Where to begin

Does he remember other things? If you read him a book, can he tell you about it? Does he know other facts?

Does he remember the names to other things presented visually? For example, can he name a square, a rectangle, a circle?

It could just be development. My nonLD daughter didn’t know any letters at age 4 1/2. The big difference between her and your child is that she had no interest either. I remember sitting her down about that age and after about 10 minutes she wanted to do something else.

My LD child couldn’t learn his letters at that age either but there were tons of other red flags as well. Most glaring was his speech development.

Will he be in K in fall?

Beth

Has his vision been checked? He may not be able to see the difference.

He does remember colors but messes up red & blue (gotten better though since we started talking about his “red backpack” and his “blue jeans”).
He can differentiate squares, triangles, circles, stars, etc.
He can tell me about a book plot after we read it.
He can correctly set up a chess board and knows some of the rules.
He knows that he is behind some of his friends at school and the teacher is “testing” the kids right now on letters so it is really important to him now. I am not pushing him on this at all, I can tell he is bothered by it though and am trying to help him be comfortable with what he knows. I doubt school is pressuring him, but don’t know for certain. I don’t think it is important for him to know all his letters at 4y6m but I am very concerned that he can’t remember a letter after 2 minutes of constant verbal cues (i.e. while pointing to the flash cards: this is an “H”, this is a “G”, this is an “H”, this is a “G”, point to the “H” and say what’s this and he doesn’t know).
Kindergarten is in the fall.
Any thoughts would be helpful!

His vision appears to be fine.
He doesn’t sit excessively close to the tv, doesn’t hold books too close, and he has great hand-eye coodination.
Are there other “tests” with vision I could perform at home?

Can he/does he sing the Alphabet song? that would be important to know. Usually learning the song precedes learning the actual letters.

If he does know the song and can sing it well, I’d sing the song with him slowly while going over the letters. And I likely wouldn’t quiz him on the letters for a little while. I’d just sing the song and go over the letters. And I would get a wooden or rubber puzzle of the letters so he can pick them up and touch them while he’s singing the song. You might even play some fun games with the wooden letters such as having him close his eyes and asking him “Is this letter wriggly or straight?” Or find the letter that’s shaped like a circle (with his eyes closed)?

I’d find it very interesting if the names of letters were the only names he has trouble recalling. Naming issues are usually found in children who are not verbal.

What happens if you say point to the D(ee)? If you name the letter, can he point to the correct one?

He doesn’t like music very much and has just mastered the alphabet song (save L,M,N,O,P) about a month ago.
He learned shapes at school and I’m not sure how much they have focused on that so I don’t know if that was easy for him to learn or harder. Like I said, colors came pretty easy except for red & blue which he still confuses about 50% of the time.
He can correctly point to about half the letters in the alphabet. But he can only recall the names of about 6 (A,B,C,S,X,Z).
He has great communication skills. He speaks clearly and is easier to understand then my 6 year old. He uses full sentences.
One thing to note, he is the youngest in his class but his teachers tell me that his social/emotional development makes him appear to be the oldest.
I like your game ideas and will incorporate that in our routine.
Are “naming issues” very common? Is there somewhere I could look to read more about that online? I can’t find anything that meets his specific issues - I just don’t know the buzz words.
THANKS!

Hi guest. When my son was four his teachers and most of the moms thought he was gifted because he spoke in full paragraphs with great vocabulary. He was/is “gifted” but also has moderate to severe dyslexia. You asked about naming: one of my sons deficits is formally called a rapid naming deficit, and it is a predictor of dyslexia. My son too was very slow to acquire the alphabet, and even today at 11 has little idea of the sequencing of the letters without starting from the beginning. I would ask critically, can he rhyme? Does he get what it means to rhyme? If not, I’d think about a dyslexia screening.

I am an SLP….developmentally he may not be ready for the Alphabet….he is just getting the speech sounds down in his auditory memory…the SYMBOLS A, B, C, etc.. we use to represent the letters mean nothing to him. He needs to get the sounds down so do lots of phonemic awareness developmental activities to help him develop this and slowly introduce the letters again…start with his name….and break up the sounds…but bombard him with nursery rhymes, fingerplays and the like…

Thanks Peggy & Pattim for you thoughts and suggestions. To reiterate, I really do not care if he does or doesn’t know his letters (I know he is young and my expectations are not too high) and I am not pressuring him in any way. My concern is how hard he is trying to learn them and he can’t. It seems to me that if a child wants to learn something, sticks with it for 45 minutes and can’t retain the names of two letters while we are working on it - well, that seems to be a sign of something. He cannot rhyme, but I don’t remember if that is something he should be able to do yet. Isn’t he a little young for him to be able to rhyme???? I will research dislexia some more.
THANKS! Becky

Here are some practical and fun ways to work on letter recognition.

You mentioned he can air-write letters. Have him *trace* the letter (and please, save yourself huge amounts of trouble later and have him do correct directionality, always always left to right and top to bottom) and *while* he is tracing it, say the name. Then close his eyes and trace it while “seeing” in his mind, and say the name again simultaneously. Then open his eyes again and look at the letter while tracing it in the air or on his desk and say the name again. If the teacher shows a card and asks for the name, all he has to do is trace the shape with his finger and the name should come up.

For the moment, stop doing the compare and contrast of two letters and do one at a time. Start with h (and unless he absolutely must do capitals for the teacher, it is better to do lower-case. At least do both). Say the sound h-h-h-h. Have him start with this sound and name as many words as he can that start this way - house, horse, hat, head, … . Give him a few models to start and then see how many he can come up with. Either draw five to ten of these words, or find pictures to cut out and past. Make a h page with them. Write each word under its picture and have him trace over the h with red an each. At each tracing, have him say the h-h-h sound, and then the letter name “aithch” which is nothing like the sound. He will need both sound and name, sound for phonics and name for his teacher, so both can be learned.
Draw a set of extra-large writing lines, an inch or two apart, and have him use the red marker (marker rather than pencil for smooth hand motion) and make a row of h’s and a row of H’s, and each and every time he makes the letter shape he says “h-h-h”, “aitch”.

Do one letter in an evening or two, and a different letter the next evening or two. Start with forms that are very different, like your h and g, and only much later do things like n and m. Then after he has lots of practice under his belt, then see if he can tell the difference. He should.
If he still has trouble, ask for more help, but he really is unlikely to.

The other benefit of this approach is that after a week or two you can give him h-a-t and m-a-t and c-a-t and g-o-t and h-o-t and so on and he can start to read simple words, which is so exciting.

email me at [email protected] of you want more outlines.

If you are very concerned you could check out a developmental pediatrician. They are specially trained pediatricians who could assist you in answering these questions about your concerns and would know what type of tests to run, if needed, to come up with conclusions.

I was wondering does he know his numbers and count to 10 or 20. When my child was 4 :D halfyrs I put her in KG because the school said she was ready,but I must say when we moved to a country school she was behind
6mths and I had to retained her,but I remember she had trouble with
some of the letter in the alph.I think at the end of Kg. she knew most of them.If he write them does he write them backwards. I know the teacher said this was common and not to worry about it till 2nd grade. She always write (BD) backward up untill the end of 1st grade.
I hope this help My daughter is in 2nd grade and she not the best reader
in her class,but she the best in math in her class because she LOVES math. Sometimes kids know what subject they like it may not be that letters and reading is not his thing right now. I would’nt give up.

When my daughter was in pre-school… she could not recall the names of two letters or a triangle. I had family members helping me and observing her. We knew at that point she had a learning disability. She tried so hard to recall the information. After many evaluations, we had a name. Auditory processing. Come to find out my mom also has this LD. At 11, she works very hard at school and keeps up with her peers. She is still pulled for Speech. They have worked with her recalling memory and vocab. She could not express the proper word or forget what she wanted to convey. Our major problem now is standardized testing. She is not fast enough and they are not allowed to guide you in any way. In my opinion, the standards are great but go in to the classrooms and watch the tears flow from the children during them.

Hi,

I have taught many students that were having problems learning the alphabet. They were successful when I made the learning as multisensory as possible, and coupled it with writing simple words beginning with the alphabet letter.

The strategy is very detailed. If you would like to know more, email me at [email protected].

Anita

My best advice is—go with your gut. By that I mean keep exploring till you feel you have your questions answered. We started noticing very similar problems when my son was 3. Only with him it was colors. He could match colors, tell me “that’s the color of the sky” but couldn’t name it. And in a similar story to yours, one day we went around his room finding everythng yellow. We made a train out of them, and I kept saying “This is a YELLOW truck” or whatever for each item. So after probably 15 minutes of this, I hold up one of the items and ask him what color it is, and he says, “green?”

Everyone kept assuring me that kids develop at different rates. He was and is very verbal; has an advanced vocabulary and everyone kept telling me how bright he was. He is extremely coordinated also. His pediatrician said don’t worry. We took him for a speech eval at age four and he tested within normal limits. But I still knew there was something wrong.

He also had the same problems with the alphabet. By age 5 we had things somewhat figured out and started remediation. But my experience is that this doesn’t get better without help. He is in 2nd grade and reading at grade level, but school is a struggle. I don’t say all this to discourage you—your son is very lucky that you are picking up on this early and can help him. Good luck.

oh my goodness!! i cried when i read your initial message. i am having the exact same problem with my son! he is 5 1/2 and half way through kindergarten. he can only identify and ‘name’ half of the alphabet. we will work on one letter for 30 minutes - tracing the letter in shaving cream, tracing it on sandpaper, walking on a chalk print of the letter, and after all that i’ll show him the letter and ask what it is and he answers….um…h? and it will be W. what is so confusing for me is that he can tell me what words the specific letter is in, but cannot recall the ‘name’ of the letter. he also has problems identifying numbers 7 and above. if i show him the number 8- he can only tell me the name, after he counts to that number on his fingers. all of our ‘practicing’ comes from the encouragement of my son. he enjoys learning- and if i think he appears to be getting frustrated, i usually stop and take a break.
i feel frustrated because nobody seems to want to help - he’s still young, is what i usually hear. but i refuse to wait until it gets worse and he begins to really fall behind.
through my own research, the only things that make sense is that it appears to be a visual memory deficit , and when i research that all i get is dyslexia and dysgraphia (dysgraphia is definatley not it!) so, dyslexia may be a great starting point!
good luck to you. i hope you find the answers you are looking for.

My son did intensive phonemic awareness with a speech path, and instead of learning the names of the letters, he learned the sound. This is the most important aspect for reading anyway. And together they came up with pictures to go with the sounds, like T was tiger. And that image helped him remember.

Hi Becky! I agree with Rocco and go with your gut. I taught kindergarten for ten years and loved every minute of it :D Everyone will tell you that at 4 1/2 it is not developementally appropriate to know letters/sounds yet. To some degree I agree but of course the concern here is that the exposure has been there and he still isn’t picking it up. That is key. Call your school district and see about getting him assessed through Early Childhood Special Education Program. Some states may not have this program but many do. By law if you request an assessment they have to do it. Some helpful hints:

LABEL LABEL LABEL! Label objects in the house with him so that print is everywhere! ie. put the word BED by his bed.

Use ALL approaches to teaching letters. ie. visual, hands-on etc.

Start focusing on ONLY the letters in his name, one at a time, starting with the first letter. His name means something to him so he will recognize the importance of knowing the letters in it.

Do a chant every night before bedtime. Make a chart of the ABC’s. Write the letter A and put a picture of an apple by it. Next write B and put a book by it. Do this for all letters on one sheet of paper. Hang it somewhere like on the fridge or his room so he sees it often. The chant should go AA apple, BB book, CC cat etc. This will give him not only a visual to refer to in his head but a way to generalize that letters go to words.

Good luck Becky. If I can help at all just let me know. I visit this sight often but don’t post much because of the Troll activity.

You might try seeing if he cuold remember those letters if he “wrote” them in the air while saying their names. He may not connect what they look like to their names, but many kids are much better at connecting what they *feel* like to what they are. Try spelling the letter on his back wtih your finger, with his eyes closed, too.

sounds like dyslexia- start researching on your own now…..the schools and teachers won’t even begin to help until around the second grade- don’t let him fall behind already! look into all the great programs available for him (ie: audiblox, etc)
good luck