One Boy's experience from age 6-8(LOOOOONG)

I was reading a topic below where intensive clinics like LMB were criticized because they don’t work longterm. I thought I would give an update on our progress. Our background is this. We were living in England where son attended local C of E school at age 5. madatory age. They said they were teaching phonics but saw no evidence of it. Was supposed to read books sent home but was just memorization. Since didn’t see any phonics usually didn’t. He had huge vocab and obviously bright so thought he’d learn quickly when the phonetics kicked in. Now I know this is called “balanced” method and there is no systematic phonetics-tho that may be changing in England and it looks like PG may become more standardized there in schools. Anyway after that year Jack got a pass into 1st grade but evaluation said he couldn’t count to ten consistently and knew his letters only to A and sometimes B. I couldn’t believe that cause he’d gone to a preschool and he’d done all that color ABC stuff. Didn’t make sense. But I found he couldn’t count past 3 consistently and tho he could recognize cap ABC that was about it. I think now all that stuff in preschool he was drawing the letters as shown him by teachers and of course made no connection as to sound or what they were. So I accidentally did 3 things right I think. I didn’t push the reading, I took him out of what would have been first grade-and since most parents start kids at 4 he was oldest in class- and I made plans to take him back to retired friend teacher who’d homeschooled and who thought she could teach him phonetics in about 6 weeks. We ended up staying here 6 mos and by Dec both of us had realized something wrong. But we both knew that brain in there was extremely bright. (When he was eventually tested by LMB the spread between ability and potential was 96%) But we found he could only recognize about 2/3rds of the alphabet about 75% of the time. After almost 6 mos of 4 hours of one on one. His math had improved to about grade level by using manipulatives. By that time we’d decided to send my friend for training at LMB in Ca. ( If she hadn’t offered we’d have prob gone to Boston clinic-very grateful we didn’t. We’ve probably spent the same amount that would have cost but far more effectively over 3 years) And that summer she came and began working with Jack while we were back in England. By end of summer he’d had prob equivalent of 6 weeks at a clinic. And we decided to spend another winter in U.S. so she could continue Seeing Stars. We paid her $10 an hour for 4 hours a day. Last year Jack began reading ads and signs spontaneously as well as books to little bro. The kids and I relocated here for another year , We did IM with Jack this summer but Jackie continued the seeing stars for 2 hours a day also. This fall he is decoding just about any word he encounters, self-correcting but reading slow. Just had eyes checked again and tho glasses corrected his slight double vision last year it is worse this year. So we’ll start VT in Feb. However on jackies suggestion we bought 2nd hand DVD player nad with subtitles on he can read a lot of dialogue and keep up. And hopefully this will improve his reading speed a bit. When he hit 1000 of the Seeing star sight words his fluency really jumped-that was last year. And he won the local reading Rainbow young writers and illustrators prize- a big boost for all of us. (On TV and everything.) This is long but I wanted to add support to those who say LMB and PG work but it needs to be kept up much longer than is usually accounted for. My son joined the local elementary school chess club last year and is playing and winning occasionally against the 3rd graders. He learned on computer that first year-the computer had more patience than Dad. And that seemed to help his math and executive function. IM over the summer really helped math and he’s learned to ride his bike by himself this fall-which I think is IM , too. At 8 Sp and writing are still problematic. Working on keybording this year. Jackie finally concedes spending anymore time on writing is probably not worth it. Still plugging on Sp. I know not all parents can do this but I just wanted to add our experience. Also by end of school year 05 we may be relocating. And Jackie, our tutor, is thinking of taking up selling air purifiers cause she doesn’t think she can get enough pupils consistently in our rural area. I have found her to be an incredibly gifted teacher. I was wondering if there would be any interest in others coming to Ks for 6 week LMB clinic situation if they could get reasonable family accommodation here-maybe even sublet our house- and pay a fraction of the LMB clinic cost. I’d hate to see her talents wasted when i know there are kids out there hurting. What do you guys think??