mamashark
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Posts posted by mamashark
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I've struggled with exhaustion for so many years - For a long time dr's told me that it was because I was still waking up with kids overnight. We are finally to the stage where that's not happening anymore. My Dr. told me to take B complex because all my labs related to causes of tiredness were fine - literally everything is in range except my testosterone is high, progesterone low, and cholesterol high. Those are the only out of range numbers. And she's not worried about the cholesterol because she says it's driven by the other hormones and if we fix one it'll fix the other. I'm on several supplements to help with the hormones, including some to help with general health... omega 3, adrenal support, vit. D, B complex, several just for hormone support (licorish, saw palmetto, vitex), a couple for blood sugar regulation - ALA, NAC, (which was related to the hormones but my blood sugars are now ALL in range, including fasting).
I finally got a dr. to listen to me about the exhaustion - they ordered a slew of labs and an OAT test. Labs all came back normal per medical guidelines, but waiting to see what the functional dr. says. The dr. had to reschedule my OAT test results apt. for 2 more weeks. And I'm hitting that point in the exhaustion cycle where I literally wake up tired and want to cry by lunch because I'm just done for the day and I've got SO MUCH DAY LEFT. She wanted the OAT test to look at possible mold toxicity, SIBO, Candida overgrowth (although bloodwork antibodies came back negative), high oxalataes (but said that if this is indeed the case, she suspects this is a symptom, not a cause). I'm supposed to take steps to reduce stress, take epson salt baths, and wait for test results.
What else can I do, or look into, that might help revive my energy levels??? I was doing ok the first 2 weeks as I waited for results, because I had a light at the end of the tunnel, but now I feel like sleeping for the next 2 weeks, or throwing something out a window. There's gotta be something else and I'm feeling so depressed today because I stayed up until 10pm last night because of something we did together as a family and I could barely get out of bed this morning 😞
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ok sounds like waiting until Black Friday for a better sale on 23andMe might be better 🙂
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Ancestry is running a sale on their DNA testing for $60, and so now researching the benefits of this is relevant from a financial argument... But, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth running two tests (one for my son with ASD and one for my daughter with Dyslexia/other unanswered questions regarding health).
Here's what I can't wrap my head around - how do I get actionable information from this?
Getting a report that says, oh look, she has this mutation that means dyslexia helps me zilch. I can SEE that already. Will I be able to figure out something that I can actually use?
I know this has been discussed on the boards before but either my computer is acting up or I'm in need of another cup of coffee (or perhaps a cup less than I've already had??) but I can't get the search function to bring up any relevant results.
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15 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
Dunno, haven't looked hard. It's pretty rampant on the lists I'm on (irl) and the stress level is high. That's what I think the church is not acknowledging or is just plain clueless about. You're either a leader and spiritual or you have problems. But I think we also got really burnt on this, sigh.
Fair enough - I am not in a field that works with this or is knowledgeable about this, I simply did a quick, and admittedly cursory, google search on it.
I know that our church has been taking a different approach to marriage since December, putting a lot of time, energy, and specific rubber-hits-the-road type help in place for families - both those with struggling families and for those who are not struggling (your marriage WILL hit a rough spot so let's work on it NOW kind of thing). I've never heard some of the things we've been talking about at other churches we've attended, and I do think that it's been very beneficial to my marriage specifically, even as we work through the various diagnosis and health issues of our kids.
12 minutes ago, PeterPan said:Some things are just HARD. And you have confounding issues like de novo mutations vs. inherited ASD. So a study would have to be pretty thorough to sort through the probabilities on that. (ASD+ASD marriage, ASD + ADHD marriage, ASD+NT marriage, ADHD+NT marriage, gifted+gifted, NT+NT, etc.) To me it would vary that much.
Yes, I see your point here and I agree. There is always an issue with statistics and thinking deeper about all the issues that have a play in it. This is why I'm struggling with the concept of ABA, it's appearing too cut and dried, too clinical and without taking into consideration other issues at play. I'm hoping the behaviorist we get paired with will be more holistic in thought and practice.
So then let me ask this - what would you see as more helpful? What types of training could churches use for their volunteer teachers that would be broad enough yet specific enough, allow for flexibility, yet not overwhelm? Teachers have all types of classes, trainings, talks, etc. they can go though to learn all sorts of helpful information, but Churches don't often have the funds to put their volunteers through those types of intense trainings, and often they are too specific to education to be helpful in a church setting. And getting the SN moms to volunteer to teaching isn't a good answer either.
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btw, the 80% divorce rate for families with ASD has been debunked.
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1 hour ago, PeterPan said:
-Are you a donkey's butt, rigid, inflexible, and arrogant? (you're not allowed to ask that, but you'll wish you could. They try to hide it and it comes about by their stodgy professionalism, their willingness to take on anything instead of referring, their attitude that they have all the answers)
lol, this is exactly why we won't allow our kids to go to a certain summer camp again. And when discussing this issue with my husband, he was like, yeah your concern is they'll hire a guy like that! Uh huh! exactly! Flexibility, a willingness to learn, and a willingness to admit mistakes are huge to me.
1 hour ago, PeterPan said:but over on the seminary/counseling side it's psychology will send you to hell, you should be quoting more Bible verses, if you were more spiritual you wouldn't have this problem, if the doctor can't find a physical explanation then it's a spiritual problem. It's a new religion they've made, worshipping and glorifying the GP as omniscient.
But that's the denomination I was raised in. Maybe your denomination is totally different, kwim? But in ours, that's how it starts, at the seminaries, with what they're being taught.
This was how I was raised too. Our current senior pastor's viewpoint is that by living in a broken world, even our minds are broken and that's where the DSM stuff comes in. AND he is one of the best supporter we have for our SN kids. I need to see what classes he had available to him in the school he went to, that would be interesting. Also, a conversation with him about what he needs to look for might go further than a list of questions, I'm thinking. It's encouraging to me that they asked us for ideas, what to look for. It's at least a concern they are aware of. They haven't put together the search committee yet, so we'll see how the process goes.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts 🙂 Some of them mirror my own and a couple are good additions to what I already had!
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Our church is in the beginning stages of putting together the information to start a pastoral search for a children and families pastor (so, like an assistant, or junior pastor, but with a focus on the families and kids younger than middle school). My husband and I have been asked to put together a few questions relevant to the issue of kids with special needs in the church.
We are a small church with a growing youth population, but NOT one of those churches with huge amounts of resources. Currently, we have regular attendees who have a variety of special needs including a wide variety of SLDs, ADHD, 2 with ASD, several older students with serious emotional issues, and I know of at least one family who chooses not to attend at all because of a child with multiple disabilities including downs, and she feels as if the staff wouldn't know how to handle her child, which is true.
So I could come up with questions, and have some ideas, but I know that some of you have had not so great experiences at churches and others better experiences, so I thought I'd broaden my net to see what you thought as well. What questions would you submit to the pastoral search committee that would help them in this area as they search?
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14 hours ago, PeterPan said:
How long is that going to be? The advantage of a neuropsych, in your case, is they might, if they're worth their salt, be able to hone in on the part of the brain affected and help jumpstart your medical process.
I'm glad the doctors are starting to listen. What you're describing seems pretty significant to me, not accounted for by the SLD. If she's that frustrated, I would consider just doing something else for a while. Have you tried doing word searches with a highlighter? How does she do with those?
it's aprox a 6 month wait but she said they are actively looking for another person to add to their team so they can move through the list faster, so she hopes she will be in touch sooner.
Yes, it's significant to me too. We are trying to decide on what specific blood work we want to run by our next appointment.
Love the idea of word searches 🙂 I agree that backing off some and doing something fun would be a good idea. I've got a couple sound-out books from different authors that she can read, or has read in the past, we'll work on fun reading and word searches for a bit I think.
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53 minutes ago, geodob said:
What can cause the difficulty that you describe, is 'Scotopic Sensitivity' of the eyes.
Which is caused by the light reflected off of white paper.
That is also related to the 'Saccadic movement of the eyes'.
Though you can do a test, to identify this. Where you open a page of text for her to read. Using the Word program.
What it involves, is changing the 'white background', to tints of blue, red and yellow.
Have her read the text, with these different colored backgrounds. Observing whether any of the colors, enable her to read correctly?Irlen's syndrome, right? - I'll have to try this idea of changing the color on Word to see if that makes it easier for her, I know that I much prefer a darker background to a white background on the computer, in college I used blue when typing all my papers. But I figured that was just the intensity of the light from the computer screen because books don't bother me.
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4 hours ago, PeterPan said:
And she's seeing a neurologist? That's a significant amount of difficulty to have after multiple tier 3 interventions.
The medical stuff is just now coming to a point where the dr's are listening to me and we've already tried all 'tier 1' and 'tier 2' medical interventions, so to speak so we are getting the referral now.
On the other hand, I did do some digging today and found a place that will do neuropsych testing under our insurance, so I'm on that wait list now, which honesty will be faster than the local school system - the system I'm zoned for has a reputation for breaking those legal deadlines and talking parents out of testing and I don't have the energy to fight them right now.
3 hours ago, Pen said:Being able to read sentences and paragraphs and whole stories of almost entirely CVC type words fluently before moving on to a word like lunch or march is , IME, huge
I think this is where I need to go next. Spell-Links was a good stop-gap for the inability to move through Barton level 3, and we will likely go back to it, but it had become tedious. Maybe we could try Barton 3 again, see if she can get past where we were before, since we already have it.
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2 minutes ago, Pen said:
remind me of her age
she's 8
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1 hour ago, PeterPan said:
Does it change if you change the FONT SIZE? And does it change if you use an index card to reveal only a phonogram at a time? And then on the comprehension, has she had expressive/receptive language testing (I like the SPELT) to see if there's a language issue as well?
yes, larger font size helps. Revealing a phonogram at a time would help too - she is fine with letters in isolation, even with words in isolation, but multiple words in a line, even a dibbles test with non-sense words, she doesn't always say the right sounds first. Actually, I did a dibbles with her this morning and it was terrible - she has no context or meaning to help her so she does very poorly with non-sense words: k o m turns into "moc" and n e j turns into "eng". She got 23 words correct out of the 50 she read. It took her 4 minutes and she was fatigued by the end.
Her expressive and receptive language are fine per the SLP, I can't remember which eval they used right now. She also engages in the books I read to her without issue. She is my social thinker/street smart girl - she can catch the nuance in situations and inter-personal stuff is her strong suit.
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ok let me back up, the developmental vision dr. said her vision was fine, the regular eye dr. said her vision was fine. no glasses needed, and no tracking issues diagnosed. She has not had a full neuro-psych eval and we are not interested in spending the money on that right now, even though it would probably give us more info that would be helpful.
So, what I'm noticing only happens in context of a sentence in a book. She's inconsistent at what letter sound she starts each word with. Sometimes "of" starts with the "/f/" other times it's correct. Sometimes she'll correctly read "was" and other times she'll start with /s/. Often she'll grab a letter from the middle of a word to start the word with so "lunch" will start with /n/. She'll often pick more than one starting sound from letters available in the word before she'll sound the word out. so "march" could sound like "/k/ /r/ /m/ Christmas" she fatigues within a few minutes and will start guessing so reading sessions are kept to 5-10 minutes.
BUT in isolation, she's able to read a good number of words with automaticity. We've done a lot of word-level work this year.
She's gone through Barton levels 1, 2, and part of level 3. We couldn't get past the first few lessons on level three in a year and a half, (last school year I tried level 3 the first part of the year, re-started level 3 after Christmas break, backed up to level 2 after Spring break and tried again, getting stuck at the same point in level 3) so I switched to Spell-Links at the beginning of this year, and she took off for a few months, and that's how she is now able to read words in isolation - at least the words that she has been explicitly taught. We still use the Barton cues for sounding out and spelling and checking the vowel. On the QRI-3 that I had been trained to use in college (and I see they have updated that a bit since then...) she's reading on a pre-primer/primer level with comprehension, and I am seeing her start to volunteer to read verses in her Wednesday night church class (so she's developing some confidence).
There are a couple other medical things going on that lead us (me and the Dr.) to believe there's something neurological going on that could also be impacting her reading, and we are trying to address those issues as well, but it's not going to be a quick fix. I was just trying to understand how the tracking books might help, if there's not a developmental eye tracking issue.
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I was browsing about the high noon website thinking about adding the sound-out chapter books to my wish list, and noticed the visual tracking books. Do these types of exercises actually help with the whole starting a word with whatever letter catches your fancy issue? My DD8 with dyslexia struggles to remember to get her mouth ready for the START of each word, and I was wondering if something like this would help her eyes not jump around the words picking up letters here and there as she goes?
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16 hours ago, PeterPan said:
Remind us, he's decoding, not decoding? If he is decoding but not reading, then you might find that pulling back lets you find a level where both interaction and him reading independently can occur.
He learned to decode cvc words quickly, but has thrown fits whenever I get much past 3 word sentences. So I thought we'd progress fairly quickly this year compared to his sister who has dyslexia and couldn't get the sounds firmly connected to the letters forever, and each step in the reading progress has just taken her a lot longer than typical. BUT he's not any further in reading instruction than he was in the fall simply because he will refuse to work for me past sounding out words. I was to the point of him reading to me a 3-5 word sentence with comprehension - he'd read it slowly, word by word, and then laugh when he would get to the end because of the funny sentence - or we would read these partial sentences where he would fill in "silly answers" and he would have fun with that, but now he refuses to do more than read one or two words before he just refuses and he won't even attempt sentences anymore.
11 hours ago, Ktgrok said:that's what I was trying to get at with the boxcar series - to use books that kids read on their own as they have much simpler sentence structure, etc.
I realized that, the thing is, he refuses to listen to the boxcar series too, but that has an added component to it because my parents read that series to them over skype. sooo, the interpersonal stuff makes that more difficult too.
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On 3/31/2019 at 7:57 PM, PeterPan said:
If you put 510 into the lexile finder, you get Magic Treehouse books
So I had these artificial classifications of books in my head that put the Magic treehouse into those 'first books you read by yourself' rather than read-alouds. I pulled them off the shelf last night and allowed my son to pick one for us to read together and after the first 2 chapters I said bedtime and he begged for just one more chapter! And today he reminded me that we needed to finish the book and asked if we could go down the pile I had pulled off the shelf?
So that's an amusing twist to the conversation, anyway.
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3 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
make a list of what books he *interacts* with
ok I have to think more about this one. But I see your point, and I'll start to make note of these.
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31 minutes ago, kbutton said:
Grading emotion words...annoyance vs. anger vs. rage. My son would know they were all negative, but he wouldn't understand those words represented a continuum. Same with faces, body language, etc. So, if someone was annoyed with him or super angry, he just kind of assumed the worst. He wouldn't see the nuance without direct instruction.
ok, so I don't know. That's an interesting thought process though. I do know that he's particular about the choice of words I use to describe his emotions when I mirror him in the moment. Almost like annoyed and angry and frustrated all have different definitions that apply to select situations and this situation is angry, not frustrated, but now this situation is annoyed, not angry...
33 minutes ago, PeterPan said:So your ABA tip would be to take turns making choices. A lot of ABA stuff like that is common sense. You want to be able to make some demands, so as he chills you bring in a slight demand like that so that it's not always HIS way. Life is reciprocal, with taking turns, etc. Learning to do that with books is setting him up to be able to do it with play, etc. 🙂
Yes, and I can make the choice sometimes. But now that I think about it, I probably should do more turn taking with choices. Thanks for the common sense reminder 🙂
I love the ideas given here about the grading of emotions and specific language and using the 5 point charts and tying curriculum together like that.
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29 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
That's what I'm saying. The reading comprehension is plateauing at the level where most language intervention ends. Think about the level you're seeing in available materials and think about what's NOT out there. Unless the SLP is making it up herself, there isn't a lot of great stuff out there for kids with DLD who are able to continue working on syntactic complexity, etc. It's a niche thing too, as not all kids with DLD or ASD can. A huge chunk of your ASD2/3 kids have ID or language delays or even non-verbal issues to the point where working on sentence complexity isn't the plan. They aren't doing it.
So yes, if you have a dc who CAN go further, like I hope mine can sigh, then you're left scratching like a chicken, trying to find stuff. There's an SLP Balthazaar who's doing some research to develop an evidence-based approach for intervention in sentence complexity to bump reading comprehension. We're not crazy seeing the connection between syntax, reading comprehension, and writing. It's there. Just it's hard to find pre-made materials to do this. They're working on it or we innovate.
oh ok, sorry so I misunderstood... and now I'm rethinking all those kids I worked with years ago who could decode but not understand what they were reading and realizing they needed language work...
28 minutes ago, Pen said:What picture books does he like?
he’s doing some self-advocating at age 6? That’s wonderful!
Yes, the self-advocating is new and in specific play-based situations, but I'm thrilled to see it start emerging. We've been working on things like "tell me exactly what you need me to do" when he shoves something into my hands for me to help with, lol. That and the OT has been doing TONS of work on getting him to ideate ways to play with her, and he's starting to do some really exciting things with that.
Some picture books he likes: swimmy by Leo Leoni; The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka; Barn Storm by Charles Ghigna and Debra Ghigna; Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik; Pickles to Pittsburgh and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Salty Seagul A tale of an old salt by suzanne Tate; Big Bad Wolf is Good by Simon Puttock.
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On 3/30/2019 at 9:20 AM, Ktgrok said:
Definitely sounds like language. Also, the books you mention have pretty complex language at that. How is he with something simpler, like The Boxcar Children?
He doesn't like the Boxcar Children either, but some of his rigidity comes out in the inability to realize that things can be fluid and change from one time to the next - if he experiences something one way one time, then he expects every time in that activity to be the same, regardless of how much change there might be from one experience to the next. So if one book without pictures is disliked for any reason, he refuses all books without pictures, for example.
On 3/30/2019 at 9:37 AM, PeterPan said:reading level plateaus, and I think that plateau is directly correlated to where the language stops.
This makes sense, if you think about it, but how does that correspond to those kids who can read but struggle with comprehension?
On 3/30/2019 at 12:30 PM, Pen said:How is he on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?
Not a show we watch...I could try to find some episodes to show him and see. In general he watches similar shows that are "preschool" age, but that are animated. So the "tension" in the plot is limited to solving problems with creativity and flexible thinking.
1 hour ago, kbutton said:My dyslexic kiddo also picked up on that stuff pretty reasonably well also.
Ok so I've seen this refrain repeated a couple times now - so apart from the early obvious signs of dyslexia, what am I watching for??
1 hour ago, kbutton said:Are you using anything specifically for narrative language, such as Mindwing's Story Grammar stuff (they have autism-specific books too), or SKILL? They've been discussed a lot in the narrative language thread.
Yes, I'm using Mindwing's preschool program with him - Braidy and have made huge progress with that. I allow him to pick the books we use, typically, and then I work on which ever concept fits that book best, so it's a lot of flexibility on my part, but it gives him the practice and allows me to work with it without push-back because they are his book choices.
1 hour ago, kbutton said:Can your son sort and grade language words? My son could not do this. Everything was positive or negative, not neutral, and within positive and negative, he couldn't tell you what was a small emotion or a super intense emotion or anything in between.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here...
1 hour ago, kbutton said:I think he tended to try new things in a familiar context first, and when he felt safe with that, he would tolerate novelty.
I see this a lot. He will practice at home with siblings for weeks, sometimes months, before I'll see a new skill 'leave home' and one of the therapists will see the skill, or I'll see him use it in a different setting. I realized this recently when the OT noticed how great he was doing with ideation and self-advocating and I had been trying to tell her that he'd been working on that at home for over a month now. So he finally felt comfortable enough with the skill at home that he took it to OT and she was able to see the improvement.
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the more I think about this idea the more I'm excited that I figured out the issue... he plays rhyming games and is excellent at rhyming words, but he can do that without word-level comprehension. In play, he only plays the cartoons he watches. Chuggington games when playing with trains, car patrol when playing with cars, robo car poli when playing with bikes, terrific trucks when playing in the dirt in the backyard. And my 11 year old explained it to me as "we have to play those games or he refuses to play with us". So I'm thinking that he has memorized all the large chunks of language from those shows.
That also explains why when doing science (interoception) that I put together, he gave me huge behaviors (I was using interoceptive feeling words but the pictures I used were body part pictures - like a color the various parts of the heart type thing, and he hated doing the activities with me). NOW I'm using the interoceptive curriculum and they use icons that SHOW the feeling words ON the body part, so it's giving a specific picture cue on the word level and all of a sudden he's not fighting it and is actually excited about which body part we will do next each week.
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14 hours ago, Terabith said:
I'm wondering what chapter books you have tried. My younger daughter struggled with what I call "narrative tension" for the longest time. Honestly, she still does, but it's better. But she could not, would not listen to, read, or watch anything with any kind of emotional or interpersonal conflict. So all the Ramona books that I loved from my childhood? Absolutely not. Dora the Explorer? Nope. Too scary. Complex, violent nature documentaries? Sure! No problem! I have a long list of chapter books that worked with her, but there were also a lot that did not. She has passed the ADOS a couple of times, but is probably on the spectrum. But anxiety is her biggest diagnosis and really affects day to day functioning more than anything else. But....I think we try to push kids to listen to chapter books over picture books too young, a lot of the time. There are so many wonderful picture books.
The reading was hard here, too, but she was also dyslexic. Very atypical, so I didn't suspect it for a long time, because she had mastered all the early reading components very young and very easily. She got easily overwhelmed by text. And we did do things like candy. And used computer programs like Headsprout. But reading instruction felt a lot like bullying. I'm still not sure if it was the right thing to do, but she did wind up an excellent reader.
I've never tried a nature documentary like that, what an interesting thought.
8 hours ago, Ktgrok said:I think you need to return to the auditory processing thing. The CELF test is for language, not auditory processing, from what I can find about it. My DD with dyslexia, who also picked up CVC words fairly well, had no stamina for read alouds, at all for the longest time. Her hearing was perfect, but she has a breakdown in the phonological awareness part of her brain and despite people saying that SHOULDN"T effect read alouds/audio books, it DOES. At least for her. And for some other people I've talked to. As her reading got better her stamina for read alouds got better too, it went hand in hand.
Or it could just be a language issue, not auditory processing, and he needs the pictures to understand.
I gave him the barton screening for kicks and he couldn't pass the first task. He pulled tiles down for each syllable, rather than words. but for syllables, he was 100%. For the third task, isolating sounds, he was 100%. Not even hard. Does make me wonder if he is literally having trouble with word-level language and with pictures and context understands but stripped of those supports with read-alouds (stuff like trumpet of the swan, peter rabbit, etc.) and phonics instruction, he just has trouble with understanding.
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Just now, chocolate-chip chooky said:
Thanks so much for sharing this.
ADHD is not an issue for us, so I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about starting inositol.
Can you please give an indication of how quickly you built up to the 7g?
I looked up my notes on how we titrated the dosage, we actually started at 3 grams and added a gram a week. We started noticing a calmer/happier kid by the end of the first week. At 5 grams I talked to his dr. about how high I could go because we were still dropping off in behavior prior to dinner. She gave me the green light to go to 8g. I stopped at 7 grams because the improvements in mood/behavior were level all day, with no significant drop off in behavior prior to the evening dose.
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My son takes inositol for OCD/Generalized anxiety. He started at 2g and we worked our way up to 7g. (his dr. gave us the ok to go up to 8g) For him it's huge. It's like it took this giant thing hanging over his head and toned it down to something that's more manageable. He doesn't have ADHD though and I would not try it with my daughter who has anxiety issues who also has ADHD because of the stuff I read about it aggravating ADHD symptoms. That combined with L-Theanine means we no longer need melatonin for him to sleep at night. The theanine took the edge off of the anxiety but wore off too fast. The Inositol has a much stronger impact and lasts longer.
L-Theanine works great for my daughter with ADHD (we pair it with some coffee in the morning and she's much less impulsive). She tells me that it calms the anxious thoughts in her head within minutes of taking it, and will take an extra dose before certain activities that she knows will spike her anxiety (like a rambunctious social setting).
I am looking into other supplements too, zinc is what we're currently working on and then Vit. D might be next. I like to do things one at a time to know what impact they make. I personally take NAC, I need to read more about that in kids. I have an appointment with a nutritionist in a couple weeks that I'm hoping will help with direction to go too.
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SPELL-Links
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted
I tried it this year with DD8 because we hit a wall with Barton that I couldn't get past. But sorry, not selling, I expect to use it with her more before I'm finished with it, and it's actually a pretty neat spelling curriculum that I might use down the road with the boys.
DD really enjoyed the variety of activities - one of them uses coins and she LOVED earning coins for reading her words! I liked how they looked at language from a more holistic perspective - so all spellings were taught for a single sound in a single chapter. (I thought this would be overwhelming, but it was pretty easy for her to filter the odd spellings out as we went and I think it was good to expose her to those words anyway) We moved SLOWLY, though, and I should have bought stock in index cards, lol.
She got really good at word-level reading on the sound we were working on - so by the end of a given chapter, she could read the word lists for me with 95+% accuracy. BUT her fluency was sub 20% across the board. I saw her confidence shoot up, she was suddenly willing to try to read random things, even in front of peers. So it helped from the perspective of starting to fit in a little better with her peers as she was able to start picking through things that Barton would not have gotten to as quickly.
She gained several sight words, and is able to read and even recognize a lot more individual words - things that she previously struggled with. She also can better see small parts of words inside larger words.
I Didn't like that the extra books to reinforce the concepts were extra $$. I didn't spend the money on them and wish now that I had, because more book reading would probably have been beneficial in the fluency/sentence level reading.
Also I saw some of the previously learned Barton skills have been lost - she never did like using the b/d trick but she still cannot for the life of her keep those letters apart in her head. And she lost the ability to tap and sound out cvc words.
So overall, we gained some automaticitiy with sight words, gained some spelling rules (we have taken a break after finishing all the long vowel lessons), and gained confidence. In turn, we lost the ability to approach an unknown word, tap and say the sounds, get your mouth ready for the first sound kind of skills. So a mixed bag.
One of the things I really liked about the curriculum is how much effort they put into word-level learning. We did tons of sorting activities and looked at spellings, rhymes, etc. We reviewed their rules, and wrote words down, and underlined parts of words, etc. Just lots and lots of word-level work. Like I said, I just didn't do enough sentence level reading with her to reinforce the skills because the stories that come as part of the downloadable files for it are just small print on a single page and took a lot of leg-word to make into something usable for her. Some of them, at the beginning of the year, I would copy a sentence per page and print out pictures for her to choose and glue on each appropriate page as she read. This was useful but a lot of work for me after spending all the money on the curriculum.