Thank you all so much! I am passing all this info to my SIL, and will ask her about finding a Speech and Language Pathologist. I appreciate all the help!

Hello All, My SIL has 5 kids (15, 12, 8, 5, 2), and I would call their homeschool style academic unschooling -- they say they are unschooling, but the parents are big readers and their two oldest children are excellent readers, and my SIL emphasizes academic learning. My 8 year-old nephew was slow to speak and slow to listen, and has been really struggling with reading (they've used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons), and was just diagnosed as hard of hearing, which makes sense of many things. He struggles to hear mid-level sound, including speech sounds. He speaks in a tight-mouthed mumble, and my best guess is that he speaks in the way he hears speech. He is trying very hard, but phonics don't seem to make any intuitive sense to him. Can anyone recommend a reading program or resources for a student with these struggles? I was Lindamood-Bell trained for Seeing Stars and Visualizing and Verbalizing years ago, but have only really used Visualizing and Verbalizing for a number of years (I teach high school and many students decode well but don't "absorb" anything they read). Could Seeing Stars be helpful? Or LiPS? Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't want this critical reading period to pass my nephew by. Thank you all so much!