Why Should I Do an Informal (LD Dyslexia) Assessment of My Child?

April 8th, 2009

One of the critical questions I often get is why should I do an informal assessment of my child? Can’t the school do an assessment and tell me why my child is having trouble learning?

Yes, the school can test your child, but the tests used by the schools don’t always give you the whole picture. For example, sometimes a child is shown to have poor auditory memory because they were not able to repeat nonsense syllables or random digits. These activities have absolutely no meaning to your child. You know that your child can often tell you a long story about something that happened the day or week before.

Using an informal assessment in the comfort of your home that utilizes parent observation can give you the opportunity to do an assessment from your own observations of your child. Remember, you are the one that knows your child best. Then, when you have the results of your evaluation, you have a starting place to approach the school if formal testing is indicated. You can even suggest areas that need to be tested more thoroughly than might otherwise be tested, so the school can get an accurate picture of your child. (The LD Dyslexia Screening Tool gives lists of suggested formal tests that can be requested if indicated upon scoring the informal test.)