Dyslexia Voice Feature - Summer 2025

The article below is reproduced from its original publication in the Summer 20025 issue of Dyslexia Voice, published by Dyslexia Scotland

Our son, Fiachra, has autism (diagnosed age 10) and dyslexia (identified age 11).

Our journey to identifying our child as having dyslexia highlights the challenges that co-occurring conditions can play in the identification journey.

Fiachra had early challenges in relation to speech and language, but our concerns were dismissed. Challenges became more apparent during the Covid-19 lockdown. I think this is when many of us realised that there was something “going on” with our neurodiverse children, in the sense of feeling alienated when parents referred to home learning as “difficult,” listed their reward strategies, shared their tactics. For us it wasn’t difficult, it was impossible. We are parents not schoolteachers, and certainly not teachers with specialist training in supporting neurodiverse children.

Fiachra was in P2 when lockdown commenced, and P3 when the second wave of school closures took place. In the short attendance window in-between, his headteacher and class teacher identified that he had literacy challenges, and we completed the first checklists for dyslexia. His teacher agreed with his literacy challenges, but also felt there was something else going on, but she wasn’t sure what. Throught he second lockdown, we gave up on formal learning, and spent the weeks watching television, getting outdoors, playing computer games.

After the reopening of schools we could see Fiachra was still struggling. My husband reached out to Dyslexia Scotland to seek a tutor and a wonderful, experienced, retired additional support needs teacher started working with Fiachra via video call at first and then in person. Quite swiftly his tutor raised with us that she thought there was more going on than just dyslexia. At the start of his P4 year, he was referred by our GP for ADHD.

This is where things slowed down. At school, everyone was behind, because of the impact of Covid. Fiachra was happy and engaged but was masking at school. His class teacher was supportive but Fiachra attends Gaelic Medium Education (GME). Children in GME generally get their formal dyslexia assessments later, as they learn to read and write in English at a later stage of primary school. It became quite evident that there was not parity of esteem between the resources available for dyslexia in English and Gaelic. This was when I got involved with Dyslexia Scotland’s branch network via the National Development Officer Lena Gillies, and we started to work together to improve the dyslexia resources available for GME – but that’s a story for a whole other article.

Fiachra had an initial CAMHS assessment via video call in April 2021, at which meeting we were informed that they were referring him under the autism/ADHD pathway. This affected his dyslexia assessment, as local authority policy where he attends school is that a child cannot be assessed for dyslexia while they are on the identification pathway for autism/ADHD, due to “crossover.” This is a policy I believe is inappropriate as the conditions often co-occur. At the start of P5, Fiachra received speech and language intervention, which identified significant word finding, memory and processing difficulties. His school implemented support on a needs-led basis.

The other children in Fiachra’s year group had their assessments and received dyslexia identifications in P6. Fiachra was in P7 before he obtained his, after he had been formally diagnosed with autism 7 months earlier (and not ADHD). There was, evidently, no need for his formal identification to have been delayed. Our journey is easily summed in the words of the principal teacher, who called to let me know the results of the assessments: “It’ll come as no surprise to you that Fiachra has dyslexia.”