, but that she could stay in the private school, regardless.

Casey did respond well to Powerline, so we never had to take the next step. I have a feeling that had our other two kids been exposed to the same program at Kindergarten, they probably would have done fine as well.

One thing they did here in California around the time our two older kids were learning to read, was they switched away from phonics and toward sight reading.

Most adults sight read. You don't sit there and sound out every word, you just remember what certain words look like.

The problem was, a lot of little kids couldn't do it, so they had this huge surge in what they thought were learning disabled kids here.

Keep in mind that if you don't learn to read right off the bat, all your other subjects are pretty much screwed. If you can't read the instructions on your math test, then it is kind of hard to get the word problems, right?

Casey's school only does phonics, and the powerline program is one on one phonics. She learned to read, when our other kids struggled until they got into special ed, and THAT is where they used phonics!