if you haven't purchased it yet, I saw today that it's 40% off for a summer sale.

I don't know yet, they haven't responded. This slp is very pregnant, and is working for a company that is a bit of a production farm...they are crazy busy all the time and share offices, and pump people in and out of there like crazy. It's an "everything" place with OT, PT, and Speech, and their OTs knew enough to mess my son with ASD up and had no clue how to fix it... I could go on and on about the OTs, but suffice it to say that I will never recommend OT at this place or take any of my kids there for OT ever again. They even have a therapy dog now... which is some small mutt that is very hyper and makes the kids hyper too. I don't know how much experience the SLP even has with kids because she mentioned working with adults in the past. But the thing is, she's more interested in helping me than in selling herself; she gave me resources to work on the R sound already, and gave me several names of other resources when I asked about other specific topics to work on. She's been very open and helpful, and I think working with a homeschool mom is new to her. I don't expect them to be able to service my daughter for long based on the service plan I received, so I'm going to ride this wave and get what I can and move on.

My goal was to gather data that I can't gather at home. I really wanted to see where her weak areas were and where her strong areas were so I knew where to focus my time (and I was hopeful for a professional who was worth my time to partner with me in helping my daughter). I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. This child does not have ASD, that's my son. So anyway, what I did was contact the insurance agency, figure out what we are allowed to do, and then let the center know what we were going to do. I'm still waiting their response, because I emailed them instead of calling so that I have proof of the communication. No more she said, he said junk here. But we'll continue for now because the SLP, in spite of her slowness and lack of energy, is willing to partner with me and answer all my questions. So at the very least I can get resources from her! In other news, I got a call for the neuropsych eval - there was a cancelation and we are on the schedule for the first week of September!

I've got insurance and I've got medical assistance both and it's apparently company policy to not do more than 2 sessions of testing before continuing, but that was 2.5 hrs of time for just the TNL and CTOPP. The lady took forever to test and could have finished all 3 but moved like molasses and spent more time reading the directions for the test than testing, and she kept scoring sections right then instead of moving on. It's not so much that I want the CASL results as I wanted to have them finish what they said they would, and the therapist couldn't answer my questions because she didn't understand why they were telling her no, she agreed with me that we should finish the test. I wanted to see them because it would give me the high numbers to compare against what I've got - I have a feeling that the "average" scores we have are outliers compared to where the high scores would be on some things based on the 2 subtests of the casl that she did finish. She scored really high on the comprehension section of the casl but average on comprehension on the TNL - so that makes the TNL low for what she can do. I'd like to see the rest, that's all. I realize the CASL won't give me processing speed, I need the neuropsych stuff for that. I need something to work on that is my point - the SLP told me that she feels like processing speed is effecting all the issues.

So my daughter's speech therapist and co. are annoying the heck out of me and I am so not one to fight a system, I'd rather just do it right and save the gas money. They are refusing to finish the CASL test because of "insurance" and the fact that they already finished the TNL and CTOPP. But they say it without making eye contact and without answering my questions about why they can't finish informally so I can have the info since they already started her test booklet. It's not like they can reuse the booklet now... even the therapist didn't understand why, she's just doing what she's told. Anyway, I have some specific notes after discussing issues in depth with the therapist (who works incredibly s . l . o . w . l . y, and is so very low energy level). The biggest thing I don't have is something for processing speed...

ok thanks for the heads-up! I've already got my Barton box back out and am refreshing myself on everything!

The psych eval is not until probably January, so I am thinking about doing Barton 3 now, since I have it, but not sure what I want to do after that. I was talking to my sister-in-law about it today, she's a kindergarten teacher whose done 2 masters in reading instruction. Her advice was to try a program called Rime Magic, that teaches kids to recognize the small pieces of a word in order to build bigger words. They are using it at her school with 1st graders who are struggling. edited to add - after looking at it, I don't feel like it offers anything more than what I did with spell-links this past year, and that didn't work for us, so I doubt this program would hold the magic key to reading for us as the website would like me to believe, lol. yes, and I think before I did Barton level 1 with her that she would have scored very differently. Level 1 took us a LONG time, and was REALLY hard for her. So I'm pleased that the work we did there was so helpful.

Ok that's what I was thinking. But how in the world does RAN/RAS impact reading so much though? No, I haven't worked on those at all... I guess I'm just struggling to understand how these scores indicate the severity of difficulty she's having learning to read. No, I've never wondered if she was on the spectrum. Other than some speech issues she's really no where near the diagnostic criteria. I'd say ADHD inattentive type if there is any other diagnosis in there - and I really am looking forward to getting the full neuropsych eval whenever that happens, I feel like that'll give me a better picture of what's going on. We have coverage for speech - not thrilled with the place the SLP works (they share offices and are really busy and don't put testing signs on the doors, so another SLP walked into the room several times during the testing) but it'll do for whatever we can get from it. She's 8 and not resistant to the therapy, so we'll continue there as long as they feel they can service her.

So I got the CTOPP and TNL results back on my daughter, I'm not thrilled with the SLP who tested her because she had never even given the TNL before and was more focused on some of the expressive speech things she was hearing (monotone speech, inability to pronounce the letter 'R' correctly, low volume). She's recommending services but wants to focus on goals that look at speech. So - here are her scores -please help me know how this impacts reading instruction, because the SLP isn't going to be any help there, and while going back to Barton level 3 is my next step, I need someone to break this down for me! Elision - standard score 10, 50% - Avg. Blending words - standard score 8, 25% avg. Phoneme Isolation - standard score 10, 50% avg. memory for digits - standard score 6, 9% below avg. nonword repetition - standard score 8, 25% avg. rapid digit naming - standard score 5, 5% poor rapid letter naming - standard score 0, <1% very poor phonological awareness standard score 96, 39% avg. phonological memory standard score 82, 12% below average rapid symbolic naming standard score 55, <1% very poor Test of narrative language - (Note - I used Braidy with her all year this past year. I listened to her take this test and was surprised at how good her scores were based on the narrations I heard her give. I know what I want to focus on next year with her based on my observations.) narrative comprehension - standard score 13, 84% above average (((this score doesn't surprise me - she's my really aware, street-smart girl))) oral narration standard score 10, 50% average Narrative language ability standard score 108, 70% average. * note - some of the goals that the SLP included are directly related to this test - focusing on sequencing, cause and effect, etc.

Alright - so I found a speech therapist who takes my insurance, and we are scheduled for her to run the CTOPP, TNL and CASL. She said they have about a dozen tests, but these are the ones I said I was interested in - well, I asked for the TNL and the CTOPP, she recommended the CASL as well. Oh and the Barton screening - she failed A (counted syllables), failed B (counted 2 syllables in everything, which was ironic considering she counted syllables correctly in part A), but passed task C (1 repeat, 2 wrong).

No, she's absolutely not. And I wasn't even in the room for the conversation because I don't talk to her about anything except the weather and her day. I can't avoid her, for various reasons, and so I have learned to smile and keep my mouth shut, and they have learned to always have salad on the table when I'm there. She has her own issues, and I have my own issues, and I have safe people to talk to and she is never on my call list.

Yes, I absolutely think that there is a genetic thing at play here - I have one with ASD, one with ADHD, one with tourettes and whatever else we find. You go up to the grandparents and we have OCD, go to the great-grandparents and we have more mental health issues. So when my MIL last night was bemoaning why we ended up with 3 who have special needs, my husband told her it's all genetically related. And that these were the kids we were supposed to have, and that our job is to care for them and support them to adulthood as best we can, and that having the diagnosis are helpful in giving us directions to go for that. I have to decide if I'm willing to open the can of worms that genetics would be. Some stuff I might just rather not know.

ok I'll work on the Barton screening tomorrow and see what that looks like now. The Celf4 was what the original testing was several years ago. I'm going to call slp's tomorrow - that shouldn't be much of a wait list at all. lol I've got 4 total 🙂 so I've got my hands full! But as I have cut coffee entirely out of my diet, I'm starting to feel better and more on top of things, ironically, so that's helpful! Yes - we are wanting to rule out OCD and ADHD inattentive type, along with the dyslexia. That's interesting - one of the tics she does right now is breathe holding, and she'll do it in-between her words while she talks so it chops her talking up. It masks as "word searching" as I put it - like she's having trouble thinking of what to say. so having the testing done will help us figure out what is language issue and what is not. We got some suggestions, the tics we are dealing with right now are not severe or impactful enough to medicate, but we are established patients now with the neurologist so we can go back to her with anything that comes up - and she wants us to come back to her if the other testing shows anything that she can help us with, and we have a list of all that.

Yes, we had no issues until we hit that wall... so that's a good thing, meaning we can get past this wall and keep going? I just wish we could skip them and come back, but maybe with the time that's passed, she can move past them. I'll pull Barton back out this week and see what she can do. I don't know, I haven't thought about trying that again. no, she has not done this at all. The language was hard for her, sure, and we've worked on a lot of language pieces this year, but one of the reasons I had difficulty with her motivation when doing Barton was because the words were not the ones she wanted to read, so it was a waste of her time, from her perspective. I would say she's doing more memorization with spell-links.

We took a break from barton when she was able to read a cvc word with one consonant blend on front or back of the word, but could NOT do a consonant blend on front and back. I am thinking maybe go back to the start of level three and see if she can get any further now that we're a year older. And I need to get more audio books for her. thanks for the encouragement!

Yes - we did level 1 and 2 and couldn't get past the first few lessons in level 3. We took a break from that a year ago and did SpellLinks this past year. The neurological problem beyond dyslexia has been officially diagnosed as Tourettes. I've not had all of the official testing completed because I had no need for it to intervene. We had slp testing when she was 4 that showed signs of dyslexia at the time, so I just assumed it was and used Orton-Gillingham for a year. Then switched to Barton for 3 years, then spell-links this year.

My dd8 who has dyslexia was diagnosed yesterday with tourettes. The neurologist specifically requested that we get a private neuropsych eval rather than a psychoeducational evaluation through the school district because she wants more info and feels that we need more info than the schools can give. So I'm on 2 wait lists- one is 6-9 months long and the other is 12 months long. 😞 Ironically, she also told me that she's glad we homeschool - we can make all the accommodations and address her needs in a much more targeted way that the public school system. In the meantime I'm realizing that answers aren't like neon sign posts. Once we get the testing it's not like I'll have a piece of paper that says "do this curriculum and she's start to progress!" and for that matter, I can't wait 6-12 months before I figure out what to do next for reading instruction. She's progressing fine in math between the Ronit Bird foundation I gave her over the past 2 years and now working her way through Math U See. She's listening to me read books for history, participating in science. She's happy, getting ready to start a new dance class, has friends. But I feel this tension, this desperation almost, to figure out the bite-sized pieces necessary to work on reading. I am someone who needs to see the progress, the steps to check off as we go. With my DS6 with ASD I keep a binder with goals that I update monthly. It keeps me focused on the little things and helps me see progress when it feels like we are moving backward. (Like yesterday's win was an easy transition for something that has been a huge challenge the previous several times). But I can't feel that progress or see those small goals for reading. It's like I have this end goal in my head where she can pick up something and just read it, but I don't know how to get the small in-between steps. We've taken a couple weeks off of all reading instruction now and yesterday when I was reading her a level 1 reader book in the waiting room, she couldn't sound out the word /get/. She kept starting with /t/ until I finally told her the word. Sorry for venting, this mama is just feeling a bit lost and down today.

I've heard that autism counts as a disability towards this but have not pursued it yet so I cannot verify that.

no, my dr. talked about ordering that if these tests don't show us anything. I feel like they are similar to tension headaches, generally pressure in or around my temples. I get aprox. 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. Honestly, I feel like I wake up and roll over a couple times overnight, and then I feel groggy for a while in the morning until I eat and drink coffee. I'm trying to eat before I drink coffee but it's hard!! I am going to find a place to do a sleep study, it sounds like that could be a big part of figuring out what's going on. And if nothing else, it'll rule out some stuff!

yes, let us know what you think after you've used it! It might be something that I look into later when I'm ready to build more independence in routines... right now it's wholly appropriate for me to be the intermediary between my 6 year old and him taking his vitamins and brushing his teeth. 😉

Great question - I let him play with the apps a LOT when we got them. Like I broke all my screen time rules so he could just mess with it and he thought it was awesome. My theory was that he could then learn what he liked and what he didn't. And no - he doesn't drive it often for himself when he needs to. And when I tried to use sound the last time he was throwing a big fit it backfired on me big time, so I'm still figuring out how to use it myself. But, I want him to know that these are options that people use, all the time. I point out people wearing headphones in public every time I see someone, so he realizes it's totally normal to put music on and walk around daily life. He uses it some, not as much as he could benefit from it. I like the time timer app because we have time timers at home and we use them for transitions all the time so I wanted to have that with us when we are out too. And this way it's the same exact look. Right now, the choice works app is really the most beneficial thing on it. He can and does use it independently once the schedule is set up. The visual of what will happen is very helpful, and it is motivating. There are days when all I need is the app in front of him to get everything finished for school. Other days I have to bring out the marshmallows or something else, but we all have off days.

I took a look but I'm not sure it's better than the solution we came up with. We bought an ipod for our son this winter and use the choice works app for it. I realize that with this choice he has "competing" options for his device, as the goally website discussed, but I was also able to put music on that is calming, give him the white noise app for sounds that he can choose from to listen to, ibreathe app for calming, the time timer app, and Breathe kids for some other calming strategies. I minimize what is allowed on the ipod and he doesn't get games, no matter how educational they may be. It's purely a therapy tool. We did spend some money on all of that, but I feel like it can grow with him better than the goally app. And I really like the flexibility of the choice works app. I modify it all the time for things we need to get accomplished and it gives him some say in the order he does things in, we will work together to get his school subjects and breaks in as he would like them, which helps with compliance. It also has the schedule change lightening bolt, which in a few situations has helped in a big way when we had big shifts in our schedule unexpectedly. AND I like that I can take pictures of his work and use pictures that have more meaning for him. (Like a picture of his bag that he needs to pack, or the book we will read together on any given day)

I likely have celiac and have been gluten free for 7 years. I am like 99.9% sugar free and follow Trim Healthy Mama with some modifications (I pair a fat with nearly every meal to keep my blood sugar in balance) I do have chemical sensitivities, I'd be interested in knowing how Melissa modified her living environment for her husband. I've also put on about 5 lbs in the past month. Which may seem insignificant and silly but I generally have trouble keeping weight on, and this is the first time I've gained without trying in my entire life. And my activity level/eating hasn't changed. I have not had a sleep study done, so that is something to look into - my sleep isn't always great, I will often wake up feeling tense, but I can only impact my tension levels when I'm awake, so I don't know how to improve that. no tick bites, D level (OHD) was 65, D level (1, 25 Dihydroxy) was 64. When I started my methylB Complex about a year ago I did have a period of time when I felt better - I'm doing some research on it and wonder if I'm overmethylating and I need to lay off the B complex now. I'll add that to my questions to ask next week. My folate was a little high according to the lab ranges, at 22, but B12 was in range at 607. During the winter I use a therapy light for SAD, which helps some. I'm contemplating the effort it would take to cut coffee entirely. I took a nap yesterday afternoon, which I hate to do because I always feel HORRIBLE after a nap, but then I drank a cup of coffee, and the combination of nap and coffee helped me feel clear minded for the first time in a while. no fog hanging over my head. I also have an eye apt. this week to ensure my glasses are the right prescription to see if that will help improve the headaches.

yeah, probably. For my purposes, I had her writing individual words only but yes, you could use letter tiles for that part... it's pretty adaptable. Therapy style with reproducibles. The worksheets that you can copy/print and use are fairly useful, too, no busywork.

It's very open and go - Well, when I don't prep ahead it means I'm writing words on index cards while she waits...so I try to do that ahead. Each lesson has several activities, targeting different concepts within. So for example the lesson on 'k' and hard 'c' has 7 activities and a journal page. The activities for this lesson include tap and map (counting sounds), sort it out (sorting by spelling and they have 9 spellings for this sound plus "foil words" that help you focus on the correct sounds), who's the neighbor, the long and the short of it - 1, the long and the short of it 2, take time to inspect the rime (sorting words by rime), and missing letters. (I've not done this lesson, it's just what I opened the book to). The word study journal page has them list the spelling options at the top of the page as you learn them, strategies and rules that you cover (you can have them put a sticker on the rule or strategy you learned that day, which was very motivating to my daughter, although it bugged her that all the strategies are listed, and only the bolded ones are the ones relate to the lesson you're working on so not all lessons will have all stickers). Also a word gallery on the bottom of the study journal page, where I had my daughter write the words by the end of the lesson (which often took a week to complete, or longer) and she could write them without a visual or help by the end of the lesson. Each activity includes group adaptations, cross-curriculum extensions, a list of materials needed, the word list, objectives, a helpful did you know box that often relates difficulties a student will have with sounds related to the lesson. Teacher prep section and detailed directions for the activities. Sometimes I would literally read aloud the directions for the activity to make it funny if I was having trouble motivating my daughter and she would laugh and do what was asked. The end of each activity is the sticker number for what strategy or rule you worked on that activity. There is a lot of flexibility in the structure. You can buy their assessment and only do the lessons or activities that the student shows necessary to do. You can use it as a supplement to your main curriculum (and they have an appendix sheet that shows the lessons broken out by spelling pattern). Or you can use it as a curriculum model, which is what I'm doing so I have a copy of the appendix pages that lay out the lessons in order of grade-equivalency. It's 3 spiral bound books of lessons and total of 73 lessons. We took a week or longer per lesson and have gone through a total of 25 lessons this school year before I stopped and am taking a break now. It did get a bit tedious, but not any worse than Barton and honestly it was a refreshing change from Barton at the beginning of the school year. There should be some samples online if you check their website.