informal survey

Actually, no; except for the boys with a genetic disorder, all of the students I’ve had for tutoring have been quite capable of recognizing individual letters and of memorizing words, their problem being that they were not taught any skills. But again, except for the brothers with a genetic disorder, my students are not pre-screened for LD, they are just kids whose parents are desperate to have them taught to read.

victoria,
i do not mean after age 5 or 6, ask the parents if the tutee had trouble learning the alphabet as a 5 or 6 yo, not his current ability to recognize the letters,

if the child is 8 or 9, he would have learned the alphabet, i am more interested in the child’s ability to learn it as a very young child,

and as compared to siblings who maybe did not have reading problems,

libby

Back in the 1970’s my professor, Russell Stauffer, said that knowing the alphabet is the best predictor of how well a child will do. Still is. I would put catching on to “rhyming” up there as another good indicator.

Well I guess my dd was the exception. She didn’t have any trouble recognizing or learning the alphabet and she could rhyme. Also, she was one of the only two students who aced the parochial school first grade entrance exam out of 38 students.

Blessings, momo

You can add one more parent to your list. My older son did not learn how to write his name until the week before or after his 6th birthday, and even then had a hard time recognizing other letters. At around 6 1/2 we started using Let’s Read ABC’s and he did well with it- I can’t tell you if it was the program or just the fact that something finally clicked. Also, he was completely clueless about rhyming words until somewhere between 6 1/2 or 7.

We worked through decoding slowly but surely, and he’s doing great now. His little brother seemingly knew every letter in the alphabet except “q” before we ever sat down to learn it, could rhyme like a champ by age 3, and sailed through decoding. The difference was simply astonishing.

Jean

My son recognized the letters of the alphabet at age 3, could read them, randomly, in isolation, could rhyme, yet by 3rd. grade all he could read were 3 letter phonetic words.

I am tutoring two students with a similar profile. Both of these two have been found to need vision therapy. I wish I’d known about it for my son back then.

thanks for the info, hope others keep posting, would love to hear from moms,

libby

That’s an interesting question. My son could recognize many of the letters, but not all of them. Also, his ability to do this was inconsistent. Often he’d mix them up. Currently my son is in 2nd grade and goes to tutoring (for reading) 3 days a week. I work with him at least two hours a day after school (reading, word flash cards, trying to get him to see and recognize letter combinations like “th” and all the words that can be made with it, spelling, sounding out, etc….). And his reading progress speed is slow and labored. He’ll stop at words like “and” or “I” and sometimes put other words in. Then other times he can read words like “friends.” His reading is progressing but very VERY slowly (so he’s becoming more and more behind as the weeks pass). The school has tested him twice and the results indicated no problems.

In response to your question, I have noticed that he sometimes has difficulty writing his spelling words out even when I tell him the letters. For example, this morning in the car I was telling him how to spell “furniture.” He got so frustrated he began crying and said he was just going to leave it off his pretest. I explained that it is an extremely difficult word to spell and that he wouldn’t need to worry about it (the teacher allows him to write the first 10 words (a much easier list) and he isn’t graded on the second 10 words.

Interestingly, my son does seem to have a good understanding of word rules. For example, one of the words on his list this week was “Find” and he was frustrated with it because he felt it should have an “e” on the end because of the long “i.” He also commented on how “sky” has no vowels and how can a word have no vowels (I explained how “y” can sometimes be a vowel…which I’m sure his teacher explained to the class be he either didn’t hear or forgot).

I don’t think my son has a visual problem (???) because he does have very good building skills (with or without drawn out directions), excellent game playing skills (chess, checkers, othello, etc…), and when he was taking piano lessons he learned to read music very quickly and his piano teacher was excited about having him as a student.

As far as why my son has had such difficulty learning to recognize letters and now is struggling with words, I have no clue (and neither does anyone else at this time). It’s not as if he’s fought this because he’s actually very sweet and easy to work with. But I know it has taken a lot of effort and work for him to get just this far.

BTW, my daughter (she’s in 6th grade and is an excellent reader and overall good student) could recognize and point out every letter of the alphabet (non-sequentially) when she was 2 years old.

Greetings Laura,

Sounds like you have a very bright little boy!

Along similar lines, I’m curious what percentage of struggling readers have high mechanical aptitudes. The fact that your son has good building skills - with or without directions - is a strong indicator of this ability. It has been my observation that a high mechanical aptitude frequently goes hand-in-hand with difficulty learning to read. My husband is a Master Auto Technician, owns his own shop, and is very gifted at his profession but he did not do well academically. During a workshop he attended on training new employees, the instructor indicated that the majority of mechanics are dyslexic! Consequently, Auto Tech schools have adapted their teaching style to better suit the dyslexic mind. My 15yo dd recently completed the Differential Aptitude Test which indicated that her mechanical reasoning is at the 93%ile! This cannot be attributed to genetics because our dd is adopted. My friend’s ds, who is also a struggling reader, took the same tested and also scored highest in mechanical apptitude.

If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to have your son make the letters of the alphabet out of clay. The Davis program uses this technic which seems to help the dyslexic tactilely “see” letters.

Blessings, momo

Laura, Your son sounds a lot like mine did when he was in third grade. I don’t know if you were asking for advice but I wanted to share what worked for us.

My son use to mess up reading the small words a LOT until we went to a developmental optometrist who found that he had a convergence and focusing problem. (We went to three before getting the correct diagnosis.) His eyes were not teaming up well enough to see the smaller words thus he would guess. Vision therapy really helped to improve this. Using your eyes on large tasks is much different when trying to focus on smaller items.

My son also had a hard time writing down letters when I spelled them out loud. Not because he didn’t know the letters but because he could not process the auditory sounds well enough. Fast Forward and PACE really helped this.

Donna in MO

thanks again to all of you, i really appreciated your candid responses and hope more people post, libby

laura, your observations are very astute, and especially about your daughter,i am now helping a homeschooler, she cannot remember the code and is 8, she has 6 siblings, all read with ease and all remembered the letters of the alphabet at an early age, her younger brother, just turned 4, can tell the letter names of any word he sees,’

but this child could not and still struggles with it,

but thanks laura, your post was very informative, libby

I wish that schools in the early years would work on auditory and visual perception and memory skills. I truly believe we would have less reading problems later on. Just going over and over the alphabet letters is not enough if the child does not have these perceptual and memory skills developed.

Thanks for the clay idea!!!! I will definitely try that with him. I’ve been writing spelling words on his back and trying to get him to write in the air. He sometimes tires of all the things I do. The other day I was working on flash cards, I got to the word “point” and instead of saying it he pointed and then proceeded to do the rest of his words by charades! At first I was a little annoyed (because I also want him to verbalize), but then I figured that if it made it more fun for him I should let him do it (this “game making” desire of his!) also “acting out” seemed like it might be a good sensory approach.

Interesting thing about mechanical or engineer types. When I was talking with a reading tutor a couple of weeks ago she asked me if there were any engineers in our family. When I told her there were many she said it was quite common for children of engineers to have reading disablilites. I didn’t think much about it, but I did mention it to my mother-in-law who didn’t think too much about the theory either (probably because all the engineers come from that side of the family! ;-), but then a couple of days later she called me to say she read or heard something somewhere else saying there was a connection with this.

One thing I will say…I’m just happy there’s something my son can do well and feel good about. Knowing how much he struggles in school (My son is at the very bottom of his class and there is a big gap between his reading ability and the rest of the class), it’s just a real blessing for him to have something.

Thanks for your post,
Laura

Donna,
THANKS for the advice!!!! I do believe my son has processing difficulty (slower processing) which is making reading and learning harder. Oftentimes he “misses” things that are said. Also, sometimes, if he doesn’t speak his thoughts right away, he’ll forget them.

I’m really interested in learning more about PACE and some of these other programs that may benefit him.

Hi Laura,

A description of Mechanical Reasoning states:

“Students who do well in mechanical reasoning usually find it easy to learn how to repair and operate complex devices. Occupations such as carpenter, mechanic, engineer, electrician, and machine operator are among those that require good mechanical ability.”

Sounds like you might be raising another engineer!

Blessings, momo

Hi Laura,

Like Donna’s ds, my dd made great strides with both Fast ForWord and PACE. Prior to FFW, she would also miss many things that were said and would frequently ask, “what?” or “huh?”. She also had a poor memory. I had to allow her to interrupt conversations to say what she needed to say because she wouldn’t remember if we had her wait. While she still has some memory issues, PACE really helped improve it.

Other good therapies are Interactive Metronome, NeuroNet and The Listening Program.

Blessings, momo

Just last fall I bought a lovely lovely antique teacher’s manual for Grade 1 silent reading, dating back to 1910 or 1920.

First point is that the authors make it clear that silent reading is not everything and that literature teaching and oral reading should also be taught.

Second point is that they use a nice applied phonics development, teaching a few letters and sounds at a time, and then words that use those sounds.

The part of your post that made me think of this book is that your son has just reinvented the approach used in this program. The idea is that the class would be taught to read certain instruction words, and then they would read silently and demonstrate their reading comprehension by following the instructions. At the beginning the teacher would say “show me a .…” (cat, dog, pig, etc.); by the end, the student would follow a multi-step instruction such as “Go to the front of the class. Write a 5. Go back and sit down.”

You could invent all sorts of things like this yourself, or if you want I can try to find where I filed the book and give you copies for ideas.

Sheila:

I found Jerome Rosner’s book called, Helping our children overcome learning disabilities, very good in helping me to understanding visual and auditory perceptual skills and how they affect a child’s ability to learn to read, write, spell and do math. I highly recommend it. I am a regular classroom teacher and am very interested in why some kids come to school with such high perceptual skills and others struggle so much and the best way to help these kids. Agree totally that we need early intervention. Getting schools and colleges that are so stuck in the balanced literacy philosphy to change is the real challenge. Not sure how to change them and believe I have tried in my school district for the last 4 years.

Kathy

Hi Laura, Someone suggested this article to me and I wanted to pass it on. Let me know if you have a hard time pulling it up.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0HDF/3_35/79826322/p1/article.jhtml?term=Naming-Speed+Processing%2C+Timing+and+Reading

Donna in MO

Lisa,
Here is one more article recommended to me about rapid naming and reading.
Donna

Title: Naming-Speed Processes, Timing, and Reading: A Conceptual Review.

Source: Journal of Learning Disabilities, Jul/Aug2000, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p387, 21p, 4 charts, 2 diagrams
Author(s): Wolf, Maryanne; Bowers, Patricia Greig; Biddle, Kathleen
Abstract: Re-examines the role of naming-speed deficits in developmental reading disabilities. Presentation of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-linguistic research; Exploration of two nonconsecutive hypotheses on putative links between naming speed and reading processes; Demonstration of naming speed differences among dyslexic readers.

Thanks. I will check into the book. I am a Sp Ed teacher by major, and am currently in the reg 5th grade. This year I have been doing Audiblox daily with my class. I would love to see this being used in K and 1st grade. After using the program for 6 months, I can see that it has great potential for the lower classes. My class has improved greatly on the skills, but it would be so much more effective for children just starting out. I am the “unconventional” teacher in the system. Sometimes that is hard.

Have him do the gestures *and* the words and you’ll be building some excellent brain connections between the right and left :)

Unfortunately, for a whole lot of these kids, the aptitudes go undeveloped. There’s still a lot of learnign that has to happen. For every engineer with a history of academic problems, there are a bunch who didn’t get a good enough education to be an engineer.

Laura, I thought I would post the name of this article (which I posted above) in case you needed it.

Donna in MO

P.S. I find a lot of articles on www.findarticles.com.

“I like to take my own sweet time”: case study of a child with naming-speed deficits and reading disabilities.(Statistical Data Included)
Three types of dyslexic readers exist, according to the Double-Deficit Hypothesis: those with (a) a single phonological deficit, (b) a single naming-speed and (c) both…
From Journal of Special Education, September 22 2001 by Theresa Deeney, Maryanne Wolf, Alyssa Goldberg O’Rourke
Page(s): 16

Sheila:

The book is Helping Children Overcome Learning Difficulties, sorry I posted the wrong title.

Kathy

Yes, I have found that both of my boys with dyslexia had problems recognizing the alphabet. My youngest did better than the older one, told the people at Kindergarten registration that he only knew the letters to m, but would learn the rest by September. Every morning before Kindergarten, we would wait for the bus practicing the alphabet on flash cards. It took a very long time for them to learn the alphabet. thanks for bringing this up.

Yes, my son had tremendous difficulty recognizing the letters of the alphabet at age 5. It took months of work for him to finally recognize his letters and sounds.

Wow! Your daughter sounds very similar to my son. Thank you sooo much for sharing what you’ve found that has helped. I am definitely going to look into those products. Thank you so much! :-)

Thanks Donna,
I’m going to read these on Monday when I have some extra time!
I really appreciate all the information!!!! :-)
Laura

I think the concept of “whole language” is also a problem. The teaching that you just write without worring about spelling or phonics isn’t good. I think that it confuses the children. Mine were surprised that there was a “right” way to spell and a “wrong” way after being encouraged to just write and worry about content, spelling, grammer, etc. later.

My son loved books, loved stories. We read to him constantly. Didn’t occur to me the fact that he didn’t like rhymes was important. And thought not recognizing letters in the alphabet books was just not wanting to memorize long list. Thought he’d straighten out with phonetic program. Thought that getting numbers and letters mixed up was just way introduced to him in preschool. (partly true) It was only when I realized the numbers he was mixing up were 9-P, b-6 that I began to realize there was something else going on. At 6 with intense tutouring in phonics can recognize letters at beginning of word, and sound out words but still no sight words. Still doesn’t really “get” rhymes.

Your theory does not apply to my son. He learned the alphabel quite easily and had no problem rhyming words. He was not taught decoding in a systematic way until after second grade. Blending is still difficult for him. If I’m not mistaken some researchers such as Carmen McGuiness (Reading Reflex—Phonographix) say the ability to segment the sounds in words and blend them together are the key skills in decoding. The ablity to rhyme is not predictive or helpful.

And when you’ve got someone with an information processing disorder who’s been allowed to write letters any which way and you have to correct that before you can begin teaching him phonemes….

She could not remember sound/symbol for the life of her. When she started Pre-school/K - her Montessori teacher told us - ‘I’ve never had a child like this’.

We would drill A,B,C night after night and she could not remember any of the letters or sounds. Montesorri taught sounds of letters and did sound boxes - my dd after a whole year could not get thru one sound box.

She had expressive language delays, late bloomer with learning colors, could not remember words to songs, has difficulty with names of things.

She is a split IQ kid - gifted in performance IQ, average in verbal, with auditory processing deficits.

After alot of remediation, she is reading above grade level, but still has problems with sound/symbol periodically. She also still struggles to remember the lyrics to popular songs and reciting jokes is not a strength!

Dea:

If you don’t mind, I would love to know how old your daughter is now and what is she reading? Does she have fluency? Did she have any blending problems as she learned to read? Did you notice if she had any trouble remembering code such as the vowel digraphs? Did she want to read letter by letter or could she pick up the patterns? How is her spelling? How did you get her reading above grade level?

I am a classroom teacher who is very interested in these issues.

thank you

Kathy

thanks dea, a great post, and like kathy, i would like to know at what age did she finally learn the alphabet,

and in regards to the code, what do you see as still a stumbling block, long vowel patterns, or what?

does she still struggle and what does her school do to help her??

thanks again dea, libby

Laura,

I commend you on trying to find programs that will help your son. I am a special ed. teacher, but am also in the same position trying to find what will help one of my own children. In reading your posts, I was wondering if you have had your child evaluated for Auditory Processing Disorder? I really think it is a mistake to just go try different programs without getting a diagnosis of the underlying problems first. Some of your son’s symptoms line up with APD, so I just wondered if you had pursued an evaluation.

Janis

My dd is now 8 years old and in 2nd grade. We have done many different programs. We had private testing done when she was 5
at the recommendation of her Montessori teacher. She was on an IEP from the public school since she was 3, but the services she was getting were not helping nor did we have any kind of ‘diagnosis’ other than expressive language delays. The private SLP diagnosed her with auditory processing deficits. I hopped on the Internet, discovered this BB and other sites and our journey began.

We started our remediation at age 5.5 with Earobics and she saw an SLP once a week who did a offshoot of LiPs. (I wasn’t seeing any real progress with LiPs, so we stopped after about 3mo.) She struggled thru Earobics for several months, until we discovered Tomatis. Tomatis opened the door for her- she was not hitting the brick wall and could actually learn. She now breezed thru all the Earobics execises except for Karloon’s Balloons(within a month time frame and did it without me fighting her!). I then learned about digit spans and auditory memory. She had an auditory digit span of a 2-3yr old(that’s why her short term memory was so bad). We started Brainbuilder religiously and after a month she was at a 5 year old level.

In a matter of months, she progressed tremendously. In May at end of her 1st year in Montessori, she still could not complete 1 sound box. In September, she had completed all of them and by the beginning of October she was putting sounds together and reading easy books. By the end of her Kindergarten year, she was reading same level as the rest of the kids - close to top of her class! Her teacher commented with tears in her eyes that she was just not the same child. She went from hating school to loving school - it was wonderful!

We also were on program with the NACD for a time, have done Audiblox, Reading Reflex, and now PACE and MTC. She still has issues, but she continues to progress and maintains average/above average in her class. Her writing(spelling) is not too great, but I’m seeing alot of improvement lately (knock on wood). She is still on an IEP, but only getting services for writing(we think worthless services) - has NEVER gotten any additional help with reading.

She is fairly fluent (good intonation, comprehends, corrects most of her mistakes) on like Magic Tree House Book level. PACE/MTC has really helped her read correctly (left to right/blending etc) although the multisyllable words are slow, but she is getting them right. She has high visual spatial and I notice that she wants to read starting from the middle (I think she looks at the word as a whole picture). Blending was VERY hard for her - still is. Tonight we read a few pages of Harry Potter - not fluently, but she made it thru.

The advanced code is hardest for her. The sounds patterns that are represented by multiple letters.

I don’t feel we are out of the woods yet. We’ll spend the next 6mo. practicing and reviewing MTC and next year I want to do Language Wise with her. Whew - sorry I went on for so long!

Well, I did read one study that found, along similar lines, though they did not use the descriptor “mechanical aptitude,” that this talent is no more often found in the LD population than in the remainder of the population. If it happens to be the case with your child, that is great.

My LD child certainly does not have it!!!! Or either does his nonld father, for that matter.

Beth

Dea,

I just wanted to tell you that because of your posts I pursued sound therapy with my son. We did The Listening Program from December through January. We saw some very nice changes with small motor skills and ability to carry a tune. This has translated into handwriting improvements. I also returned rather reluctantly to the AP exercises in PACE which we had never been able to complete. I would say we did not complete half the program. In the first two days he passed the first levels of two procedures that he had not been able to get through in four months!! His progress has slowed down and for a few days I thought it had stalled completely but last night he started doing several procedures perfectly.

I am hoping we can through it this time and regret not doing sound therapy earlier. I now think that any child with documented AP problems ought to do some sort of sound therapy before PACE. It would have been so much easier.

I am glad your daughter is doing so well.

Beth

Wow - that is great! I’m glad it worked for you. I find it very interesting. My dd never had any motor issues, so I didn’t see any differences there, but the lower frequencies are suppose to address this area (balance, sensory integration, motor etc). The middle frequencies address Language and the higher frequencies are the creative.

There are additional CDs that you can get which focus on just these particular areas. We have the one for Language. When we got to like CD #4, we used it for part of the program - like we listened to track 1,2,3 in the mornings and then TLP in the evenings.

I’ve mentioned before that we typically hit a slow down phase. We still have not completed MTC yet. I’m considering going back and doing some booster on Tomatis (our Dr. has a new program you can sign up for that is pretty reasonable) and then pick up MTC again. or we may dig out our TLP CDs - we haven’t done them in a year. I have found Tomatis to be quicker and faster gains than the TLP, but TLP is much cheaper and more convenient.

Dea,

What did you see with the Language CD? My son’s speech is still immature. He is getting help in speech at school but I see no effect frankly. Also, where did you purchase it from?

I mentioned to our NN provider that I was thinking of doing sound therapy and wondered what she thought. She tried it out with my son because 1. another audiologist had been telling her the results she had been seeing 2. we had really roadblocked with some of the small motor stuff. She had backed up as far as she could and it still wasn’t far enough. I was interested because of the auditory processing issues.

We also have done low frequency sound therapy—something from Germany. It was rather amazing–all of sudden he could tell which direction sounds were coming from!!!

I wonder if we’d get more progress if we used Tomatis too. I don’t think there are any providers at all, however, where we are at.

I think MTC following PACE is just a lot for an 8 year old. You just might try it again in the summer. My son practically cried when I mentioned more therapy like PACE which is why we haven’t done it.
Beth

Dea,

How did you get TLP CD’s? I can’t see how to order them from the site. Do you have to buy them through a provider? Do you think you might reach a point you would want to sell yours? I’d prefer to buy them second hand if possible.

Janis

I’m glad you went on. It’s a good example of how each child is unique and how it all comes together when you get the right key. That’s what it seems like with my son. We keep trying keys til we hit one that unlocks something and then the things he couldn’t do before come together and he can do them. You gave me some new methods to research. Thanks

We bought the language CD’s thru the Center that does our Tomatis (we did our TLP thru them too).

To be honest, I could not see any obvious language changes from the Language CD.

Our center also just started a new program (kind of a booster program). First they digitized all the Tomatis tapes and developed a new system. They found it reduced ‘training’ from a 2hr session to a 1-1.5hr session. They also saw increased gains with the new system. The new booster program they offer, is like $300(I’m spacing the exact details), and you can go into the center whenever you want for 30min. sessions for up to a year.

But still more money and the time it takes to drive there!

(I have a good Tomatis Center in my city - but we don’t have a NeuroNet center- I would love to have your audiologist!!)

For PK - that’s why I’m probably going to hang on to my TLP program for awhile - but I’ll keep you in mind for future. It sure would be nice to recoup some of my investment in this stuff!

Dea,

The booster program sounds like a good deal—why don’t they allow you to do it at home. It would be so much easier.

My son’s language can be quite sophisticated in terms of vocabulary. But his grammar is awful—he still doesn’t have irregular verbs down, uses wrong tenses, what instead of that. Not quite sure what to do to help. He is addressing some of this in speech at school but can’t see any real improvement.

It is too bad we can’t all have everything where we are so that we have real choices!!!

Our audiologist has decided it is time to let my son “gel”. She has him doing a low frequency tape now that she hopes will help him hold on to the gains with TLP. The only other thing he is doing is jumping rope, so it is a nice break!! She also told me she was disapointed that TLP didn’t make differenciating between u and a automatic for my son. He can audiorally tell the difference as long as it is single words but can not consistently write a series of words or listen to a series of very similar words. Now he couldn’t do this at all before TLP so he is greatly improved but still not where he should be. I don’t quite know what to think. I asked about doing ore EArobics or FFW2 and she said it was auditory-motor and they wouldn’t help him enough either. So I guess I will go along with the “gelling” and see if that helps. If not, maybe I will look into other sound therapy since we got some gains that way.

Beth

Janis and I understand. But I hope somebody with a lot of excess storage space for inventory decides to start a home business selling the stuff second-hand or even renting out. Might be a good way to stay home with kids .

The Listening Center center provides ‘technology’ that you can’t really do at home. They use the really expensive headphones that do bone conduction and the equipment they hook it all up to is very unique. They call it an electronic ear.

Dr. Minson told me that you should do TLP more than once. Wait about a month or 2 and then do it again. They were showing additional gains with doing more than once. If you were to repeat it, you might see more improvement on the U and A differences- if it’s really a discrimination problem.

I’m noticing we have some of that going on too - with the differentiating the sound. I notice it with her writing. She writes phonetically and that is how she pronounces the word. I’m not sure if she is not hearing the word right or if it’s articulation issues or what.

Tomatis never cured her CAPD. Her CAPD testing shows that she only ‘hears’ about half of what is said when in a semi-noisy environment. However, her sound sensitivity decreased significantly and she scores in the above average range on the auditory discrimination tests (but these tests are ususally done in a quiet environment?) Before we did Tomatis, her discrimination was in the handicapped range.

I think ‘gelling’ is a good thing. We are kind of doing that right now too. We finished as much as we could with 4mo of PACE, but are only half way thru with MTC. We haven’t done anything for a month now. I think I’m seeing improvement in her spelling ability. Lately, she has been learning her spelling words with minimal effort and not getting as confused - kind of like she is linking the visual memory with the phonics better.