We’ve done that by accident, and gone to the mountains for a few days before my husband leaves for a new job. Maybe on Monday when we get back to it, it’ll be better. 😊

Sorry I’ve been away from this, my husband is getting a new job out of town and we’ve put a lot on the back burner and took a mini vacation before he leaves. It’s not pleasant, I can see him shutting down. I wonder if there is some way we can practice this in a different way? I think it’s something like 8 or 9 times trying to get through the same procedure. I liken it to the fact that if he were being tutored 2 times a week that would be a month of exposure to the same topic kwim? Is it typical to spend months on a procedure? I guess I just don’t know what to do in the meantime. It’s hard when he has been reading CVC for a long time. So we are treading water when I feel like he could at least be reading some Bob books. I know he’s not supposed to be doing anything with letters right now though.

Hi all! We've been stuck on this procedure for a little over a week of sessions. I've read the tips and it basically says to just slow down and break the words apart. I feel like I'm doing this and yet we're not making progress. Does anyone has suggestions of what we can try? I pulled out the FIS sound pictures today even, hoping that is comfort with those and doing the same activity would help. No dice. I feel like I'm talking way too much again, and things always go south when it gets wordy. Thanks in advance for any help, we are going to try for a couple more days and then take a break. I'll add too, that during this he'll grab tiles and make a full word for fun. Yet, the isolating and finding what is "different" just has him guessing every time. We've gone over what same and different mean separately to be sure he understands what those terms mean, but 9/10 he'll tell me that the two that are the same are different. I won't rush him at all, but it's hard to trust the process (this is a recurring theme with me haha) that he *has* to master this to be able to continue.

He had picked out a new toy (some alien launcher watch thing haha) a couple of weeks ago when we were in the doldrums a bit and I figured some motivation would be good. I had it waiting for him to open after lessons were done for the day. It's been a fun day for sure!

You all were so helpful! We finished today! I can't believe it. He just loved moved along the chart, and by the end he can totally spell words by ear with the cards. I'm blown away. He was even able to tell me why the word "ten" sounded like it was vibrating but the sound /t/ was quiet. "Oh because the /e/ and the /n/ are vibrating sounds too!" Gosh ya'll, it just warmed my heart. I really liked the order in which the sounds were introduced as it helped me see what I thought was an obvious difference in sounds, was really quite subtle. It helped me as a teacher to know what I needed to make sure he could hear in my speech. The last procedure of changing sounds shook him a little bit. We just slowed down again, I adjusted my speech and used more hand gestures until I knew for sure he understood what I was asking. Once that was clear, I backed off with gestures finally having him do it the last couple purely with the words in the script. I think we'll play some of the review games the rest of the week and start Barton 1 on Monday. I'm telling you this combined with the genius that is Ronit Bird's dot patterns book and I actually think he will make so much progress this year all around.

I'm coming back to this now that we have finished. Thank you!

I definitely appreciate that advice going forward. I will look into ways to be sure he’s understanding the meaning as we go along. I’m not sure it can work in Level 1, as it’s all auditory still? Level 2 ramps up fast though with written phrases in the second lesson, so definitely we can work on it there.

Just wanted to update that after almost 3 weeks, he has made SO much progress! Today, for the first time, we were able to get through all procedures (review game, discover sounds, play which word, sequence with cards, sequence with tiles) in one sitting! This usually took about 3 sessions. He enjoys the cards a lot, having so much fun with the review games. When I told him he would have around 20 cards in his hand eventually, his eyes bugged out with excitement. He feels really confident and proud of himself. Things I've done per everyone's great advice is to move back to my office to a desk facing the wall with just us. I eliminated using the provided charts/cards (except the sounds stoplight, love that) as they are just extra clutter on the table for him to mess with. I've only had to really drive home lip vs tongue and quiet vs vibrating for a couple of harder sounds. He remembers simply by backing up and watching my mouth. I'm guessing we will finish at the end of the month and be ready for Barton 1. I've also found that just being really silly, like purposefully saying the same sounds over and over to get him laughing really has changed his whole mood about it. I'll continue the "which word" game with silly words too to just make it all less monotonous. We are on our way, and hopefully Barton 1 will be a breeze. I'/m so excited to see how he does when we get back to real words!

Unless you qualify for medicaid, there's no help here. NC isn't winning any awards with assisting folks. Had we not decided to homeschool due to COVID, I could have thrown our hat in for the lottery for a disability grant to cover homeschool/therapy costs. I've no doubt funding for that will be even smaller this year though. I hadn't had a chance to look at the link, I will! That makes sense to me, integrating them that way. He told me today he likes the pictures, so I'll keep going as written, but cleaning it up visually and see where we are. Thank you all SO much! I was feeling like I made a huge mistake and feeling so lost. It's very hard to trust the process. I'll regroup for the weekend and come back stronger on Monday.

Thanks for your input! This is just our first two sessions actually teaching sounds. We only have done /m/ and /n/ on separate days. I think it was just the language that was confusing, but I see now that same language is in Barton too so I see why they chose that. I'm looking at the first lesson in Barton 1, and I think I'm missing what I'm truly attacking. If I wittle down FIS to make it less wordy, which all it is is matching sound pictures to sounds, then segmenting with tiles, how is it different from going very slowly in Barton 1? Lesson 1 of Barton 1 asks him to break apart two sounds with tiles, then increases in length. Could we not start there and stay there til mastery? The only speech he's had for the last year has been for articulation. I don't know what I'm looking for. If I remove the sound pictures from FIS, and don't replace them with something else, I have a hard time recognizing the difference between this and Barton 1. Barton seems to have, in its materials, more ideas for shifting the lesson, noting that "fast sounds" are hard to distinguish, so they can be avoided for a while and then slowly brought in. This type of advice seems much more helpful to me as a parent tutor doing the program. It goes over having him look at my mouth and so on. I've got to do some reading on what having sound/mouth pictures brings to the table, to understand the logic of what seems like an extra step for him to remember. I think it's so that I'm 100% certain he knows each sound is different. He can blend CVC, so I'm fairly confident he can do this. For visuals, FIS has these sound charts. They seem overwhelming with a big title he can't read and a small picture in the corner of a lip or mouth. I think I could make something that's easier like an on/off switch to signify vibrating (motor on) and quiet (motor off). I do agree, we'll have to rethink the lessons entirely to get more senses involved more often so he can move around.

Because I think he may have it and what progress can be made with anything if he cannot focus? You've told me before that meds can be a game changer. I've seen it with my daughter too. If even with minimal language he is looking at everything in the room but me, thinking about what he's going to do next and so on, maybe that needs to be dealt with to set the stage for him to receive instruction. By the same token, relaxing instruction and just doing reflex work for 30 days or what have may be enough to help too for now. I've read so much about all that it takes to make a child table ready when they have LDs and things, so that's where my mind is. Is he even ready and how can I help him to be ready. I have absolutely no clue where to begin to find an SLP that can do those things. I feel like the only reason to throw hundreds of dollars at more testing would be if I found a professional that was actually going to do the therapy, and that we could afford it which is not likely. With the pandemic too, weekly appointments stress me out and telehealth, I just can't see working, again, because we would still have to get him to pay attention to the screen long enough. We did virtual sessions in the spring and it was an exercise in futility. It sounds like I just have to grin and bear it and teach better. Nothing will ever be open and go even with SN materials I see now. I'll figure him out. I'm determined.

I've got videos cued up. It's been hard to test him myself as he kind of laughs his way through it all lol. I figure I can assume he has some and just do the exercises anyway. We all need a little more movement these days. It's hard for me because I don't realize the extent of his language issues until times like this, and it's yet to come up on testing. I don't know that I want to go through more academic testing this year. We get along fine for the most part until it hits me in the face that he may very well be clueless to anything that isn't a concrete concept in his head. Do I need to get mouth pictures instead? Is that piece, that understanding of what your mouth is doing when you make sounds so critical for reading? It's hard for me to wrap my head around that. The end goal is to be able to break up sounds correct? He can read CVC and some digraphs just fine already. So it seems like the issue is more so just the juggling of it all memory wise? I'm feeling like I wasted a lot of money right now honestly. Maybe I should pause and go to the adhd clinic here for a workup and address that first. We're gonna take the rest of the week off while I figure out next steps.

I do need to immerse myself in the thought behind these programs again. It's been years since DD1 was in the thick of Barton. Thank you! It's hard to see the other side of this, I appreciate the encouragement.

Yea, it was in my long thread from the summer when I was debating what to do. I've read many times about their lack of qualifications but it kept getting recommended to me for its ease of delivery on the parent anyway ya know? Also, when Susan Barton says she's never using LIPS again, well, I just said to heck with it and bought FIS so I didn't have to try to wrap my head around the former haha. You're speaking to my exact feeling, my gut, that the meat of this is good, but because of his extra stuff going on, its just extra for no reason in his case. I've gotta put away all the fluff. I've absolutely used voiced/voiceless/motor on/motor off in my normal teaching so I will go back to that happily. I do like the sounds stoplight a lot, so I really think just using that then moving to tiles is all that's really needed. He's having to process what the picture is, remember the word map, then remember it starts with /m/ and that it's a lip sound..just whoa. It seems like, I could have just went straight to Barton 1 and just done is reaaaaally slowly and gotten to the same point. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know how to avoid making him hyperlexic? What would I use instead of Barton?

I could maybe leave it set out, it seems kinda busy/overwhelming to me though with all those big cards across the table. I have a desk in my office closet I could use for it and bring him back here solo where it's more quiet to see if that helps. I wonder about just leaving them to the side for a bit to cut down on the visual stimuli. The first day, we could only get through the intro. We are essentially doing only one procedure a day. That has us taking a full week per lesson. I forget that 7 is young when he's coming up on second grade and not reading. I keep debating with just giving him time, but I"m not sure if that's just delaying dealing with the issue vs helping.

That’s a good idea, I will contact them! Maybe I just need to give it more time for him to get used to what I’m asking. Maybe attention is something we really need to address, I just don’t really know what is outside of typical 7yo and or boy behavior. My daughters were attentive angels making not preparing me a bit haha. I worry it’s even more stress on his mind, to hear the sound I say, remember it, associate it with a sound picture and then answer my question. If I’m thinking that though, attention must be a good ways outside of normal range. 🤔

Hi all, We're underway and going slowly with Foundation in Sounds for my 7yo (ASD and maybe adhd plus the usual LD suspects). I'm finding during our sessions, I'm talking *so* much with the script and asking him so many repetitive questions trying to get him to focus, that I worry it's more distracting than helping. We are only able to get through one procedure before his attention span is toast. If he doesn't repeat what I said, he won't remember anything. I'm asking him whether sounds are vibrating or quiet and half the time I think he's guessing. I don't know, I just guess I need some encouragement this will improve and the steps are worthwhile. I'm so glad I went with this over LIPs as I'm not sure I could keep my wits about me with his level of distraction and still implement it correctly. 🥴

Thank you so much for sharing this! I have so many pdfs and things all over the place, I really think this will help streamline my mornings.

I am the queen of over complicating things haha! Thanks!

Thanks! I will look into this, though I don't think we have something official enough on his IEP. I wonder if they'll just accept the fact that he has reading goals, but he's not classified as SLD reading officially.

This is my current dilemma for sure. Something that is open and go is so appealing, but I also don't want to still have holes after we are done. He definitely has language issues (think wh questions and what not). I think he can make all sounds fairly easily though. Some of the issues raised in the previous poster's thread do give me pause as to whether it's right for him (ie it's prep for Barton but not much more than that).

Thank you so much for your input! Open and go is really a plus! I have Barton 1 and 2 sitting here already so we definitely plan to move right on into that. I've been watching the videos and you're totally right, I was thinking " It seems so simple!" But there's a beauty in a methodical process that covers all the bases, since he struggled with every part of the Barton screening. The last part being just completely out of the question. I'll try to see if I can find your thread! It's nice to hear she was the same age too. DS likely has the attention span of an average 5yo though haha.

Doh I missed that part! He liked doing it though so when we do it again I’ll have him repeat. I stumbled on Hearbuilders on that site and it looks fantastic too?! 60 day free trial and there seems to be a ton of activities for auditory memory, following directions Etc. He was pretty engaged with it, the storylines are cute, so I’m going to give that a try too as well for variety. 5yo DS with some residual funky speech was into it too.

Yea, I dare say I need to see about some objective adhd type eval with him too along with apd. I don’t believe that’s ever been looked at either as he was too young. I finally dug into Ronit Bird’s dot pattern book last night and WOW! Thank you SO much for that. I know he (and I) will enjoy those lessons and I am just in awe at how incremental it is. It is perfection, and I’m forever grateful for all the advice here. Looking at it, I can see how you’re totally right, he isn’t ready for Rightstart! So I think we will try FIS, the Super Duper grammar processing for some language work, Dot Patterns/ C rods books for math, and then as a family I’m hoping TGATB can bring us to together for some history and science. Actually, I just went through the samples with him for Super Duper and he did way better than I expected. Perhaps, it's not hard enough for him if he did the Level 2 sublevel 21 no problem? I know it goes to 50, but curious if there's maybe something else that starts further along.