B reversals

Hi Colleen,
A developmental optomotrist I recently took my son to told me that they treat reversal problems by teaching children to “know” the right and left side of their body. According to what they said, some children don’t have this concept fully internalized or automatic.

You might want to try including some left/right and midline crossover exercises as a daily warm-up. Or suggest that something like this be included in a P.E. class (if your school has daily P.E. Most elementary schools in my area only have P.E. once a week).

Another exercise you can do is pull out a page from a magazine and have the child circle all the “b’s” in blue and all the “d’s” in red, and then add other colors for other letters the child has difficulty with.

Circling and vision will work very very slowly if at all, because this is not an issue of seeing the shape; she is seeing the shape just fine. The letters b, d, p, and q ARE the same shape, just in different orientations. The problem is positioning, and circling and colouring do little for that.
What does work is kinesthetic training, learning to write with proper **left-to-right and top-to-bottom** letter formation. b (Same directionality as needs to be stressed for reading, and a good feedback to reading) Done this way, these four letters are all quite different and you can FEEL the differences.
Specifically, if formed properly with good directionality:
b — start at the top line, pull down to the bottom, slide halfway up, over the bump, and complete a ball on the right.
d — start a bit under the middle, counterclockwise/leftwards circle (finishing near middle line); slide up to the top, then pull down back to the bottom.
p — start at the middle, pull down to the bottom and then past it to the tail, slide back up to the middle, over the bump and complete a ball on the right.
q — start a bit under the middle, counterclockwise/leftwards circle (finishing near midle line, just a tiny bit up to middle, and pull down to bottom and then past bottom into the tail; optional hook at the end.

These directions are all obviouisly quite different, and with practice she will feel the differences. In reading if she makes an error, you can have her trace the letter shapr with a retracted pen.
This retraining takes time — work on it for a few months. But it does work.

I like using the word bed for the b and d reversals.

It stuck with my son when I showed him that word and explained that the b and the d make up the bed posts in the word bed. The word bed looks like a real bed. Whenever he forgot he would think about that word.

If the child knows “B” show them that the small “b” is part of the “B” while the same is not true for “D” and “d”. If “b” is not the only reversal Vitoria’s ideas are great.

Helen
( whose son did lots of reversals; even “K” the first letter of his name when it was used anywhere else other then in his name at the top of his paper because he knew that he had to write it so it would not fall of the edge of the paper)

Thanks for your suggstions. I am going to try some. I just have to remember it is going to take a long time. I think that exercises my be good for this child. Does anyone have any spefic examples of exercises that would be good?

Colleen

Any idea on how to solve this problem? I so love this board. Very helpful!!!

As above, this takes time and work — sorry, I don’t sell snake oil — but the exercises are the same; do traditional writing exercises. Work large and loose with markers or a blackboard and encourage large arm movement and a “swing”. Do lots of counterclockwise circles and top-to-bottom lines and left-to-right lines, quick and loose, to get directionality under control. Then practice each letter quickly and smoothly (never mind details) until the directionality is ingrained. Then practice various words and let the student some up with words with that sound and have fun with it.

Colleen,

I attended a clinic several years ago and picked up a tip that is very useful with this problem-to use a “window” (a large glass baking dish works also)
with the student on one side and the tutor/teacher/parent on the other side, with both writing with wipe-off markers. The adult writes backwards on one side and the student follows the adult who is directing the student verbally through the directions.

Go to this web page for an example of something that may help: http://www/spellangtree.org/SupplementaryMaterials.htm#Multi-Sensory

When you’ve finished looking at that, click on “Home Page,” then on “Free Resources,” then on “Teaching the Child to Print.” The letters described there are a type of script that looks like neat printing but will lead directly to cursive writing without the child having to unlearn certain strokes and replace them with others, especially ‘b’. Kinesthetic/tactile experiences really do help children learn the differences in the letters so anything you can do with tracing on texture will be of value. Every time the child practices printing the letter in this way s/he should also say the letter name and the sound it represents.

The carryover to reading is tremendous. Whenever my students blocked on any of these letters in reading, I simply said, “Trace the letter on your clothing,” and they knew it immediately. Grace

Hi,

I agree with Victoria here…teach them to make the letters properly when they write and it will help them discriminate. Too many kids start both the d and the b in the same spot, at the top of the line. By the time they get to the bottom, the odds of them going the right direction decrease, probably because they’ve moved on mentally to the next letter….who knows? By making the letter d with the “circle first” they are forced to think about the proper letter form before they put pencil to paper, instead of halfway through it.

I use no mnemonic tricks to discriminate b/d, other than proper handwriting, and consistently supplying the correct pronunciation when they mispronounce either letter, and with most clients, b/d reversals disappear relatively quickly, over three to five sessions, generally.

With the stubborn ones, a vision problem usually underlays their reading problem, I have found. (A persistant b/p reversal very likely indicates a vision problem, as few kids have up/down orientation problems and those that do also are likely to have messed up vision, in my opinion.)…Rod

I had a tenth grader who switched b’s and d’s in handwriting. We started each class every day with a copying exercise featuring the letter b. Things like “I bought a bunch of blue bottles of bubble bath” and “Big beans are better than baby beans for breakfast,” especially since it was at the beginnign of the word that he was most likely to confuse things (this was a cursive issue). The idea is to separate the confused things and learn one to automaticity — by January things were lots better but I’d still toss in practice here and there.