Teaching reading to hard of hearing son

Go over to the Teaching Reading board — there are lots of experienced teachers and a Speech-Language pathologist (Cheryl) over there. Post requests, and use the Search option to look up good posters and things on CAPD. and Reading Reflex. There’s lots of help available!

I also have an hearing impaired son who is 8. I am going to homeschool next Fall. Have you homeschooled him from the beginning? I find it interesting that I have actually found someone else with a hearing impaired son who homeschools! People have told me that being hearing impaired is not an LD what do you think? Does your son have any other LD’s? Jen

was begun on May 4 on the Vegsource forum on Teaching Reading and Math (http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/reading/index.html). The thread title was “Teaching Reading to Hard of Hearing Son.”

What about auditory processing? Have you heard of it? This seems to be my daughters problem. The brain processes what it hears differently than normal and creates what seems like a hard of hearing problem.

That would make a difference in teaching him to read. I am hearing impaired and so are 3 of my 4 kids and I am becoming a Speech Pathologist. It is not uncommon for hearing impaired kids to miss words when they are speaking, reading or writing. Does he wear a hearing aid?

CAPD - Central Auditory Processing Disorder.

There is a LOT of discussion of this and related topics on the Teaching Reading site — go over there and have a look at all the older posts on this for tons of useful info.

Lori,

I happen to be a teacher of hearing impaired children. Many of them struggle with reading. I think you have made a wise choice to use Reading Reflex. I am planning to use it with my students next year. How is your son writing? Does he write complete sentences? If his oral and written language is delayed, then I would expect for there to be reading problems. As Patti already asked, I’d be curious to know the level of hearing loss and if you’re using amplification when teaching reading.

Also, he may just feel overwhelmed when he sees a whole page of text. If he can successfully sound out words in isolation, you may just need to use a pointer and move it over the letters as you do in PG to get him to sound out the words. Until that becomes more automatic, comprehension will be difficult, but you just have to keep working on it. Teaching a hearing impaired child to read is a very difficult task. I think it is wonderful that you are teaching your son!

Janis

Jen,

I just wanted to address the part in your post of hearing loss being an LD. Hearing impairment and LD are two different categories which have legal definitions for children to be placed for special education services.

I would agree with you 100% that HI children have many similarities to dyslexic (LD) children and certainly need very similar instruction assuming they can access some hearing through amplification or cochlear implants. Yes, they DO have learning problems (often reading disabilities) in most cases.

On the other hand, the term “learning disability” was meant for children who have processing problems that are NOT caused by a sensory (visual or hearing) impairment.

I do sometimes have a HI child who I sincerely believe has a separate LD. For example, math computation is usually less difficult for HI children than language based tasks. If I have a HI child who is having great difficulty in math (other than word problems), I suspect a LD and will request an evaluation. But most HI children will have some degree of difficulty with reading and writing since language is often delayed in these children (degree depends on level of loss and other factors, of course). So, yes, they do have learning disabilites in one sense, but just not in the sense that the term is used for educational/legal purposes.

Janis

My 12-year-old son has a high-frequency hearing loss. He wears hearing aides and learned to read through PhonoGraphix. He was mainstreamed in a private school through 4th grade. This past year he has been in public school is a self-contained classroom for hearing impaired children. In our school system many HI children are mainstreamed and get support services and others are in self contained classrooms that are oral, using cued speech, or sign language.

Learning to read is definitely a challenge when you don’t hear all the sounds! Educators of deaf children have yet to figure out a truly successful methodology to teach reading. I personally think PG is the best way to come along so far. I know some teachers use it with cued speech.

There is definitely an overlap of learning disabilities for some HI kids. I think the connection is neurological impairments. Auditory processing is definitely an issue for many HI kids according to my son’s teacher. She also says that all her students have a hard time with math word problems.

Linda,

Thanks for telling me a little more about your son. I am very happy to hear that PG was helpful to him. I can’t wait to start using it next year. I do agree that most HI children have problems with math word problems, but I think it is dues to the language delay and reading problems as opposed to being a math problem. But if a child has over-all math problems, then definitely I suspect an LD.

Is your son still really delayed in reading and writing skills? All of our high frequency loss kids are in regular classes with resource help as needed. We have only self-contained children who were deaf.

Janis

My son has a lot going on. It’s pretty hard to sort out. See my posts about sleep apnea on the “Parenting a Child with ADHD” board. After suspecting for at least a year and a half that my son has sleep apnea, removing his tonsils, etc. he’s finally on a cpap machine at night and his brain is working much better. We’ve also been doing neurofeedback training. When he was 2.5 he went into cardiac arrest and was not breathing for over 11 minutes! Although the MRI and catscan never showed any brain damage, we knew he went from being left-handed to not being any handed. His EEG shows all kinds of atypical and disorganized brain waves. Since we’ve done so much stuff it is difficult to be scientific about what is making the biggest difference (or any difference), but it’s more important that we do everything we can to improve the quality of his life.

From kindergarten through 4th grade, he went to a progressive private school that was wonderful on many levels, but not the best match for him regarding his hearing loss and other challenges. I think that if he’d been in the public school program that he is now, he’d probably be performing at grade level. The curriculum in public school is nowhere near as stimulating as the curriculum in his private school…but it might have been better for him academically.

He’s doing so well right now, I am hoping that in the next year he can be transitioned to mainstream classes and keep up with grade level work. I wrestle with wanting him to be challenged to do his best but not wanting him to be stressed out by demands that are more than he can handle. I hope we can find the right balance.

Linda,

I understand now. You are right that it is far more complicated when a child has multiple issues. I have several students who are having more difficulty than that which would be caused by their hearing loss. Fortunately I have LD training as well, and it often comes in handy! And I agree with you that balance is essential. When I read on here about kids who are depressed and having a horrible time in class, I think, TAKE THEM OUT! Isn’t that obvious that the placement is inappropriate? It is very important for a child to feel some success, and I support a special class, resource class, or mainstream class…whichever is right for a child to progress at their rate and feel some success. It sounds like you have the right idea and I am so happy that your son is doing well!

Janis

My son has bilateral moderate-severe hearing loss. He does where 2 aids.

Lori

Janis,
We are in the very basics of learning to read. He is able to blend short vowel sound words.

He does wear 2 aids, which just came back fixed today.

I am hoping that this helps too.

His oral language is pretty good. But since he is not reading much yet, he is not writing.

Lori

Lori,

I think PG is a good choice. Just remember that those hearing aids are essential when you are teaching decoding. Good luck and feel free to ask me further questions if needed!

Janis

I’m tutoring a hard-of-hearing adult right now, the first time I’ve worked with this particular disability. Because he was allowed to go to age 18 with absolutely no intervention, and then left alone to cope for a very long time, he is also language-deprived and socially deprived.

I’ve been using the same phonics books that I’ve had good results with before (Scholar’s Choice Check and Double Check phonics, starting right at the beginning with Book 1) which are aimed at primary school kids, but he actually *likes* them because for the first time in his life he understands and is succeeding in his work! These also include printing practice and, later, spelling can be blended in.
For reading I’ve been using the Ladybird Key Words Book 10, a level I normally omit (I change over to various basal readers after Book 5 or 6 usually, to get richer backgrounds and concepts) but the upper-level Ladybird Key Words are specifically designed for students having learning problems and they give all the facts without asking for a lot of inferences, an advantage for the unsure/language disabled/concept disabled student.

Results are extremely slow but positive — he is becoming aware that the letters in a word are there for a reason, he’s printing more confidently, he is finally extending his reading vocabulary which was stuck at 3.5 (the typical memorization level) for a very long time, and he is beginning to make an attempt to spell words by sound and to get at least the most stressed letters — previously he could not write at all; he could form the letters but had no idea which ones to form.

I am finding that I need to repeat even more than usual, maybe fifty times or more on one word in one lesson, and the same topic over five or more lessons. I am also finding that I need to do a lot of speech and language therapy as well as reading — last lesson for example, we found he couldn’t distinguish ghost, goat, or goats, (his s’s and z’s are slushed or missing in speech, and apparently he doesn’t really hear them, and he cannot distinguish s from t well if at all) so if he doesn’t hear it and can’t say it, how the heck do we expect him to make the distinction in his reading and writing? I’m also trying to get him to use singular and plurals and correct verb endings when he reads (previously he just mushed the sounds and either didn’t know or thought nobody would notice through his thick speech.) I have to be forceful and insist on repeating the correct sound many many times.

But he is moving forward, and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel in another six months or so.

This is not a miracle cure and you can’t buy a program and wait for the magic bullet to work, but a combination of a solid phonics program, patterned writing, highly repetitive and patterned reading, work on speech/listening, and above all one-to-one work on practicing correct patterns and NOT practicing mistakes, all together will pull things together slowly but surely.