HELP! Difficulty Learning ABCs

[hugsathome]

Hi.  I am wondering if my Kindergartener who can't retain the names of letters or their sounds  might be dyslexic.  Any other ideas or learning issues that I should look in to?

 

Even though we go over a few letters a day v-e-r-y slowly, she can't remember their name or sound.  Often times, she even thinks they are a number.  I've played games.  Had her color and cut-out the letters.  Build the letters, paint them, etc. 

 

Thanks for any help. 

[PeterPan]

Our neuropsych is a HUGE fan of early diagnosis of dyslexia.  Given that you have two other kids with reading problems, seems to me you ought to find a good psychologist or place to get them eval'd and get the whole lot of 'em in.  Could be dyslexia, could be adhd that needs a lot more attention and careful teaching, could be undiagnosed vision problems.  Could even be a mixture of things.

 

Stop guessing and get the evals, that's my advice.  The ps will do them for free, or pick a place to do them for you.  Find out who in your area is well-regarded for dyslexia and start there.

[Pen]

Yup. I was told to wait and see...

 

But that was a first sign of dyslexia issues, and I wish I'd gotten it figured out sooner and not listened to the "wait and see".

[OneStepAtATime]

Agree with Pen and Elizabeth 100%.  Get evals.  And read the book The Mislabeled Child by Brock and Fernette Eide.  There could be a ton of different issues/strengths (yes undiagnosed strengths can also play a significant part in masking all the possible issues) combining to make finding answers and the right path really tricky.  You need a professional to step in and help you wade through everything.  Otherwise you are just guessing and possibly wasting valuable time, while you and your child get more and more frustrated and demoralized.  

 

For DD14 there were red flags all over from the time she was 4 but we didn't fully understand what we were seeing and we waited....and we waited...and we waited ...before we finally broke down and sought preliminary evaluations.  Although DS10 did not show the same issues, something seemed a bit off for him, too, by 1st grade but we waited another year before testing him.  It was a huge, colossal mistake in both instances.  If I could get back those lost years I would do it in a heart beat.  

[geodob]

Something that you might consider, is whether she understands the concept of 'Symbols'?

Where some children have a difficulty with this.

So that they look at letters and try to make sense of them?

What is an 'A' and why does it look like that?

 

I have come across 7 and 8 year olds, who had this problem,

But after helping them to understand that letters are symbols.

They were then able to remember letters, as they made sense to them.

How a printed word is made up of symbols.

Which represent a word, but don't look like what the word describes.

 

So you could confirm that she understands the concept of letters as symbols. Which look nothing like the sounds that they represent.

[Ottakee]

I agree with some evals unless they are a young K and then maybe wait a few months.

While you are waiting for evals, you might look into I See Sam reading program www.iseesam.com or www.3rsplus.com  It starts out teaching only a few letters and sounds and reading with those and SLOWLY adding in letters and sounds over time while giving those learned LOTS and LOTS of practice.  There is no need to know the letter names at this point with this program and only a few sounds.  It reduces the memory load while teaching the blending skills for learning to read.