Lindamood Bell

Trixie,

First let me warn you to please not use a commercial tutoring center. I’d rather see you spend a huge amount and get something worthwhile as opposed to spending half as much and getting nothing. The tutoring centers rarely use methods for children woth real reading disorders (dyslexia).

Call your state International Dyslexia Association and get a list of qualified tutors in your area. Most private tutors charge less than a LMB clinic. I know I charge half as much as the nearest LMB clinic to us and I am trained in LMB programs as well as some others.

It would be best if you can arrange more than one session per week, though.

Janis

It’s frightening, isn’t it? You see the cost and it sortof explains why the public schools can’t successfully teach children with learning disabilities. To do it right is very very costly!

I went to a LMB clinic and talked with the director and watched a child in session. They wanted the kids 4 hours a day/5 days a week during the day. I didn’t see how I could do that. My son was in public school and that would have been way too many absences. The director said most kids they see are either withdrawn from school and considered homeschooled or they attend private school where absences have no meaning. I work full-time and the logistics just wasn’t going to work.

I opted to put my 9-year-old son in a private school for kids with learning differences. The outlay of money is staggering. I took a loan out and will take another out for next year. He’s been there almost 1 school year now and there is progress. I haven’t received the end of the year testing results, but I look forward to it.

I know some of the teachers at his school also tutor at night to other kids privately. That might be an option too.

>Trixie,

>First let me warn you to please not use a commercial tutoring center. I’d rather see you spend a huge amount and get something worthwhile as

Agreed! The commercial francise type tutoring centers are a big waste of time and money. They might be good for some kids but NOT ld kids for sure.

>Call your state International Dyslexia Association and get a list of qualified tutors in your area. Most private tutors charge less than a LMB clinic. I know I charge half as much as the nearest LMB clinic to us and I am trained in LMB programs as well as some others.

Might also try Iser.com and some local papers (not the big one of course). Also schools might have a list. You want someone trained in some established proven approach for ld kids like LMB, Orton gillingham (OG), etc. I charge a WHOLE lot less than the LMB clinics. If you’re not sure, ask away here and we can tell you what is worth your while.

>It would be best if you can arrange more than one session per week, though.

Your kid may not need LMB really, but if she does I think really 4 times is best (1 hour though, not 4-5). OTOH, OG can reasonably done in 2-3 sessions a week. I don’t think 1 time a week will accomplish much.
Most kids do not need LiPS which is LMB’s most extensive program.

Janis

—des

nis[/quote]

You know, I am so confused now. Not from what any of you said- but what is the “right” thing to do. There are all these things- like Fast Forword and Audio Blox and Lindamood Bell and Orton Gillingham.
I am going to talk to her speech pathologist about what she thinks and look into all the resources you guys have mentioned. I know, no magic bullet- but what is a reasonable (in terms of expectations and cost) thing to do?
I guess part of my frustration is her age. She is young (and yes, this is good- getting right on it etc…) But, she is young- so she might developmentally come to terms with some things (which she has shown this year) OR………
was I learning disabled? how would I know? all I had to learn in kindergarten was to write my name. Now, I am a writer- figure the irony my daughter with expressive language disorder. Perhaps I was just like this and turned it around to a strength. I know she is smart and bright and funny and adorable and I want to help her any way I can. But I just want to do what is right.
I did email a local fastforword provider. any opinions on that?
once again,
thanks. Trixie

Understand that if you talk to your public school speech teacher there is really very little she can tell you. If she says, Yes your child will benefit from LMB then the school must pay for it. If she recommends it, that’s it. Typically, public school personnel will tell you that what they are doing is fine, is the best, is enough. You can’t get unbiased information from her. Her hands and opinions are tied.

She is not the school speech therapist. This is something we are doing on our own.

Trixie,

I have personally wrestled with the FFW issue to the point of driving myself nuts. There are providers that rave over it. Then I read that the studies are flawed. If it cost $100, I’d say, what the heck, let’s try it. But it is a huge responsibilty to recommend a program that costs $850 plus a provider fee which can easily double the cost. Not to mention the intensive time involved. So I remain cautious about FFW and continue to use Earobics which is different but does train some auditory skills effectively at a very small cost.

Here is a study which is listed by the International Dyslexia Association (a trustworthy organization) which compared intensive instruction in FFW, Earobics, and LiPS.

http://www.interdys.org/pdf/PS29-Steppingstones.pdf

Janis

My ds did Fastforward the summer he turned 8 and we had fabulous results. But, I think 6 is just too young for this program. You are better off doing Earobics for a while. I’d wait until she is at least 7. I personally find this Earobics very annoying. The time between one question and the next is very long and there is no way to speed it up. You also have to be very on top of which game the child is doing. My dd has used the Sound Reading Solutions CD and it is far, far better on both those counts. It is reasonably fast between questions (you don’t have to wait and wait for the reward pictures to show up) and the program is all set out in the CD in a way that is seamless to the kids and requires no input from the parent. Dd used the teen CD and while it had some phoenemic awareness, it was not at the intensity you are probably seeking. You might check out the CDs for pre-readers on the website—those are probably very oriented to intensive phoenemic awareness. That said, many report good success with Earobics—but it was slow torture for me and dd.

Marie,

I definitely agree about recommending SRS CD’s, but I just wanted to say that my students use Earobics with no monitoring from me at all. (Other than they are in the room with me so I can see that they are working rather than goofing off!). The main problem I see with it is that it takes a lot longer for a child to get a token on the record page than it did in Earobics 1, and they think something is wrong with the CD. I very much wish they’d revise it and add more frequent reinforcers.

Janis

Trixie,

You might also consider buying the LiPS manual and taking the 3-day training yourself. If you’re the type who can teach their own child without going crazy :lol: then this option is definitely much cheaper.

Thanks Maricel-
That remains to be seen! :)

We did neuropsych testing w/ our 8 y.o. boy in January, after which she recommended FastForward with a followup of LindaMood Bell. We were also aghast, but resigned to the cost. As it turned out, our speech and language pathologist is an [u]unadvertised [/u]provider. She wants to prescribe a program that is appropriate for the child’s problem. (We did call two of the advertised providers. They were going to start him without any testing other than what had already been done. In fact the providers office assistant was the one who monitors the program.) It seemed a little random.) With our S & L therapist it was only necessary for us to pay the licensing fee because we opted to work the program at home. We then pay her for what would be our regular visit when we go in once a month. We determined it would be best to do it at home because of attentional issues and it is working out well. He has completed his fourth week and we are in the home stretch. His Dad and I have noticed a distinct improvement in his reading skills. We have also focused on reading material he is interested in.

My understanding is that if a child’s reading difficulties are appropriate for the treatment, FastForward works. But otherwise, it’s akin to taking aspirin when you don’t have a headache.

I would agree, except I would rephrase that to say that if the child’s auditory and language skills are appropriate for the treatment, FFW works.

Janis

I’ve been reading the above posts and I’ll give you my two cents. I think that all the advice is right and wrong. Wrong if taken in the context that one size fits all kids. Right if it works for your kid.

Our daughter who is now 15, has multiple issues including ADHD, language, CAPD and anxiety/depression. When she was 8, we were the first to do Fast ForWord (FFW) in our area (the beta version was HAILO back then). Prior CAPD testing showed her to have temporal processing issues, which FFW does address. We followed FFW with CAPD testing again and her scores improved in areas that should not have improved over only time. She also told me that she “hears” better. FFW alone, however, did not improve her reading one iota.

We then did Lindamood-Bell in 4 different ways. First, LIPS with our SLT who was self taught and did it 1-2 hours per week; no improvement in phonemic awareness to speak of and certainly nothing in reading. Second, LIPSin a classroom setting at a private school for LD kids; again, little improvement. Third, LIPS again with our SLT in the summer 4-6 hours per week; still not much improvement. Because we live in an area where there were no intensive Lindamood-Bell programs or Orton-Gillingham tutors at all, we brought in a tutor from Lindamood-Bell themselves at big bucks, who worked with her 4 hours per day for 6 weeks, doing LIPS and Visualizing and Verbalizing almost half the time. After a two month rest, we went to a Lindamood-Bell Clinic and did another 6 weeks of LIPS/VV. In that 12 week period, she improved decoding from a grade level of 1.6 to 3.4!

It then became apparent that past the phonemic awareness portion of LIPS, it becomes essentially Orton-Gillingham. So we sent an LD teacher that we hired to tutor our daughter for O-G training. We continued to work on keeping her decoding skills sharp and worked on fluency, which took almost two years to really develop with lots of practice. Her reading is now just about at grade level, with comprehension a little behind, due to her language issues.

Spelling and writing continue to be the biggest challenge. Phonetic spelling is pretty good, though she still lapses into guessing sometimes. If you ask her to correct the spelling, she can cite the “rule” and correct it herself. I think her attention is the big factor here as well as executive function which is part of her ADHD.

We are continuing to do Orton-Gillingham. Because of her multiple issues and the more severe nature, she is one who is not easy to “fix”. Reading is easier than spelling and writing for most kids, but there are some who will never be great spellers or writers. We haven’t given up yet, but there may come a time when spell check will become her best friend.

All kids are different. I have known those who took off after FFW helped with temporal processing. Those actually probably had temporal processing issues. It won’t help what isn’t “broken”. I’ve know others who needed more expliciti “phonics” and took off. They were probably mild and had problems due to a failure of teaching. Still others need lots of repetition and socratic teaching (which Lindamood-Bell and Orton-Gillingham are great at, if done properly).

If you’ve had neuropsych testing, you have an idea of the areas impacted and how severe. Most neuropsychs don’t know much about specific programs for remediation, however.

In hindsight, if I had to do it over and had access to any program I wanted, I still would have done Fast ForWord for temporal processing issues because if your child needs intensive work with lots of repetition, most SLTs wouldn’t do it. FFW makes you do it. If you can find a similar program (EArobics or some of the other newer ones) and can be regimented enough to do a daily schedule, then do that. The same goes for Lindamood-Bell. Their claim to fame is intensity and doing it with VV which aids attention and memory. Again, if you can find someone to do LIPS/VV daily, then go for that (if that’s what your child needs).

Orton-Gillingham for us is a very long term committment. I actually had the director of our LD school ask her tutor ask when she was going to be “done” with O-G, the implication being either that it wasn’t working if we needed to continue it more than two years and that she didn’t need one-on-one work. Luckily, I knew better and we continue it. It ain’t over until the Fat Lady spells!

There are other good programs out there for reading, but first you must get an accurate diagnosis of exactly what is causing a reading problem. As I said, it’s not one size fits all. Read the articles in LD in Depth at this site about reading to learn which steps are weak in your child.

For phonemic awareness, though I’m a little behind in all the new programs out there because we’ve been through that 7 years ago, Daisy’s Castle was one I remember, Wilson (an O-G offshoot) has a younger program, the Language! program by Jane Fell Greene have PA components and of course there’s always Lindamood-Bell. All are good, but you’ve got to match the intensity to your child. LIPS won’t work if not done the right way for him/her.

LD Online is a great resource that you should use. It literally opened my eyes to what was going on and was very instrumental in learning and choosing programs for my daughter. Keep posting specific questions on the bulletin boards.

Good luck. Your child is lucky to have a parent who asks the right questions!

Cairo

There is no “right thing to do” — until after you did it and it works. You can’t know if somethng sort of helps, some whether if you’d done something different it would have helped more; you can’t know if you do something and it works that it wcouldn’t have been accomplished with something less intensive or expensive.
That said, LMB is the “Cadillac” of treatments and (with a well trained, experienced tutor) a whole lot of good can be done with their intensive programs. Have kids been remediated with less intensive programs? Yes. I’ve gotten many of ‘em on track with 50 minutes a day of O-G… tho’ that was at an LD school — yea, shall we say significant financial outlay, tho’ financial aid helps — with supportive instruction all around. Confidence in the teacher is really important. See if you can observe a lesson — or as has been suggested, get the training yourself. I’ll grant that you learn a *lot* from experience — but you only have to learn *one* kiddo that you already know fairly well.
By the way, the original research on FFW was done on *younger* kids than 6, not older (but with kids severely enough impaired in auditory processing that you could tell when they were preschoolers). It is, though, intense and boring and a true test of patience — effective if it’s what you need, but tough! :-)

I think you are a phenomenal parent. You really are doing it right. As children grow, their abilities improve and they cope differently with their disabilities, so we need to give them all the tools possible to cope at various stages in their growth. My experience with LMB is that most severely dyslexic children make progress where none had been seen before. It’s like opening the door. Unfortunately, the older/more advanced students don’t continue to progress or they can’t apply the techniques in connected reading. I don’t think you get enough bang for your buck with LMB after a certain point.

OG seems to be something that readers can hang onto and really use over time, and the results are worth the cost. If a student really has problems, you must teach or tutor on a more intensive basis than when a student is just struggling a little, but the intensive 5 hours a day for LMB doesn’t leave the child time to work on other areas like math or social studies or science, or any time to be a kid and make friends and have fun. It’s all about balance as well as success.

Good luck to you and your daughter. I’m sure she’ll succeed with your help.

Fern

The LMB clinics do 4 hour a day intensives during the summer. And they do offer the schoool day program for the few who choose that. However, you can hire and independent tutor who uses LMB and have it one hour a day if you prefer. LMB can be scheduled just like OG is scheduled. It is not limited to intensives, although some of the clinics may not want to do less than a certain amount, like 2 hours a day. All programs will require long-term follow-up to develop fluency.

Janis

<<By the way, the original research on FFW was done on *younger* kids than 6, not older (but with kids severely enough impaired in auditory processing that you could tell when they were preschoolers). It is, though, intense and boring and a true test of patience — effective if it’s what you need, but tough!??

Our school was one of many that were involved in a research study on the effectiveness of FFW. For the first 8 weeks we had third and fifth graders, and the second 8 weeks we had 4th and 6th graders. None were in Special Ed., and we had to have weekly raffles and such to keep these guys on task. It was boring for them, and boring for us. I’m not sure who needed more patience—the kids or us!

Marilyn

Marilyn,

Have you ever gotten outcomes on that experiment? But I am really blown away that the kids were not in special ed. No wonder it was boring for them! What was the criteria for selection?

Janis

Janis:

<<Have you ever gotten outcomes on that experiment? But I am really blown away that the kids were not in special ed. No wonder it was boring for them! What was the criteria for selection?>>

No, we never got any results at all. Actually, the criteria for selection was quite random. There was a control group and the experimental group. I think the purpose was to see if FFW actually increased reading scores. The study was done by an ivy league university. But like I said, we never got any type of results.

I did have some Special Ed. kids do FFW, but they were not part of the study, and they did show more interest than the regular ed. kids.

Marilyn

Well, there’s an experiment that was designed to fail!

Seriously, FFW is intended to help learners with auditory processing problems. If a child does NOT have auditory processing problems, how in Hades will it help? For an analogy, if a class is doing *well* in Grade 5 math and doing fraction arithmetic, and someone wants to test a new math program and uses them as a control group for a program on whole-number addition, what woud you expect to see? Would they be likely to show any improvement being re-taught skills they mastered three years previously? And wouldn’t you expect them to be bored and resistant?

That was a dumb study design. And Ivy League people can do some dumb things — I can tell you tales — in fact the Ivy League name sometimes protects people who would never get away with it in a place that had less prestige.

That was my thought while watching “A Beautiful Mind.”

Victoria,
Of course it’s not just the Ivies who do this sort of thing. A while ago someone posted a link to an article about some school district—I think it was in PA—whose superintendent decided the way to raise reading test scores was to make all the first graders do FFW. He insisted he was getting brilliant results but a couple of us questioned the cost benefit of paying for FFW for all those kids with perfectly fine auditory skills.
Mariedc

Well, I can see *some* justification for using FFW with all first-graders. Very few six-year-olds have completely mastered the language, and the idea of manipulating phonemes is new to them, so the majority could get at least a little benefit. But using it with all Grade 5 students borders on professionally irresponsible.

Victoria:

<<That was a dumb study design. And Ivy League people can do some dumb things — I can tell you tales — in fact the Ivy League name sometimes protects people who would never get away with it in a place that had less prestige>>

Actually, I think the study may have been trying to disprove FFW’s claims. FFW seems to have been making many claims of success and improvement in reading scores and obviously was trying to expand their market. That’s too bad, because I personally feel as you and others have expressed here that the program does benefit students who do have auditory processing deficits. It has been known to be a good preface to multisensory programs such as LMB and OG programs. FFW seems to be doing an outstanding job of getting school systems turned off to them, and not renewing licenses, even though some of our SPED kids can really use it.

Marilyn

Ya, whatever happened to a successful niche market?

Sue:

<<Ya, whatever happened to a successful niche market?>>

I guess they got a bit greedy for a bigger chunk of the market, maybe?

Marilyn

Lots of pages here to read through, so I might be repeating what someone else has said. I work for a public school district that provides Fast ForWord and Lindamood Bell Programs. Even my old, not at all supportive, district had some Fast ForWord contracts and some LMB trained teachers. Ask if your school district will provide these programs.

Just popping in, sorry to be redundant…

We did 4 weeks of LMB (seeing stars) 4 hr/day for our dyslexic son about 18 months ago. It was the first reading intervention that had an observable effect on his reading. I sat in a session, and from what I could tell it wasn’t that different than what his OG tutor had been doing except it was intense. And the cost was actually less per hour than his tutor was.

What I learned was that intensive remediation would work for my son, and we subsequently have moved him to a private LD school that uses OG . That is also working for him.

If he hadn’t been accepted to his current school we would have continued to do LMB during school vacations. When we did do it he went during winter break, and then I took him out of school early for a few weeks. It was very difficult, but worth it.

LMB is not a sylvan, huntington or the like. Every child I met there was LDS, some appeared quite impaired in their language processing. The teachers were really just well trained kids, but the format of the center kept it reasonably fresh for my son and he enjoyed seeing other children.

Hope that helps!

The difference between LMB (esp LiPS) and OG is that LiPs takes each phoneme and teaches exactly how it is produced, gives it a name, etc.
OG doesn’t do this (although I imagine an OG teacher that was trained in LiPS could combine the two to some extent). LiPS will work when nothign else can, imo. But not all dyslexics need that intensive an approach.
I saw it work “magic” with one of my students, he was reading on a first grade level, with little clue on how to sound out work, much less say half the sounds in isolation.

—des