Citrusheights5 Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 Ok not really, but I've so many thought on the subject and my DH is not interested in listening too it and if I can just get it out it helps sort my own thoughts. So my son is 10 and still not reading, we've had initial testing suggesting ID, but I decided to look for more answers. I've found an excellent developmental pediatrician who dx'ed him with ADD- just inattentive, and said that he has dyslexia but cannot officialy dx. Concerta has made a HUGE difference in this case. We've been working through speech and has just passed the Barton screening. We purchased level one and just started working on it. Honestly I expect to be here for a while even though I know it's supposed to be "quick" his phonemic and phonological skills are just horrible. This child is still at cvc words. He can not do blends. Can not hear them reproduce them anything. So we did lesson one in Bartons, took us 2 weeks, to get through just that set. Then Miles got a concussion playing football. We are on full brain rest as well as physical rest. No school for a week. So then today, a week and a day after his hit, he looks at my shirt and says- b..br..bro...bron..bronco... p...pr..pri..pride.. Bronco Pride Seriously what happened. This child not only sounded out, but blended and made the correct sounds. It's scary, exciting, yet confusing. Was it the Barton?, was it the bonk in the head? Was it just a developmental leap? Is there a manual somewhere? Ugh. ParT of me is dying because I want to move forward with the Bartons, but his rest is way more important. Does it matter what happened? I feel like I should know what made it happen. If you made it this far thanks, I think I've come to the conclusion that what ever it is, I should just accept it and move forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 No idea, but that's great that he seems to have made a leap forward. Enjoy the positive and keep moving ahead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heathermomster Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 You are likely just seeing improvement from the explicit, direct instruction he has been receiving. Those methods work. He may know your shirt as a sight word and was sounding it out based upon what you have taught him. The word Pride has a long i and silent e in it. If you haven't taught that than you may want to tell him so that he doesn't continue a guessing habit. It is good that he is starting to see a connection with the blends in each of those words, b-r and p-r. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plink Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 First - Hooray for your son's accomplishment!!! Isn't it exciting to see it beginning to come together? Second - I'm so sorry about the concussion. Please take the doctor's rest restrictions seriously and wait on your Barton lessons for a bit. It is so important to allow the brain to heal after a concussion. If you don't you will be doing permanent damage, and our kids who struggle don't need any more bumps in their road. I have a child who took For-Ev-Er to complete Barton 1 at a pace similar to your 2 weeks/1lesson rate. I thought it was hopeless, but at 11 we are now confidently moving into level 4 and those moments of reading shirts, signs, and the back of cereal boxes are finally becoming something that I see every day. ((hugs)) Don't worry if his pace seems to wax and wane. Don't worry if you have to "miss" lessons while he heals. Don't worry if his ability is at a different level than his peers. Forward progress is ahead of you now that you have some good tools. You know what needs to be done in order to help him read, and right now that is rest. Take the time to go through your manual and highlight the bits that are most important, watch the videos again, and browse through the tutor section of the website for tips and games. I wish I had felt free to take the time to do that kind of planning when we started. More Hugs. It isn't easy being a momma. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 Ok not really, but I've so many thought on the subject and my DH is not interested in listening too it and if I can just get it out it helps sort my own thoughts. So my son is 10 and still not reading, we've had initial testing suggesting ID, but I decided to look for more answers. I've found an excellent developmental pediatrician who dx'ed him with ADD- just inattentive, and said that he has dyslexia but cannot officialy dx. Concerta has made a HUGE difference in this case. We've been working through speech and has just passed the Barton screening. We purchased level one and just started working on it. Honestly I expect to be here for a while even though I know it's supposed to be "quick" his phonemic and phonological skills are just horrible. This child is still at cvc words. He can not do blends. Can not hear them reproduce them anything. So we did lesson one in Bartons, took us 2 weeks, to get through just that set. Then Miles got a concussion playing football. We are on full brain rest as well as physical rest. No school for a week. So then today, a week and a day after his hit, he looks at my shirt and says- b..br..bro...bron..bronco... p...pr..pri..pride.. Bronco Pride Seriously what happened. This child not only sounded out, but blended and made the correct sounds. It's scary, exciting, yet confusing. Was it the Barton?, was it the bonk in the head? Was it just a developmental leap? Is there a manual somewhere? Ugh. ParT of me is dying because I want to move forward with the Bartons, but his rest is way more important. Does it matter what happened? I feel like I should know what made it happen. If you made it this far thanks, I think I've come to the conclusion that what ever it is, I should just accept it and move forward. (this first part was on whether to accept the ID diagnosis) Lee, what are they saying is the problem with his speech? In looking back over your old posts, I find you've been struggling with this question for about a year. You mentioned trying VT, ADHD meds, something about school for some of the kids but keeping this child home to give him focused attention, etc. I guess here's the problem. It's not going to be one answer. That dev. ped. didn't do another round of IQ testing, did he? The advice I was given when we got our evals was to accept the answer, even if we don't like it. It *could* be that a dc with severe apraxia of speech and limited speech does an IQ test that doesn't reflect his full abilities, yes. Is that's what is going on? I mean, just be honest, are his speech problems so severe that they would skew the results of the test? It's only in the last year that my ds has had speech even remotely close to his thought process and even now you have to be really, really patient to let it all come out. It could throw testing, yes. But the psych *should* have had forms of non-verbal IQ testing to administer. Did he? People don't always like the answers and the answers can be hard. It's possible that the answer will be a mixture of things (ID *and* ADD *and* VT *and*...). Some people are very special like that and get to meet lots of practitioners along the way and have these well-rounded lives influenced by lots of caring people. I'm reading The Spark right now, and it's about a mom who decided her boy was more than the label, more than the bit they were able to get to come out of him, so she went with his interests. I think, no matter what the label is of your dc, you can't go wrong with rolling with his interests. I had an adult cousin (now deceased) with what I think would now be called ID who was very into records. Is he into anything? Honestly, I'm not sure how much he read. I know he could read the record labels enough to do what he wanted to, lol. His funeral was well-attended because his heart touched many people. I'd encourage you to go with who he is. If he has interests, pursue them. If those interests can be a springboard to work on his formative skills like reading, go for it. I didn't address your actual question. Probably the combo of the explicit instruction and time to PROCESS it. That's why you're seeing the jump in his reading. Accepting the reality of his ID doesn't mean you aren't allowed to TEACH him, mercy! Sounds like what you're doing is working, so keep at it!! The lie would be that he'll never be worth anything, that your worth is only in your IQ. Find whatever is good or joyous about him and nurture it. And keep going with your teaching, because it sounds like you're getting progress!! :hurray: :hurray: :hurray: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kbutton Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 No advice to offer, but I am glad for your good news, and I hope he heals really well from his concussion. Enjoy your kiddo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citrusheights5 Posted September 15, 2014 Author Share Posted September 15, 2014 Thanks everyone!! It really helped just getting it but seeing that everyone else here also agrees that it could just be a step sounds good to me. this child has been giving me all the headaches of trying to figure out how best to help him. I've been trying to work with him since kindergarten and five years later here we still are. Miles has so many gifts and we work to focus on them. The is a scientist and engineer in training.. as for his IQ the developmental pediatrician did recommend we have him reevaluated but we could not do it through medical insurance and the school will not approve doing another IQ test so soon. I don't think that his diagnosis of ID was correctthey did not have the papers for nonverbal nor did they go down that route they also did not do the test well in my opinion. MIles more than likely is a slow learner, with add, and profound dyslexia. I've learned how to teach him almost everything but reading. His math is even improving since I ditched fact recall and just handed him a calculator. We do "reading wonders" through McGraw Hill, because it's a new curriculum for school to be done 100% digitaly. The reason it works for us is that it will read him all sections, and we can just work on nuts and bolts such as genre, characters, predicting outcomes, etc. With out having to bother with actually reading the material. The leveled readers are also ebooks that are read to him. My hardest job it to keep his ability to read seperate from his abilities. We have a new teacher who just does not get it. I'm so encouraged by Barton! I just cannot wait to get back at it. For now well just sit and wait. Oh and paint happy trees. Lots and lots of happy trees. Since its one of the few things we can do to pass the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citrusheights5 Posted September 15, 2014 Author Share Posted September 15, 2014 Oh one more thing to add, while on meds speech cleared up almost instantly. Dr said that happened with some but not most of kids. Guess my guy was just one of em. He could now pronounce all sounds, bit not always hear them. Word recall is still poor but I believe that is the dyslexia.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted September 15, 2014 Share Posted September 15, 2014 Oh one more thing to add, while on meds speech cleared up almost instantly. Dr said that happened with some but not most of kids. Guess my guy was just one of em. He could now pronounce all sounds, bit not always hear them. Word recall is still poor but I believe that is the dyslexia.. Which meds? ADHD meds? They can bump processing speed, and sometimes processing speed affects their speech. Makes sense they could help when he's working hard to pull it together. Word retrieval (either because of speech or the dyslexia) is lexicon, where it stores in the brain. Or at least that's one cause. So what you want to do is try to *organize* in his brain all the words he needs to retrieve. When you start a science lesson, read all the vocabulary from the end of the lesson first and let him have the words in front of him as he tries to discuss. Therapy books will have a scene and have them name all the things in a scene. You can do this with your home. Or for a reading story, list all the words that will be in the story that he'll want to recall. You could make it fun, drawing a picture and adding the words as a pre-reading introduction. For math, I used to put the words onto an index card in front of us so she could look down and find the word to explain the steps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citrusheights5 Posted September 15, 2014 Author Share Posted September 15, 2014 Yes the Concerta, for ADD is what helped clear up his speech. And I completely understand what you mean by organizing it in his head. We call it preloading information. He cannot do most of his work if we don't do that first. He now understands it's importance and when he has a big task he comes and asks for help to figure out what he'll need to know to do it. If we prime that pump he can do anything. His growth this year was tremendous! Medicating the ADD let us to see what was going on underneath that and we can address the issues as come up. And as slow and as tedious as some of them are, their is improvement!! Before, with out knowing about the inattentive, it was like talking to a brick wall.. nothing stuck, nothing changed, and there was no growth. His dyslexia is profound. That is honestly the hardest part to deal with. On an earlier phonics screening I had to do with our new teacher, oral miles could say a word that rhymed with cat (hat, sat) But if he had a choice of three pictures a sock, a hat, and a flower, and asked to rhyme cat he could not do it. We're getting there slowly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suenos Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 What a great moment citrusheights5!!! I like the idea of it being due to the bump on the head....but that's my sarcastic/dry sense of humor...and my recurring fantasy of reaching inside my DS' little brain to massage it into shape...you know, just a little tweaking... But seriously, likely due to both of your efforts, and a great accomplishment. Way to go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxbridgeacademy Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 I noticed with DS (dyslexic/dysgraphic and also ADD-inattentive) that he would work on the same skills for months at a time with little to no progress then all of a sudden, like a light bulb going off, he would "get it". So, I say it's the combination of work and time, the concussion just gave his brain a break to process. Which is something I found helpful with DS. Every few weeks we'd take an extra few days off from school, even a week sometimes. I think (IME only) that a child who has both ADD and LD's, making sure to not overwhelm them is one of the most important things. They need time away to "veg-out" so that their brains can process the information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterPan Posted September 19, 2014 Share Posted September 19, 2014 They need time away to "veg-out" so that their brains can process the information. :iagree: This is "many accumulated experiences" as one article I read put it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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