I have questions regarding my child and letter reversals. I am getting conflicting information as to what age and how often letter reversals are “ok”. My third grader still reverses “b” and “d”, although it is not consistently. In fact, most of the time it looks like he writes a “d” and then realizes it, then writes a “b” on top of the “d” and vise verse. I have only found one example where he reversed the whole word. He also forms his letters from bottom to top. Lowercase “a” is formed clockwise instead of counter clockwise, almost like it has a double circle.
I have been told that it is too late to correct this and that we need to make sure that he learns cursive properly.
He is reading at grade level.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thanks, We-five
Re: Characteristic of Dyslexia?
Victoria,
What do you think about a program called “Handwriting Without Tears”? I am also looking into a tutor that someone recommended.
We-five
Re: Characteristic of Dyslexia?
I haven’t seen the whole HWT program, but des posted some samples here. From what I have seen it *does* teach good standard handwriting skills. The descriptions are a bit cutesy for me — I don’t care for cuteness in general and in particular in teaching kids who are already distractible, it can be another distraction — but des says you can skip that stuff about the “tall man” (huge distractor) and just teach the writing.
Another program you might want to look at is Johnny Can Read - Johnny Can Write from NINE.com, also very classic.
Just make sure the tutor is on the same page about teaching skills.
I work with this *all* the time.
Ok, the b-d thing. If you teach them both as “make a stick and add a ball to it” you are just *asking* for reversals — how is the kid to know which is which?
This also goes against the left-to-right structure of our writing system and leads to other problems — if you make a d by working right to left, well, it is easy to keep going to the left and get other letters out of order (I see a lot of this.)
Unfortunately, if a child reverses like this, he is right 50% of the time. If people are working on the “praise-only” and never-ever-be-negative system, well the kid gets praised 50% of the time and nothing the other times, and doesn’t even see that there is any problem until the habit is well ingrained. Also if you gently remind him to correct, there is only one choice for the other form so he is *always* right on the second try, and sees even less reason to make any changes.
The cure for this is not easy — I just had another student quite angry with me about this exact issue on Monday — you have to teach making the d left-to-right differently from the b, and you have to insist that any word written backwards be *rewritten*, not just moving the ball around (that is the problem, not knowing the place - not the solution.) Slowly but surely over a few months of insistence you can get this changed. And YES it is worth changing; once directionality is established in writing, other problems in reading and spelling and speed of work and study skills start to smooth out, because the kid isn’t constantly backtracking on himself.
Cursive — well, *good* printing and good cursive use the *same* directionalities. So straightening out the printing is an easy lead-in to cursive. Teaching cursive as a totally separate topic, something from Mars, sets the kid up for failure in cursive and more hassles with not being able to take notes at speed in class etc.
The same comments apply to forming letters consistently from top to bottom. This is vital to develop a rhythm and speed in writing. And that in turn is vital to writing fluency, note-taking, easy spelling, etc. And for transfer to cursive.
Too late???!!! Too late??!!?? He is eight years old in Grade 3!! Are you giving up on teaching him reading or math or spelling or organization or manners or sports skills because it is “too late??”
Yes, he has nearly four years of ingrained habits, from the most adaptive period of his life, and changing those habits is not going to be a walk in the park. It is going to take a few months of work, and probably a few conflicts of “I like to do it this way” — the answer, just as it is for a dirty room or not bathing or not doing math homework or not eating nutritious food, is “sorry, tough, you need to learn to do it this way because you need this to grow up”. It is going to take a year or two of continuing supervision after that to prevent backsliding. In the long run, what do you want to do with those two years — watch him get more and more frustrated with school and fall farther and farther behind the writing demands of advancing grades, or see him catch up and wonder what the fuss was about?
I have worked with this exact issue with students from age six to eighteen. The six and seven year olds this year are working on it, some conflicts, but we are progressing. Last year’s young kids have “graduated’ — I don’t need to work with them any more because they are doing well in school. The thirteen-year-old has got the b-d straightened out; I haven’t had time to work on the verticals but they are coming soon; and his reading has jumped four grade levels and his spelling has gone from non-existent to pretty good — he did “feudalism” and “fief” and twenty others last week.