My kid sometimes hates the dots too. She is 2 years old now.. and we just follow the doman method teaching skill. However, I am now using some new techniques to her. I am going to ask her using the clothes clip to learn the mathematic. How I start is using the number card with red dots under each number and ask her to clip on that. This might be help and cheap way as we need not spend a lot of money.
Sometimes, I figure out while teaching small kid , you must change the method every day as they love to have some new fun learning skill. I am sure this will be a good point to motivate your kid to start on reading skill.
What I am teaching now ... every idea is on my blog :
http://littlemommy2012.blogspot.com/may be you got some idea from here... take a look!