9 yo boy reading problems

[5kidsforME]

My 9 yo still is having issues reading. We have used 100 e-z lessons, Ordinary Parents Guide, bob books, etc....

 

He still only reads very minimally and not well. he writes his p's, g's, b's, and d's backwards consistently. We are stil on 1st grade things because of this and he should be in 3rd grade stuff.

 

Any thoughts or suggestions or programs to use? Do you think there is a bigger problem here or is this "normal"?

 

Thanks so much!

 

Megan

[Maria/ME]

This is sounding familiar. My daughter had similar issues. I'll tell you our story a bit and you can see if it rings any bells.

 

My dd (who will be 10 in a few days) never really cared to read. She just wasn't interested. Getting her to read was like pulling teeth. She did well enough, however, and always showed SOME progress though not at all at "grade level". But since I homeschool I just want progress. I don't necessarily have to have her at "grade level". We tried 100 EZ lessons, Ordinary Parents Guide, but she really hated it all. Some letters/words got mixed up although she was a great speller. Some b's/d's would get mixed up but not consistently. I was concerned because while she seemed to make progress she wasn't really starting to pick up on her own like most readers/learners do, KWIM? We started using Writing Road to Reading and I noticed much improvement! That is a bit to get used to teaching as it's not a learning method I was used to, but it worked! However, she still didn't LOVE reading. She could do better, but not great.

 

On another board I visit, someone mentioned their child with similar issues. They were recommended seeing a developmental optometrist. Developmental Optometrists check for things your avg optometrist will not. How the eyes work together, tracking/teaming and so forth. I never worried vision would be a problem because my daughter has 20/20 vision. We ended up going to a dev.opt. and found that her eyes are not working together well at all. Hence her reading struggles. Her ambivalence. Some vision therapy will help the problem to a great degree.

 

Given what you said about the mix up of letters especially makes me think you might want to get that checked out. There have been a few posts (along with mine) regarding this. I'll try to find the threads and post them below.

 

It may be that your son just isn't ready to read yet. That it may come in time. I did a lot of reading on delayed academics and didn't push my daughter, but I was also very very thankful and happy someone steered me in the direction to check out the dev. opt. If you go, and there aren't any problems at least you can rule it out!!

 

I'm sure you'll get some really great answers on this board! They've helped me tremendously!

[kRenee]

Bigger problem! Get a vision evaluation from a developmental optometrist right away. Your son sounds just like mine.

 

A developmental optometrist will check for convergence, tracking, focusing and other things. This is NOT the same as an eyesight test at a regular optometrists' office. My regular optometrist was very insistant that I would be wasting my time and money if I had a vision evaluation done. The very next day I had it done anyway, and my ds had the above problems. We are doing vision therapy now.

[Homeschooling SLP]

I am a speech-language pathologist and also homeschool. Your post caught my attention. One of my specialty areas is dyslexia. My suggestions, as already above...vision testing, then schedule an appoint with a speech-language pathologist who does testing for language and reading disorders. They should administer an assessment of phonemic awareness skills which are the underlying skills for the development of both reading and spelling. This should be followed by an assessment of his decoding abilities both in real words and in non-sense words (non-sense words are very important). A hearing screening should also be performed by the SLP and if problems are present you should see an audiologist for a full audiological evaluation. If there are deficits in phonemic awareness further auditory processing assessment should be completed (part of this is done by the SLP and part by the audiologist).

 

Based on these results specific recommendations can be given to you for home carryover. Any program you are using for spelling should reinforce your reading program. You should choose an Orton-Gillingham based method. You can google that and come up with several. One great spelling progam can be viewed at www.learningbydesign.com (expensive but is a one-time buy for all of your school years). Another great option although this is expensive is Susan Barton's Spelling and Reading (maybe reading and spelling??). You can google that and watch a video.

 

My children were beyond the spelling and reading early years when we started homeschooling and I have had limited opportunity to review lots of homeschool spelling/reading programs out there, but I don't see one's that are really complete...so as you review look for the words Orton-Gillingham. I believe the "Phonics Road to ...? Spelling or English" something like that is a Orton-Gillingham based program.

 

Good luck!

[Claire]

Here is a website with information about developmental vision skills (which are *not* assessed in regular eye exams!). You can located board-certified developmental optometrists in your area by doing a search here.

 

I would recommend getting the book "Reading Reflex" by McGuinness. Read the first three chapters, then give your son the assessments in the book. That will tell you a lot about his reading subskills (segmenting, blending, phoneme manipulation).

[Rod Everson]

Hi Megan,

 

I rent office space from a developmental optometrist and teach reading, primarily advanced code phonics and a multisyllable decoding strategy.

 

I also help out the optometrist by assessing the reading levels of kids who come in for developmental vision exams. Generally, the home-schooled kids have good phonics skills, but the parents are concerned with either their child's lack of interest in reading, discomfort when reading, or inability to learn to read (in spite of good blending and segmenting skills.)

 

I sometimes get a chance to test the same children after about 3 or 4 months of vision therapy, and in many cases it's simply amazing the gains they've made. I mean, gains of one to two years in that short time in their ability to recognize actual words. Anecdotally, most parents claim that their kids are finally showing an active interest in reading as well.

 

The only kids I end up working with are the ones whose word attack skills were weak at the initial testing and remain weak after vision therapy. These are definitely a minority of those who go through vision therapy, probably on the order of 10 to 15 percent, though I can't really tell for sure, since the parents who are no longer worrying about their kids' reading ability usually don't bother coming back to me for another assessment.

 

What my experiences of the past several years have taught me is that we too often put the cart before the horse in reading instruction. Instead of trying several phonics methods (some of which are definitely better than others in that they just make more sense to a child) we should first address the vision needs of any child who shows signs of struggling when learning to read.

 

Rod Everson

OnTrack Reading-The Vision Piece

[Laurie4b]

Bigger problem.

Book to read: Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. It is a readable summary of the latest research on dyslexia. Online publication to google: Put Reading First. It will have a good summary of all the components of a good reading program.

The overwhelming cause (like over 80%) of dyslexia (which simply means difficulty reading, BTW) is difficulty with phonemic awareness. A child needs phonemic awareness before phonics will "take." Phonemic awareness is the brain's ability to "get" that a word is made up of individual sounds. If you can't hear that bath has 3 sounds /b/ /a//th/ then teaching you that the /b/ sound is represented by the letter b, the /a/ by the letter a, etc. isn't going to "stick."

Reversals of letters past the age of about 7 is not normal, and typically indicates a difficulty with an innate sense of left and right. This can be related to issues larger than visual issues, such as vestibular issues.

 

At age 9, you want to hustle to get your kiddo caught up and closing the gap between himself and his peers or the negative emotional stuff is going to kick in. Once he decides he is stupid (which will be HIS explanation if there is not a better one forthcoming), then the self-esteem issues become bigger than the original problem. Reading Reflex has some basic tests for phonemic awareness. An speech language pathologist or psychologist can administer more complete ones. If there is a developmental optometrist near you, you can try that (we are) but with the awareness that there is not a good research basis for what they do yet. Just don't put all your eggs in that basket and ignore the help that is research-based in the meantime (such as remediation of phonemic awareness.) Good programs for teaching most dyslexic kids are the Phonographix family of remediation (Reading Reflex, ABCDarian, later REWARDS) and the Orton-Gillingham family, which includes Wilson & Barton. At his age, I'd actually recommend a tutor, at least to kick things off, or give you consultation in your homeschooling. However, a few months of experienced tutoring should make a big difference.