two questions

Most children’s hospitals hire very specialized folks. They aren’t trained to work with stroke patients. They are trained to work with children. Not saying you should—you’re the judge of that—but you might look into programs and think about summer.

Thanks

I know how hard it is - my eyes got a little wet when you said your son just read two adult novels for pleasure. I think I need to back up and really work on more basics with my son. He was bored with them - because he sees doing it successfully one time as enough. He just doesn’t understand that he has to do it until he can do it in his sleep! :-) Of course, then I get defiance and melt-downs - reading just isn’t coming easily to this kid!

One of the absolutely wonderful things about O-G training is learning lesson pacing. Change tasks frequently. The visual drill takes about 2-3 minutes, the auditory portion 4-5 minutes (spelling and sentence dictation). I add a blending drill for some and some auditory discrim (Lindamood tracking) for others that takes 4-5 minutes. Then, word reading of 5-7 minutes, Sentence reading of 7-8 minutes and 10-15 minutes of controlled vocabulary passage reading. If stamina and time remain, I do expressive writing for 10 minutes. (Sometimes, I’m working in a 40 minute block, sometimes 50 minute, and sometimes private tutoring with a 60 minute block.)

If materials are available and teacher is skilled, the transition between tasks is seamless. The routine of doing things in the same order helps achieve this.

when I finally learn to do all this correctly? If I could find one good tutor who believes that this child really can learn to read - and is interested enough to explore what he needs and then teach him! Unfortunately we live in a very unsophisticated town educationally. All the big guns are in the urban areas more than an hour’s drive away. Until then …

I have an “O-G type” reading program that I ordered a while back - but then I found PG. Maybe I’ll pull the video out and see what other skills I can learn. I’ve looked at LMB seminars - but unless I want to pursue this as a vocation (I’m an architect by trade), they are really expensive, both financially and timewise. Of course, my son not being able to read will ultimately be terribly expensive, as well.

I’m in the process of firing off letters of dissatisfaction to my county - including the superintendent … I’ll give it through the next IEP meeting now that I have everyone’s attention and see what happens. I’m not sure what I’ll do if I get no satisfaction from the schools … I suppose what I have been doing all along.

My son was my learning practice. I didn’t do it all correctly. I don’t do it all correctly every time now with every child. I get some real stumpers from time-to-time.

In what state are you? Being in rural areas can be tough, however, Missouri ranks behind Arkansas and similar to Mississippi in its educational saavy. I do happen to live in a city; though by NYC or LA or San Fran standards, it is a town.

We live in Spotsylvania, Virginia - adjacent to Fredericksburg and Stafford Counties; halfway between Washington, DC and Richmond (also site of the recent sniper shootings). My son was seeing a neurologist at Georgetown University Medical Center (55 miles away) and depending on traffic and weather, it would take us 1 1/4 hours to get there, or 3 1/2 hours to get there … Richmond is a little better …

However, after so many disappointments from so many professionals (both medical and educational - I’m fighting this battle on more than one front - not to mention the medical insurance company!), I am getting to the point where I really don’t trust anyone with my son and his educational well being. I continue to be told that “almost” is good enough - and I refuse to believe it!

Lil

Hi Cathy,

Are you sure about ReadAmerica being up for sale? First I’ve heard of it. Where did you hear it?

What a gorgeous area (recent news excluded). You are very accessible to great stuff all the way along the eastern seaboard. I’m sitting out here on the prairie. Well on the edge of it.

You need to read a book by Eric Jensen: “Teaching with the brain in mind.” Easy to read. Very insightful. Not about reading but applies to teaching and learning anything. For anyone.

Don’t get the the point that you don’t trust anyone. You will know when people are really helping you and when they are just collecting money.

Sometimes we don’t get a clear overall diagnostic answer; however, that doesn’t mean that we cannot teach the child. Brain is a complex thing.

My child could rhyme at 4 but still has trouble with segmenting at 8.

Any thoughts on segmenting and sequential processing? You have to remember what comes first. My son still slips with tried and tired even though he really does know the sounds.

…most people don’t even say’au’ when they’re reading, ‘cuz it sounds more like cuz ;)

Some of us are naturally tuned into sounds — part of the human variability. It’s not all inherent, though — we can learn it even if it’s not natural. (I managed to learn butterfly. It’s very pretty. It’s not strong, it’s not fast, but if it were reading it would be fluent; but it took 5 years and *lots* of drill of the little parts.)

People who are natural with sounds find rhyming easy. People who are natural with sounds often learn to read easily. Therefore, people who find rhyming easy …

If you’re figuring out the words with something besides sounds, then you’re going to make exactly the mistakes you described. WHne I started teaching I was dumfounded by them and would say “what’s the first sound there?” After a series of blank stares I realized they didn’t know. They’d never been taught. (My guess is it comes naturally to some teachers… they don’t remember being taught that explicit stuff, they just remember how much fun reading was… let’s share the joy, the exact words don’t matter, right?)

Yes, teaching decoding is difficult and at times tedious, especially for the creative learner and teacher.

My son is so very creative. He has about an 8th grade reading comprehension level yet still needs some help with decoding. His superlative comprehension skills aren’t worth a hill of beans until he learned to decode. If he remained a nonreader he probably would have even lost those comprehension skills overtime.

I think some children pick up the actual reading pretty easily because they can attend to the details. Phonics instruction comes quick for these children. These kids probably do need to move on the specific comprehension instruction once they have that skill down.

My son will never need comprehension instruction; as a matter of fact all of the comprehension instruction almost caused him to not learn to read at all.

In either type of child, the horse needs to go before the cart.

But… it couldn’t hurt.

Lil,

I believe you live near Shay. I think she must be an excellent tutor.

Linda

About confusion - my son is tutored by a tutor using spector phonics which I believe is OG based, and gets “multisensory” support at school. I’ve been doing PG with him at home for a few weeks. Maybe this all would have been confusing if he were starting completely from scratch, but as an emerging reader (with a looong way to go ) it doesn’t seem to be confusing him at all. In fact when I started doing multisyllabic words with him at home, he put his hand under his chin and showed me how he was taught to feel the syllables as he says them. He seems to find it all very complementary. Which is why we are leaning towards an intensive LMB intervention over his winter break - we feel like the more repetition in slightly different ways the better to hopefully reach some automaticity.

Victoria, rest assured I am firmly on the phonics band wagon. And I have kept in mind your past remarks about not worrying about speed with a beginning reader . My son is really really decoding now, and it does slow him down sometimes because he ‘s really looking at the words now, and guessing much less. But its exciting to see him unlock the code.

… I spent 5 years teaching at The New Community School. Hard not to put on 15 pounds your first year teaching — grateful parents keep bringing presents. Admission is somewhat selective (it’s college prep, though not everybody goes) — but never were hands thrown up and towels thrown in about a kiddo, always “Okay, what can we do differently? What *does* work with this one?” Everything is structured & multisensory with built-in accommodations (procedures all in place for dictated tests for kids who need it, read-alouds ‘til ninth grade and then books on tape after that, reading/dictation support for research papers in high school, etc.)

Yes to both of you - however, Loudon and Richmond are still over an hour each way. :( Just can’t be done while school is in session.

Susan,

There are many, many books by Eric Jensen - Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Teaching with the Body in Mind, Teaching with Music in Mind, etc. Anything specific about “Brain in Mind” and why I should get that particular one?

Thanks, Lil

Getting things into and out of memory is a major issue in teaching decoding and comprehension. (And NLDer’s very often need comprehension training.) Some of the memory and recall strategies in this book are indeed worth understanding.

I suggest you get it from your library. (Order through World Cat, for example, for delivery to your library if yours doesn’t own a copy. Mine didn’t.) Then you can see if it is a book you must own or from which you just wish to jot some notes relating to your learner.

Another similar author is Patricia Wolfe. Her big title is “Brain Matters.” Similar to Jensen but arranged a little differently.

Finally, Marian Diamond is another astounding researcher. One of her titles is especially for parents but I cannot remember the title—seems like I want to say something about magic and trees. I’ll look it up and post, too. (If my memory serves me correctly, Marian Diamond is the person who disected the brain of Albert Einstein.)

There is an element to segmenting and blending that requires working memory. Sometimes certain kids have trouble holding enough in memory to get syllables and one-syllable words with 5-6 or 7 sounds. They may do fine with 2-3 sounds—some even 4. That would be an auditory task because the visual stimulus is processed in the language center.

I had forgotten about the kids I’ve seen with that problem.

There is probably a percentage of kids with visual sequencing issues, too. A subtest like “Bead Memory” from the Stanford Binet *might* tease out that possibility. I”ve not worked enough with visual processing issues to be of much help on this.

“And NLDer’s very often need comprehension training” After looking at NLD for my son, I am relatively well convinced that I have a rather classic case - do you think that’s why it took me so long to pick up on how to teach him to read - in spite of Reading Reflex and all the good posts here? :-)

Thanks for the books - I’ll look at reviews on Amazon - I can probably find the Marian Diamond one, too.

Lil

Cathy,

I believe you must be mistaken. The Read America site is up and running and they are advertising the convention in the Bahamas for next spring. I have had personal email from them in the last month regarding my certification. Perhaps you had the wrong address. Here it is:

http://www.readamerica.net/

Janis

Sorry, I did not answer your questions in my last post! Yes, Phono-Graphix is intended for home instruction by parents. There is also a school version, but the parent version was developed first. The book you need to order is called “Reading Reflex” and is by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness. It costs around $12 from places like Amazon. It is well worth the cost!

Janis

What about trying to get him seen at Kennedy-Krieger/Johns Hopkins? Betcha they have some kiddy SLP’s who are a cut above the rest. I’d inquire now for next summer, though. The waiting list at our little children’s hospital in K.C. is 8 months for S/L and LD evaluations or services.

I appreciate the advice - I’m just not sure what more testing will do for my son. We (I) know where his APD problems are, where his deficits are for reading, and what he does and doesn’t understand. I just need to get the right professionals to work with him.

After reading on this and other bulletin boards for about a year, I’d say he needs some more Earobics (maybe FFW when he’s older if it doesn’t stick), and more PG. Then if he is still having trouble, we might move on to Lindamood Bell V/V or Seeing Stars. I’m also trying to work Interactive Metronome into the mix, but again we have no providers in our area - and it is an intensive 15 session therapy over 3 - 5 weeks. IM apparently helps everyone - not just LD or ADHD kids.

My problem is distance, and service providers in our area. So I keep plugging away … A couple of people on other boards have suggested moving - but my whole family doesn’t take change well. Plus we have a nice older home in an established neighborhood, with great neighbors, on 6 acres, on the river. If we move it would be to a far more urban area, higher cost of living, larger schools, much quicker pace of life. As a family we’d rather stay here and work on it as best we can.

Whenever I look at my spindly little holly bushes that grow about 2 inches per year, I think of your area with its holly trees.

Last time I was in VA (Williamsburg), the trees were turning. It was late November and totally enchanting. I wanted to stay until summer (and then go to Maine).

Seriously, what would I get with more testing?

Yes, Virginia really is beautiful. I’ve lived in other places around the county - but this is the prettiest place I’ve been. Might have something to do with the fact that I live in my home town? My husband is from here, too - we grew up just across the river from one another.

Few if any of us who have done it with our children on this board have completed the program in 15 sessions. The 15 sessions is what it takes to get through if your motor skills are fairly intact. If not, it could take many more to get the movements going in such a way that the objectives of the program are met. For example, my son did 28 sessions this past summer, without getting his scores down to the level we’d like. More sessions were recommended.

Lil:

Process spelling is the method kids use to spell MS words, the child spells chunk by chunk. He starts by saying the first chunk, and then saying and writing each sound, then he moves to the next chunk. You don’t do process spelling until you have done the MS word building and word reading lessons. Try words with simple code such as yes-ter-day or re-mem-ber. I have found the kids love it and are so impressed with themselves that they can spell long words.

It is through spelling that the child really comes to understand the logic of the sound symbol connection. That is key and if your child is having trouble spelling, he may still need segmenting work.

OK - thanks - we’ve been using that method for years - must be the segmenting he needs work on. I’ve seen him start to do a reasonable job with that for the first time in the last couple of months.

I agree when there is competition for dollars, as there almost always is I would rather just go for interventions.

It is rare that you will find an expert who will be able to explain something to you about your child that you didn’t already know. I think testing is for those who really just have no idea where to even begin.

If I had all the money in the world I surely would test my son more to get expert advice. Instead, I will spend the money on therapy and if needed tutors who are trained in the very best methods.

I agree with Karen IM usually does take more than 15 sessions for these kids. That being said, I would do it all over again.

PS. Latest gain attributed to IM. My son could never ride a skate board and on Friday we went to a skate park where he was going off ramps.

I tried to go off a ramp and just couldn’t do it. (Funny sight) Hey, and I was quite the skateboarder in my time. LOL

Lil,
When at my wit’s end, I contacted the Reading Coordinator of the James city-Williamsburg School District and asked her to recommend a really good reading tutor. She came back with the name of one of her best reading teachers in their system. Fortunately for us, Virginia’s teaching salaries are so lousy this woman had to do extensive tutoring to support her family. That woman taught my daughter to read in 4 weeks of 45 minute sessions 4x a week. This was after 2+ years of utter failure and frustration and lots of effort. Not to mention Bob books, word families and phonemes and what all. Needless to say, I worship the ground she walks on. What did she do? Encouraged her, broke words down, did it again and again. Kinda the Victoria method-hard work and lots of practice in CVC, CVCC, CVC_, etc Writing practice everyday. Best money I ever spent.

PS- The woman has since moved to NJ near Philly and an immediate 15,000 raise in pay.

Somehow, I got the impression that speech/language was already identified as a issue and that you couldn’t find someone well qualified to work with a child in your area. Language therapy takes a lot of family work, in addition to seeing the therapist. We had private speech and language with my son when he was young, about 5. Others I know have had language therapy for their LD children as old as high school.

I don’t think another round of testing is needed, unless you do. Maybe I got the wrong idea.

Ah - I misread your post. :-) Yes, perhaps SLP services somewhere like that might be good - but Johns Hopkins is even further than Georgetown, by a lot! I’ll have to ponder, again …

with both visual (diagnosis of right brain dysfunction) and auditory issues (diagnosis of CAPD), as well as attention issues (diagnosis of ADD-inattentive). He also has RAN and SID issues. The only complication we don’t have is the anxiety, which I am sure makes everything harder.

The road we have taken is to try to our best to build up every area of deficit. I figured that because he really had no true strengths (mild dyspraxia made even the feeling sounds in mouth ala LIPS not a great approach) that was all I could do. All along the way we have worked on reading, mainly using PG.

I just wanted to tell you that my son could perceive differences in sounds after doing Fast Forward following first grade. He still had a rough time with Earobics following FFW but couldn’t do some of the games at all before hand.
I did it as the provider and saw a very fundamental change in his ability to perceive sounds and follow conversations. His receptive language skills are normal now.

We have done tons of therapy (in addition to FFW, we have done vision therapy, IM, PACE, Neuronet, and a PG intensive) and the pieces are coming together this year. Now my son hasn’t felt well the past week or so—nothing serious just a little under the weather. His reading has backslid 6 months—I am sure it will come back. But I can see how precarious it all still is. And whether his reading will ever be “normal”—like enjoy it at all, remains to be seen.

But hang in there—and really I think it is chipping off one piece at a time with these kids.

Beth

Thanks Beth - We’ll get through it - but sometimes I panic about the school not being supportive. I know he can learn and excel (he’s proven that). It just takes appropriate remediation and the right kind of support.

I’m not trying to play the “my son is more disabled than yours” game - but he also has social issues and is terribly literal - part of his non-verbal learning disorder. Some days … :)

I feel really bad for you that your school is so unresponsive. I know NVLD is not a recognized condition but it would seem with all the various issues your son has, he would be classified on some basis. My son is classified as having a specific language disorder—basically reading. He also does get speech and language services, although the group size is so large that I don’t know how much good it really does.

We fought the school district for about six months and pulled our son out and homeschooled partially for the second half of second grade. It was the right decision—my stress level went way down!!! Then the school got a new resource teacher and things improved. But we really have done most everything on our own. But I do know having the school working with you is so much better than working against you.

I think having a kid with multiple issues is different because they really can’t compenstate. I have felt for years that in the academic realm my son’s only real strength is his interest level. He loves to learn—as long as noone makes him read about it! But he has issues in math, reading, writing, spelling–you name it. With his multiple deficits, everything takes longer so the time track that works for other people simply doesn’t work. Sometimes it is discouraging to read of other’s relatively quick successes. I just wanted to encourage you by letting you know that there are others out there dealing with a large range of issues and after much time and work, having some success.

Beth

Readamerica.com is for sale. Readamerica.net is the PG site.

Beth,

You are wonderful - wish we lived closer! We will be at SeaWorld the Monday before Thanksgiving, though - going to visit my brother in Orlando, and my father in Hernando. :-)

Lil

Lil,

Have fun!!! I haven’t been to Sea World but Orlando in general is a great place to forget all about academics!!

Beth