I am a parent of a bright nine year old who is starting third grade this year and who is struggling with ADHD and reading. He was evaluated last spring at my request by a speech and language pathologist, who found that overall he was reading at grade level, but that he had some mild problems in phonemic awareness and problems with an impulsive reading style. Over the summer, she recommended that we use Great Leaps, Earobics, and work on simultaneous reading to improve his fluency. I have tried to follow this program with him (except for Earobics, which he found boring and frustrating—too slow paced). Somehow in this whole process, he has become unable to do the silent reading at his grade level that he was doing in 2nd grade. I am feeling very discouraged, because his functional reading skills seem to have worsened as a result of this intensive work. His oral reading fluency is somewhat worse as well (his eyes literally appear to be jumping all over the page and he strongly resists using his finger as a guide), but apparently his decoding skills have improved (but only on short passages as tested last week by the speech pathologist). I know this board is for reading teachers, but I am feeling so discouraged about the professional advice I have been given that I wish I could talk to someone who teaches reading on a daily basis. Is what has happened here an indication that something else could be wrong now, such as a visual problem? (His vision was normal when he was tested in first grade). He now dislikes reading and resists it on most occasions and he states that something has happened so that he can’t read as well as he could last year.
Thanks for any ideas from anyone.
Peg
Re: There is more to the ADD brain that meets the eye
Pattim,
Well, I can’t memorize piano pieces either and I am not ADD. I think that may have more to do with weak auditory processing skills. I always had a sense of something not being quite right but until my son, I never had any idea of what it was.
My son has a wicked time on anything on PACE that works divided attention. He has got better on some of them but no where age level. How is that related to ADD? I thought that comment of yours was interesting because I looked back and I never told you that.
Who would give the kinds of tests you are talking about? I think that you are just living proof that smart determined people can overcome a lot. You learned how to compenstate—but it takes a toll, I am sure.
Beth
Re: There is more to the ADD brain that meets the eye
Make sure that your child knows good word attack skills and can sound out words. Unfortunately, when children learn to memorize words or use picture clues they begin to guess when they come accross new unfamiliar words, this appears to be impulsive or careless when in reality they do not have the word attack skills of sounding out words as you would do when you come accross a new word in text.
Well, all this discussion has sure kept me very interested, especially since much of the debate has concerned my son. I do appreciate all the time everyone has spent contributing ideas. As a result, I have been doing my research and also spending more time trying out different approaches with my son.
Rod, one point I can clarify—I checked out our series books we have been reading and I don’t think the print size has changed since last year, although the vocabulary may be slightly more complex in some of the books we are reading now. Also, I did not say that he had made any dramatic improvements in decoding since the last academic year. To me, it still seems like he has trouble with the same phonemic awareness issues he had last year, with only slight progress after the summer tutoring. He is still reading at early third grade level, but struggling with it. However, after working with him on oral reading for the past couple of weeks and not stressing silent reading as much, I can definitely see an improvement already in his fluency. I have been following your advice on making sure he doesn’t skip or misread anything and really emphasizing using his finger to track, and he is much more fluent now. He still is reluctant to sound out the longer words, but he is doing better. I don’t know what to do about the silent reading, though, that is where I am still very concerned more about the visual and/or attention problems. He is still avoiding it like the plague.
I have talked to the behavioral optometrist’s office that is closest and have gotten parent references, but haven’t checked them out yet. The office I spoke with said they only test for eight different areas of visual processing and I think someone (MaryMN) mentioned more areas than that should be tested. One thing I am wondering is if I should go ahead and have his visual acuity re-tested by the same opthamologist who did it when he was in first grade, or if it would be better to have it done by the vision therapy place. I still worry about the competency and effectiveness of these therapists, and after reading the posts by Beth and Pattim, I wonder if perhaps a new trial of medication might be a simpler way to start, along with a visual acuity re-check and starting with the Reading Reflex program.
I really have lots of ambivalence about the medication and I go back and forth on the whole ADHD issue, but if it would dramatically help his reading, I would use it. Unfortunately, as I said before, we did not see much benefit from the medications we tried so far, and we actually saw some troubling side effects, so I put the idea on the back burner for a while. One other reason I gave up the medication was that I ran into some professionals (psychologist and physician) who apparently did not know much about the complexities of it and I really feel that I will need someone more knowledgeable to consult with if we ever try it again. There is no active chapter of CHADD here, but through the grapevine, I found out about these particular professionals and it was sort of a disappointing experience.
Pattim, I know medication can have remarkable effects because we have close friends with ADD sons who improved greatly on meds, but we just so far haven’t had the positive experience they had. It is so scary to try meds and see only side effects and no positives,but perhaps we should give it another try sometime. He is so bright we just know his academics could be better and he probably wonders why he feels smart, but doesn’t do as well as his peers.
Peg