i am new here, but have read all of your wonderful advice to others. are any of you trained in the lindamood bell programs, both lips and seeing stars? if so please help me with this situation……my child is in 5th grade, severely dyslexic. he is reading at a late 3rd grade level and is really stuck on multisyllable words, plus his reading rate and fluency are slow. he has had many hours of private,lindamood bell remediation (over 500 one-one hours) over two years. he started out in lips one hour per day five days per week. because his p.a. was extremely weak we did a summer intensive after that and he finally at almost 9 years old learned to read and got to late 1st grade level. end of 3rd grade he did another lm bell intensive and got to a 3rd grade independent level. he has not had any further remediaition, other than being exposed to the wilson program strategies in his public school resource room. he has not improved much in his reading over the last 1.5 years, but he has not regressed and has held on to everything he has learned at lm bell. he has put in many, many hours in the lips program, but the bulk of his remediaiton during the second intensive was in seeing stars and some v.v.
his public school wants to start (after 1.5 years of trying wilson strategies here and there) “supporting” the lm bell instruction he has had. while i am pleased about this, none of the teachers he will work with are trained in lm bell or familiar with seeing stars. since the lips program is what lm bell is really known far, i have found many people do not understand the seeing stars program. anyway, they want to go back to tracking the sounds on blocks with him as well as reintroducing the mouth movements and vowel ccircle lm bell uses in lips. well, my son has done many many hours of both of these activities and i feel, as does lm bell, that he has really gotten all he is going to get out of them. he has made great progress, but needs to continue visualizing letters and letter patterns; his orthographic processing is as weak as his auditory processing was. i feel like we have remediated p.a. (and his testing shows this to be true) as much as we need to for now. doesn’t it make more sense to take this kid from where he is and work on fluency, rate and automaticity in reading? he is 12 and i am concerned also about his self esteem if his teachers. who are not really even trained in lm bell take him back to the mouth movements…..any thoughts from some lindamood bell pros out there? or anyone else have any opinions or advice? it is all gretly appreciated.
Re: advice on lm bell program....
I tutor using all the LMB programs. I took their training several years ago.
You are absolutely right that the WRONG thing to do would be to take him back to the early LIPS work. From what you wrote, it sounds as though he got very good training with them but nothing happened to support that every time he got back to school. No matter how good a program is, most children will need support once they’ve left that program.
But I think that bringing him back to the early LIPS work could demoralize him. I just wouldn’t do it. Besides, you say he has retained it all. Additionally you are very right to be concerned about putting him in the hands of people who aren’t very familiar with LIPS. The tendency in people new to LIPS is to belabor the early LIPS work and then they don’t understand why a child isn’t moving forward. LMB people strongly caution against making this mistake. Just by the fact that your school people want to go back to this makes me feel that they really don’t have a handle on the program at all.
If he needs work in fluency, I’d go with Great Leaps. You can do it at home with him yourself if the school won’t. It’s easy to follow and many parents do it with their kids. I’ve found that every now and then I work with a child who has learned every single thing LIPS has to offer but is still a very slow reader. Those kids are good candidates for a program like Great Leaps. I combine it with other Repeated Reading techniques.
Please feel free to email me. I can describe in greater detail work you can do on your own with him.
Re: advice on lm bell program....
My son was son’s PA skills were remediated and he could read pretty well but has had trouble sustaining the effort. His very good comprehension and decoding skills fall apart after after a few pages of difficult material. He could listen and comprehend the same material for very long periods of time. I have come to truely understand that this is related to an ocular motor problem.
You may want to consider an evaluation by a developmental optometrist.
what is a developmetal optometrist?
he has had a complete eye exam by an optometrist 2 years ago and agian last week. at both exams i asked about vision therapy and though both eye doctors really believe in vision therapy they did not feel he would benefit much.
also, i am so confused about apd. yes, his audory working memory is low - is this the same as auditory processing? i tend to think this apd bit is really just a part of the dyslexia. is it somethng really different? am i missing something here? i am confused also becuase many of the things that work for dyslexics are recommended for apd.
can someon explain the difference?
actually they have already started the lm bell blocks and mouth movements. my son thinks it is stupid. he is not demoralized as far as i can tell; he says he knows he doesn’t need these exercises anymore. they are easy for him and i guess he is just humoring his treachers. i feel terrible that they are wasting his time, when he needs to work on so many other areas. and yes they are well meaning and do care. but how do i inform them that this is moving backwards nor forwards for this child?
Re: what is a developmetal optometrist?
Beans,
There is usually and underlying language or auditory processing disorder in most children with a true reading disorder (dyslexia). So the underlying cause may be working memory issues, and the result may be reading problems. I have a great article on this topic and I’ll try and remember to find it and give you the link.
How do you inform them that what they are doing is inappropriate? I suggest you get Lindamood-Bell to write a status report of his current level of functioning and what he needs next…like Seeing Stars or multi-syllable work, or whatever.
Janis
Re: what is a developmetal optometrist?
A developmental optomotrist is one that does vision therapy. Even among developmental optomotrists there seems to be a quite a bit of variance in approaches and success rates.
I specifically looked for a developmental optomotrist that deals with sensory integration issues as my son has had fine motor, balancing and bilateral motor integration issues. These motor issues can affect vision but every kid can have a slightly different problem. My son’s opthamologist did not believe my son needed vision therapy but my son’s opthamologist like most opthamologists doesn’t think any kid needs vision therapy.
APD affects the child’s ability to hear the sounds in the words ie, phonemic awareness. Most of the reading research points to this being the most important factor in reading. I honestly thought that once my son’s phonemic awareness skills were developed he would be home free. Although he did improve dramatically with a program similar to lmb called phonographix, he was not quite home free. He had other issues like sequencing, and his visual motor issues that needed to be addressed. He is doing very well now in a regular class after a very big effort on his and my part.
We continue to plug away at cognitive areas such a logic and visualization of symbols.
Re: what is a developmetal optometrist?
Definitely let the school know that your son is ready to go beyond LIPs. As a matter of fact, I noticed in the Seeing Stars manual that they recommend using Seeing Stars along with LIPs (not following it). Of course, that would be for those children who still need LIPs. It sounds like your son is ready to move on and should not be held back.
From what I’ve read (although I’m just a parent), it seems that even amongst professionals in the field, there’s still some controversy about what APD is, and even who is qualified to diagnose it. Is it just another part of dyslexia? (or maybe dyslexics share some of the characteristics…I think with my son this may be the case), is it related to ADD, or ADHD? I get the feeling that more research and study may be necessary before we have a better idea of what it is, and what it isn’t.
In the meantime, I believe that there are a lot of LD’s that share characteristics which I think can often make accurate diagnosis difficult.
I would hope that you could get Lindamood Bell to write a status report about where he is and what skills he needs to develop next. If he has mastered the skills taught in LiPS, then yes, he needs to move on. But these people at school sound like they have good intentions while not understanding reading at all. There are some LB trained people here and I am sure they will answer your questions more specifically. I am almost wondering if there aren’t some underlying processing issues that need work before he can really progress in reading. Has he been evaluated for auditory processing disorder or by a developmental optometrist?
Janis