I am behind on reading replies here but thank you to everyone that contributed. I will get to all of them eventually. I've spent the day researching and scheduling different evaluations plus doing a little evaluating of her myself. It only made me more confused. According to Lexercise, she is reading at her 5th grade level, but her reading of nonsense words was very poor. She can easily read many harder words, but then when she gets to a word she doesn't know and attempts to sound it out, its all jumbled and she adds sounds that aren't there. So I think I really do need a professional's help in sorting it all out. I have some appointments, but I decided I didn't want to wait. Pulled the trigger and ordered the 1st level of Barton just now. I will update.

@PeterPan Thanks again for taking the time to share all this. I really appreciate your frank style. To clear up a few things- She didn't totally fail the student screening. She failed Part B with the syllables, but I truly think she just had a brain hiccup. I've been throwing longer words here and there for her to clap out, and she's been fine. She passed Part A and Part C with flying colors. I would definitely start in Level 1. I didn't word that very well. Just meant that I'm planning on buying Levels 1 up to 3 or 4 with the tiles before switching to the app. Regarding her private school, I totally get your concerns. But its not really that kind of school. Its very very small, low hours, and inexpensive. I am registered with the state as homeschooling her because the school doesn't have enough hours to qualify as a full-time school. So I am really the teacher to blame. Her 4th grade teacher didn't do her any favors, but her teacher this year and the school Administrator have been excellent with resources and suggestions. Her current teacher has been the one to suggest audio books and approved dictating her papers. (I just thought of that last week). But you are right about some of the problems that can exist with private Christian education. If I was paying more for a full-time education, I might be more riled up about it. The signs were there for me when I was homeschooling her up through 3rd grade, and I missed them or didn't take it seriously. Honestly it hadn't occurred to me to start Barton now. We have a potential move in the works, so I was thinking I don't want to start diving in if we are going to have to stop in a few months. But reading what you wrote definitely makes me feel more urgency about it. Since her school is out at 12pm, I would be able to do it with her. I'm just not sure about pulling her out of all language arts and reading for the rest of the year. I guess my thought was to have her just coast through the end of the year at her school, and then start remediating. But that isn't really fair to her to put it off if we can start working on it now. I have lots more to say, but need to take a break for now. I have a MAJOR bias against using screens/technology, so I'm really glad for your encouragement towards that. We just got a working computer in the home a month or two ago and both my older two have started a typing app. Do you have any favorite typing programs? We had no computer before that, I did everything on my phone or borrowed my husband's work laptop in the evenings. We got a Microsoft Surface Pro, but will definitely be need a 2nd computer before starting homeschool in the fall. I will watch the video you attached. For now just need to think and pray and start making plans on getting evaluations. Thank you again for everything.

@PeterPan Thank you sooo much for all of this. We have done zero testing; I had to Google most of the acronyms you included to even figure out what you were referring to, haha. My initial thought is "no, there's nothing majorly wrong with her, and she doesn't need testing." But obviously my instincts aren't that good if I missed probable dyslexia for so many years. Actually her teacher this year said that she noticed a huge improvement in her spelling when she moved my daughter closer to the board. Their school has very tiny classrooms, so its possible there's a basic vision issue that's also been flying under the radar. I didn't even know that "visual memory" was a thing, but it does ring a lot of bells. My eldest son is an excellent speller despite me never really teaching it, and its because he is incredibly visual (to a fault). He can just see the words, whereas obviously my daughter can't. Last year in 4th grade they were doing just a simple spelling list per week, and she would literally get every word wrong, no matter how many times she would write it. I would even just have her focus on 5 words instead of 20, writing them over and over and over, and she would still get most of the 5 wrong. Kinda rambling, sorry. All that to say, I think you are right that I need pursing testing. Even if it all comes back negative, I need to rule it out so I'm not always wondering. I feel a peace about going forward with that now. She'll be in private school through the end of the year, so we can try to get all our ducks in a row before starting homeschool and probably Barton in the fall. So did you stop all language arts when you did it? Did you continue learning through audio books or something else? She has enjoyed writing for fun in the past. Obviously she doesn't like writing for school, but I imagine most kids would say that. I found a 2 page story she wrote last year, on her own initiative. The handwriting is better than it is now, but the spelling makes it hard to understand. Practice=Pakt's brother=duthr trophy=chrofe I asked her today if she likes writing and she said "well I would if anyone could read what I wrote! Even I can't read it." But she does do quite a bit of writing at school. Essay paragraphs, answers in complete sentences. Her teacher said that if she can sound it out and tell what my daugher meant, she counts it correct even if the spelling is mostly wrong. My plan was almost exactly what you said: get levels 3-4 with 2 sets of extra tiles for resale benefit, and then switch to the app when the words get longer. My husband has said he doesn't care about the cost, but that we need to go ALL IN on something and really make a strong push to get her skills to a workable place. Thanks again. I've been reading through tons of old posts regarding Barton and dyslexia. Reading through bits and pieces of your journey has been super helpful.

@Pen I think you are right about stealth dyslexia. I looked that up and it sounds exactly like her. I'm not sure if the slowness of Barton at first would bother her, or not. She loved the Barton Student Screening lol. Like really loved the squares. I wonder if because I've pushed her for so long that it might actually be enjoyable for her to slow down and have something that's on the easy side. I'm occasionally remembering things that I gave her a hard time about. Now viewing them through the lens of dyslexia, it paints a different picture and definitely adds to the "mom guilt." For example she will often misspell words in an answer even when those words are included in the question. I always thought she was just being lazy and even chastised her a few times to pay more attention, but she kept on doing it. Realizing more and more that there were a lot of signs that I overlooked. Anyway, thanks so much for you thoughts. I will look into Elizabeth's program once I find it.

Wanted to add that I have a boy like this also. We don't have any official diagnosis or labels. Blame-shifting, not taking responsibility, anger, etc. I started laughing when I read what PeterPan's son said about his psych, cause its exactly what my son would say. Its actually been a real problem this year with communication with his private school teacher, cause he spins everything differently depending on who hes talking to.

First post here, forgive me for anything I do wrong! She has not been evaluated except for a year of Speech Therapy. We've done SWR here at home sporadically. She's been in private school for 4th and 5th grade, the last year using All About Spelling. Her reading is okay - not up to grade level, but she does enjoy reading. The issue that has always been at the forefront is her spelling. It's so bad that sometimes I can't even guess what she was trying to write. Often times she is also not sure what she wrote. She will spell the same word wrong in three different ways all in the same paragraph. Her teacher this year said that she has made huge improvements during spelling using the AAS program, but that she doesn't implement anything she's learning during other subjects. That was just a couple weeks ago and I'm embarrassed to say that it was the first time I started suspecting dyslexia. I've never considered it seriously since she can read, but now I'm starting to see signs everywhere. She does well at Math but has always struggled on word problems. She gets majorly tripped up on proper names. I was doing a story problem with her, and she read the name "Morgan" as "mrah-groony." We've done a lot of phonics work with SWR and The Reading Lesson when she first learned to read, but I suspect that she is actually guessing a lot of words based on context. We are homeschooling next year for sure. I had her take the Barton student test. She passed A and C. She missed 3 on Part B, but I think that is easily remedied. Has anyone had success with a similar situation? How did you handle schooling with the "No Outside Reading" stipulation? I was thinking about getting Learning Ally and having her listen along to text books and just do worksheets or tests orally. Did you really cut out all language arts? Is it possible that my daughter has had dyslexia and I've been in denial for 10 years?? Her older brother is very quick and thinks like me, so I've always just assumed that she is a slow processor like her father. Now I'm kicking myself.