Feedback on Lindamood Bell?

Our daughter was also diagnosed with dyslexia around the same age and we did a SHORT (and insanely expensive) stint at LB. While some feel LB helped their child, it was not our experience. I highly recommend you find a qualified Educational Therapist and get early intervention. (https://www.aetonline.org/index.php/parents-community/find-an-et) In our case that meant once weekly sessions for several years, and it was worth every penny. Our daughter is now in her 2nd year of college on a full academic scholarship, double majoring in a STEM field. Her ET made ALL the difference. One more thing, dyslexia is not just a 'reading' thing, there are lots of other parts of being dyslexic that make life interesting and sometimes challenging, so I encourage you to be open to learning as much as you can about the dyslexic brain, and be patient. The Dyslexic Advantage is a great book to start. Good luck to you!

We looked into it, and also spoke at length with our neuro-psych, and LB can be helpful for general struggling readers, but other methods are often more successful for dyslexia (OG is the 1:1 gold standard). Depending on who diagnosed you, they likely have go-to recommendations. Our private neuropsych has sent hundreds of kids to practitioners and programs over the years. Their hands-down recommendation for this area of the East Bay for dyslexia is Strategies for Learning. We interviewed quite a few independent practitioners recommended by friends or BPN, but the SfL team was by far the best informed, the process was well-managed, the intake meeting felt fun and not-scary to our 6 yr old, and they offered a free get-to-know-you with his assigned academic therapist to ensure match. They will also come onsite to schools for a very small $10 travel fee, and getting help during the day so my child could do fun/kid stuff  after school was important to us. We are starting in earnest in January, but our experience has been very strong so far, and we trust the dozens of success stories shared by our neuropsych and several families at our school that also use this group.

We are also seriously considering a dyslexia-specific school. We appreciated the counsel that if we have our child in full-day sessions that are tailored to his learning needs, he'll make dramatic progress compared to tutoring or pull-out support. We have talked to many families about good experiences at North Bridge, Charles Armstrong and Hope Academy for 2 or 3rd - 5th, and how it positioned kids to be able to integrate to public or private mainstream middle schools effectively. We are exploring this for next year while also seeing if tutoring in the current environment is enough for his needs.

Hi there,

We enrolled our daughter in Lindamood Bell for a couple of short sessions during summer breaks because of delays in reading. She hadn't yet been formally diagnosed with dyslexia, but we suspected as much. Later, a thorough neuro-psych evaluation was performed by Dr. M. Alex Peterson. While I think LMB was helpful, the neuro-psych report was much, much more so. Essentially, we learned fascinating information about the way our child's brain worked. Her dyslexia was mild, but because she also had mild anxiety and ADD, there were complexities to how each showed up and affected her overall experience of life and learning. The ways those three fed into each other helped us understand why she was slower to learn to read, but also what aided her executive function, where her brain excelled and was engaged, and how better to support her in and out of school. It was the best money we spent. She is thriving at Black Pine Circle and we feel good about her future at Berkeley High as a result. Dr. Petersen now works within a group that also supports children with the learning and other therapeutic resources that will best serve them. 

My BFF is not on BPN, so I will report her experience. She took out a loan to send her rising second grader for the summer and said it was the best thing she ever did as a mom. Not only did their skills improve by leaps and bounds, but also their self-confidence and behavior.

Our son did 2 summers of LMB in Berkeley, CA. Each summer for about 6 weeks of 4 hours a day 5 days a week. He did Seeing Stars program. That intensity was what he needed to finally be able to decode by age 10! He was on IEP since 2nd grade at his public school, had small group instructions, extra pull out reading time every day etc. During the school year he also worked privately 2 times a week with a wonderful retired special ed teacher, but he really needed the “drills” of LMB to memorize all the sound patterns of English plus the first 800 sight words. He loved the young college age instructors at LMB. I was surprised how motivated he was to work towards getting some small prizes for learning new words or sound patterns.(similar to clearing a level of a computer game) We also made sure he had something fun scheduled for the afternoons like a Lego or woodworking camp. Best of luck to your kid!