Dyslexia: Many questions

[oliveview]

Last week we got the report from the psychologist who did the testing on our ds 10. Since that point, we have made some decisions and moved forward but I still have a lot of questions.

 

As background, he was a late reader. I really struggled to teach him and we had little to no success until we went thru 100EZ Lessons. He took off from there and has become an avid reader. He says his favorite thing to do is read. He had fairly good reading comprehension for me but his spelling was terrible. After annual testing last year, I switched to AAS. In the past year, he has completed Books 1-3 in AAS. His spelling has greatly improved but he still gets many words wrong when he writes. As for writing, we had been using WWE. Something wasn't right because his history and science narrations weren't advancing the was they should. It was like he was stuck a year or two back and not advancing so several months ago I started using Student Writing A with him. He likes this much better than in writing he has done previously. He says he "gets" writing more now. His memory has always been less than the other kids, I just had no idea that it was abnormally low.

 

First, I started off with a huge mistake. Huge! We got a highly recommended psych in our area. She is an educational psych and by her own account is highly trained in neuro psych. I see now that is not the same thing as a neuro psych. I think she did a good job in identifying the educational issues but I see that much was lost. Oh well. If we ever need to test again, I will travel to get a better eval.

 

Okay, he was identified as having dyslexia and mixed dysgraphia. Among other things, she did the WJIII with sub-tests. His overall IQ was drastically lower than expected. From what I have read, his score is not really valid because some of the huge differences in subset scores. Is that accurate?

 

His working memory, long term retrieval and short-term memory were very low. Yet, he had high auditory processing. His executive processes were ranked average to advanced but his cognitive fluency, cognitive efffeciency and processing speed were very low. Actually his cognitive fluency was only 1st percentile rank. His thinking ability was well above average with strength in fluid reasoning.

 

Her comments on reading:

"Despite his wonderful improvements on some of the tasks that make up phonological awareness, he continues to present with difficulty decoding. He demonstrated limited proficiency reading familiar words (letter-word identification) and limited to average proficiency decoding nonsense words (word attack)...Children with phonological dyslexia will sound out the first letter and then guess the word bade on its structure or shape. Children with surface dyslexia will painstakingly sound out each letter and not process larger parts of the word. His reading errors were all dysphonetic, suggesting he has phonological dyslexia. As can be seen in the examples below, he was not using what he knows about the sounds letters make to decode words. It appears that he was using a primary orthographic approach, sounding out the first letter and then guessing the work based on its shape."

 

Her comments on writing:

"His ability to spell nonwords is limited, which means he may struggle when attempting to spell new words because he is not proficient in applying phonics, not aware of common irregularities in words, and does not have a solid understanding about certain letter combinations...He made phonological and surface errors in addition to several more serious errors suggesting that he has mixed dysgraphia." She listed the errors and several of them were words that we had done in AAS.

 

So, my first step was to find a developmental optometrist. We went for an evaluation last week and have started vision therapy. He was found to have poor accommodation, poor binocularity and poor ocular motility. He is doing weekly vision therapy in the office and daily homework.

 

We have scheduled an appointment/evaluation with a SLP for later this week. She said that she feels she can help him with processing and memory issues. She uses, among other things, Brain Gym and Interactive Metronome.

 

In the meantime, he has been working daily with Jungle Memory and appears to be making progress.

 

SO, the question is where from here. I was told in the psych eval that he needed aggressive and immediate intervention since he is 10 and his phonemic awareness "window" will be closing soon due to his age. I have heard some say to wait until VT is over before beginning a language program such as Barton. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Should we stick with AAS, which he loves and is eager to do, but has frequent errors on words he has passed? Should I go ahead and switch to Barton now? Should I just wait 2 months and see what happens? I've already got book 4 of AAS, we could just go ahead and work knowing we may change in a couple of months.

 

Speaking of Barton, I gave him the pre-test and he did fine. I gave him the tests for Levels 1 and 2 and he also passed them with a 95% or greater. I haven't given him the test for Level 3 or 4 yet.

 

Is there anything else that I need to look into as far as intervention or teaching methods?

 

I would love some BTDT advice on where to go from here.

[merry gardens]

Some of us on this board are taking and discussing this course: Orton Gillingham Introductory Course

 

I have read several books and teacher training guides on dyslexia the past couple years. This $49 course neatly pulls together some of the most helpful information about dyslexia that I have learned.

 

One of the women taking the above mentioned course uses AAS. I gather from what she writes that AAS is not quite as structured as Barton or that perhaps it doesn't remediate as intensely and thoroughly as Barton. I don't know how AAS exactly compares with Barton, but I thought that AAS was based on O-G too. We're in the middle of Barton level 5. I have on my own added some other things, primarily because my son needed more school work to do when I work with my other children, (otherwise he was disruptive to the rest of us.) I would think that you could stick with AAS since your son likes it, but perhaps add something more in with it to address the problems you have mentioned here.

 

It sounds like you are doing a number of things right now to address the problems. He wouldn't have passed all those Barton pre-tests and post-tests if you hadn't already done something to address his problems. :) Believe me, I know the temptation to buy every program that offers hope to remediate a child's dyslexia! But speaking from a voice of experience, I would suggest that maybe you don't need to change everything all at once. You are doing many things right now that might help. If he is able to remediate his memory problems through other means, then perhaps AAS will work out fine. I love Barton. I continue to be impressed with how well planned out Barton is, so if you're sure you want to do it, then go ahead and switch. Barton might make things easier for you than AAS, but it won't be a miracle cure.

 

Anyway, if you are trying to learn as much as you can about dyslexia right now, I would suggest the course I mentioned above.

[Dobela]

I don't have lots of information to explain all that you have posted. Hopefully some of the others will jump in and help there. I di want to comment on the VT. MY son was diagnosed as dyslexic before we began vision therapy. We hired a tutor trained in the Scottish Rite method about 3 months after we began vision therapy. While my son had some different vision issues, by the end of 18 months of vision therapy the diagnosis of dyslexia no longer applied and was removed. For him, it was apparently all vision all along. I do know that this is not the case for everyone though. He went from a preK reading level to above grade level. In the beginning the vision therapy was exhausting as my son worked hard to retrain his brain. We honestly did minimal lessons in reading and other subjects for the first 6 weeks at least. I know that we were at least 6 months in before we added in more than reading, math, and grammar.

 

Waiting 3 months to begin the new reading program was important. The reason my son wasn't reading in the beginning was because his eyes were not giving his brain the same information everytime he looked at a word, or a letter, etc. He wasn't able to match sound to letter/blend/etc because that letter or group of letters looked enough different each time that they would not go into long term memory. He would guess based on first letter or shape of word very often. After he began seeing them consistenly the same, then he was able to make huge strides in reading (and math and grammar). It was still difficult in the beginning for my son, but as time went on and his vision improved, the reading became easier and easier.

 

Barton is a great program. It may be however that once your son's eyes and brain are working together that AAS may be all you need. It may not, but if money is an issue,I would wait.

 

For working memory my son's teachers also recommended games like Simon where you have to remember the light pattern and repeat it. Loopz is another game available that is similar.

 

When my son's scores came back from the ed psych, we already knew that vision was a problem and had been working with the VT a few weeks. Anything that required visual processing was incredibly low and the areas that didn't rely on vision were much, much higher. At the end of the testing the ed psych actually said that for the first time ever she didn't feel her scores were an accurate indication of ability. While large differences typically indicate a learning disability, she wasn't ready to identify any as such. His vision was too unreliable and obviously seriously effecting all he was attempting to do. She suggested we come back in 3 years and have the eval done again.

[oliveview]

Merry and Dobela, thank you both for your thoughtful replies. I hope that the therapies that we have chosen will provide gains. It's comforting to see that things have worked for your children.

 

Merry, I looked at the course you linked and I am going to sign up for it. Thank you.

 

I am really struggling with this decision about ASS vs Barton. He had difficulty with nonsense words on the test and I know that they are included in Barton. Also, I understand Barton has more review. I keep reading that AAS is a O-G based spelling program but Barton is a full O-G language program.

 

My other concern is my 9 year old son. I think we are starting to see some of the same issues with him but more as stealth dyslexia.

 

I think for now, I am going to take the O-G intro course, let the therapies continue, and just give it some time. It's true, I don't want to be hopping from one program to the next.

 

This is just a lot to think about. I am thankful to all of you who have posted on this forum. There is much wisdom here.

[Dobela]

Barton is a great program. My main reasons for saying wait were for vision therapy to start having effect and honestly, because Barton is so very expensive. Also, some families that have posted here have used AAS for reading. Those children didn't need as much remediation or specialized instruction though.

 

I would also recommend your other son having a VT eval.

 

Have you contacted Barton for their recommendations? They may have some thoughts that we are missing here. I know that when my son failed parts of the pretest, Susan was very honest and told me that her program would not work for my son. She had a wealth of other information for me and helped point me in the right directions.

[Rod Everson]

 

SO, the question is where from here. I was told in the psych eval that he needed aggressive and immediate intervention since he is 10 and his phonemic awareness "window" will be closing soon due to his age. I have heard some say to wait until VT is over before beginning a language program such as Barton. I'm not sure what to do at this point.

 

I don't know about the phonemic awareness "window" aspect of this, but if you want to get started on a useful activity you could download the word list and follow the instructions for using it from my site. Both the list and the instructions are on the page Oral Auditory Processing.

 

I followed the same procedure with every child I worked with who couldn't pass the phoneme deletion test I gave and they all learned to manipulate phonemes orally after several sessions. Just do the exercises as instructed for a few minutes each day and I suspect he'll develop the skill of phoneme manipulation. Incidentally, here's the link to the tests themselves. Start at Testing Blending Skill and then do the next two as well. The Auditory Processing Test is the one that tests an aspect of phoneme manipulation.

 

Incidentally, these exercises won't conflict with any program you might later decide to use. They're purely auditory training, and don't involve reading anything at all.

 

Rod Everson

[VinNY]

I used something similar to what Rod Everson suggests. Dr. Jerome Rosner's book Helping Children Overcome Learning Disabilities has exercises to develop your child's visual and auditory perceptual skills. I also used LiPs and did VT with my dtr before moving fully into an O-G reading program.

[Julie of KY]

Before buying Barton, I'd call and talk to Susan Barton about your circumstance and see what she recommends reguarding her program. It may be overkill for your situation or it might be just what you need.

[PeterPan]

I definitely think you're wise to wait on an expensive new program until you get the VT under your belts. I felt like even after we finished I saw things gelling in my dd's mind for quite a while. In the meantime, if you want non-sense words, see if you can get the tm for How to Teach Spelling. It's OG-based, so it won't contradict anything you've already done or plan to do.

 

The rest of the stuff that lady said could be accounted for simply with the eyes. Sure he could be dyslexic TOO, but I'm saying the way he's guessing, not sounding out, etc. for us was eyes. We fixed the eyes and that all changed. Dd actually started sounding out words on her own. So I wouldn't get too attached to those labels. Dd is still dyslexic on top of it, but it shows up lots of other ways (bilaterality, how she processes, etc.).

 

That's great that you're bringing in a speech therapist! That's one thing I wanted to try with my dd. Instead I've been relegated to pilfering ideas from Yllek's posts. You might like to do a board search of her. :)

 

Don't let people get you too freaked out and worried. Adults learn to read all the time. My dd didn't start VT till age 11. You're going to be fine. Just take it one step at a time. :)

[oliveview]

Yes, I think I am going to wait on changing to Barton. I'm going to let the SLP and VT work and see where we are in a month or two. I am just afraid to miss this chance to help him. It's not that we aren't "doing" anything. That pull to do everything at once is more about my guilt than what he needs. Then, the thought that we could be facing the same challenges and back to square one in 2 years...well, it overwhelms me...not to mention my sweet boy. It's hard to trust that I am doing the right thing now when I feel like I have missed so many warning signs.

 

It's just too many changes, too fast. I think we need to take a breathe.

 

Oh, and yes, we got our 9 yo ds evaluated for VT and he will start next week. Thank you everyone for the wisdom, support and encouragement.

[Dobela]

Yes, I think I am going to wait on changing to Barton. I'm going to let the SLP and VT work and see where we are in a month or two. I am just afraid to miss this chance to help him. It's not that we aren't "doing" anything. That pull to do everything at once is more about my guilt than what he needs. Then, the thought that we could be facing the same challenges and back to square one in 2 years...well, it overwhelms me...not to mention my sweet boy. It's hard to trust that I am doing the right thing now when I feel like I have missed so many warning signs.

 

It's just too many changes, too fast. I think we need to take a breathe.

 

Oh, and yes, we got our 9 yo ds evaluated for VT and he will start next week. Thank you everyone for the wisdom, support and encouragement.

:grouphug: Don't blame yourself or feel guilty. I know it is hard though. I taught special ed in public schools and almost completely missed the problems my son was having.

[PeterPan]

Then, the thought that we could be facing the same challenges and back to square one in 2 years...well, it overwhelms me...not to mention my sweet boy. It's hard to trust that I am doing the right thing now when I feel like I have missed so many warning signs.

 

 

Wow, your VT must have forgotten to tell you, 4th grade is the most common time to start VT!!! You can look back and see it in hindsite, but in the moment it was indistinguishable. His strengths were covering his weaknesses, and it was impossible to tell whether you were looking at slight problems or something deeper. And you know what? A year from now you're going to look back and feel more chilled. I do. A year and a half ago I was right where you are, with the new diagnosis, starting VT, getting the OT eval, getting told all these things. But once you get past the VT and get some of these things working better you're going to feel better. Sure it might have been nice to have found it as early as Yllek, but it's OK. We're OK now.

 

I understand the repetition thing too. My dd has low tone and the eye problems, dyslexia, etc., none of which we knew before we got pregnant with ds. He has low tone and verbal apraxia such that he never would have begun to speak without therapy. My kids are almost 10 years apart, so I waited a LONG TIME for ds, only to find out he has problems. You have three close together with problems. They're still a blessing, even with the problems. So when you're feeling overwhelmed, I would focus on how wonderful they are and how sweet it is to have them and feel their soft cheeks, rather than the problems.

[cat]

I have been using Barton Reading for 3 years with my son. He is profoundly dyslexic. One thing that has been great is that a friend told my about mixed eye dominance! He is right handed and should be right eye dominant. He is cross dominant! So, I bought him some "shooting glasses" in the hunting section and put scotch tape over his left eye to force his right eye to become stronger. It has helped tremendously! Barton has worked for us.....it is laid out very nicely and is easy to implement. I am also working on his fluency using Great Leaps. I highly recommend it!!!!

[PeterPan]

Just so you know, our vision therapy place did NOT change dd's eye dominance and does not feel it's an issue. Tiger Woods is cross dominant. Indeterminate dominances were a problem to them, but not mixed. Before you go doing that based on something you read online, I would get a proper evaluation by a developmental optometrist.

[DyslexicParent]

Did Jungle Memory work despite the 8-week limit?

Has anybody else bought it with its claims of increasing IQ?

In the meantime, he has been working daily with Jungle Memory and appears to be making progress.

[Julie of KY]

I also would recommend calling Susan Barton about your specific situation.

 

I use both Barton and AAS. I like Barton for phonemic awareness skills and teaching reading. My dyslexic kids need to move slower on the spelling with much more repetion and AAS has worked well for that. I pull the spelling rules from Barton (as well as some of the lists) and mix it with AAS. I do the spelling with Barton as we go through it, but my kids take much longer to master the spelling than the reading.