Caught at a young age?

First, enrich language. Talk to her. Explain all day what you are doing and why. Ask her questions and stop and be patient and really listen to the answers. Engage her in real conversations. Encourage her to speak in full sentences. Model how to pronounce sounds clearly — show her your tongue and lips and have her copy you (this can be fun, a game). This kind of thing is vital, and a parent with hours and hours a day can do so much better than a few hours a week with a teacher.

Actively teach her various forms of language. When my daughter was young I found a lovely old-fashioned *huge* book of nursery rhymes and read it over and over and over and over until I was heartily sick of it. But she loved it and I kept up — she still treasures that book. Go over the rhymes she likes many times until she can say them with you.
I also got a good version of the Three Bears and some simple Golden Books etc — the classics that always appeal to small children. Read over and over and over …

Sing simple songs to her and go over and over until she is doing them with you. Get a sturdy kid-friendly cassette player and some kiddie cassettes that she can listen to over and over also. Teach her to move her hands and later march in rhythm — far more valuable than you might think.
if you are involved in a church, teach her the children’s hymns. Sing the same song or hymn several times a day every day until she is catching on.

Teach her comparison words — *not* just big and small, but long and short, tall and short, wide and narrow, heavy and light, more and less, more and fewer. This leads to logic and understanding of detail later. Far, far more valuable than you may think now.

Teach her colour names, and later light and dark and striped and checked and so on. Teach her to count by rote, first just saying one two three up to five, and then later pointing to objects as she counts.

You can do all this stuff all the time, while you are driving places, while you are in the store, while you are cooking supper, and so on. Take these preschool years as a time to both have a close relationship and teach your daughter about language and the world.

Also look at body development and group activities — toddler gym, parent participation preschool, sports (in our case downhill skiing, swimming) where young children can come along at their own pace. Body control helps develop the brain especially in the early years.

Later, when she shows an interest in books, you can teach her the alphabet. *Slowly* and appropriately to the age, please! No tests, no rush, no flash cards. And please *lower-case* is most important (How many capitals in this post or in any book you read — usually less than 5%, right?)
Avoid teaching memorizing whole words by sight — this is a dead end that has to be painfully un-learned a few years down the road; actively counterproductive. Rather, make sure that she knows that written words are made up of letters, that letters stand for sounds, and that you read left to right. Take your time now when you have the time and save years of catching up later.
Ask for my posts on a homemade method for teaching the alphabet; email [email protected]

This is my list (which is not much different than Victoria’s)

1. Language

talk to your child, recite nursery rhymes, stories out loud, books on tape, avoid TV as baby sitter, true for all kids but especially for at risk kids.

2. body development

teach her to catch a ball, do gymnastics at a gym, toddler swimming class,

3. music

listen to music, do things to rhythm, consider music lessons as later preschooler, if you can find the right teacher. My own LD child took piano lessons for a year and a half with a wonderful teacher. It helped with sequencing sounds and motor development.

4. art, you want to develop small motor skills—so cutting, pasting, coloring,

None of this is really different than what you would want to do with any child but except for the music, I can’t say I was carefully making decisions to optimize development. I certainly would have done more with body development and language development, in retrospect. I never was one to talk to young children naturally and didn’t realize the improtance of it developmentally. Fortunately, I guess, I worked and my wonderful babysitter talked to him all the time.

Beth

How are her motor skills as compared to other children of her age? If she was slow to crawl or walk, consider an evaluation by an occupational therapist. Also, how does she do with things like swallowing lumpy food, having her teeth brushed, etc. If there are issues, an OT can with with that too. Beyond that, you are being very smart to start considering whether she has an LD, even though she is so young. The best piece of advice I ever got was from a neurological evaluation done when my child was 4 years old. (His teachers had notice hand tremors and we had noticed that his motor skills were poor. There was a concern that he might have a neurodegenerative disease. Fortunately, he did not.) The doctor told us that children with his kind of motor problems often have LD and ADHD as well and warned us to react quickly to any academic issues rather than waiting and seeing. When the problems became apparent in K and 1st grade, we pushed for services and got them. We also took steps privately. The result is that my child who at age 6 was considered severely LD is at age 14 an excellent student enrolled in gifted classes.

So she can get the early intervention now… All of the suggestions given to you were wonderful. If she qualifies for speech now she will get more help and that will be wonderful too!!

I would add to do sequencing type things. I have a whole list of things to do with a young child that I got off the web. If you send me a private message with your email address, I can send them on.

Sequencing is really important in the reading process and a lot of ld kids have trouble with it.

—des