Dyslexic Advantage discussion thread

[PeterPan]

Ok, I wanted to pick up with this idea of gestures and dyslexia a bit more. Yllek, you've said your ds eats up the ipad, and so does Michele's. And y'all linked to that MSNBC thing that I started watching and didn't get to finish. I'm wondering, if you put all this together, if the issue is that literally it's easier for them to gesture than it is to verbally express. My dd has this STRONG desire for an ipad. Someone told me I should go macbook air instead, but I think that misses the GESTURE component of this who visualization and communication thing.

 

So did anybody get any reading done last night? Time for you who just got the book to start chiming in! :)

[Guest]

Last summer, she and her now-husband started a leatherworking business. They make, amongst other things, leather satchels and leather covers for Moleskine & Rhodia journals. Her talents are used in designing & making their products, as well as the design & photography used on their website. Her husband is also extremely creative & she says that the total product is much more than their individual efforts because they are constantly collaborating on every idea for their product and their website. I will PM you the link to their website. If anyone else is interested in seeing the website for my daughter's business, feel free to PM me.

 

I spent a bit of time on the website and I have to say, it is one of the most visually elegant and beautifully designed sites I have seen. I also loved the writer's bag and am coveting one!

 

The other thing that was wonderful was the totally, absolutely, intensely focused look on your dd's face as she was stitching and dyeing. There was just nothing else in the world for her at that moment.

 

It's also so encouraging to hear the trajectory of your son's interests -- particularly that shift from consumer to producer. Dd is an enormous, rabid consumer of fiction (mostly classics and satire) and plays at the moment. Sometimes I get really anxious about it: there's no "schooly" output! But I can see that she is building a huge base of work from which to form that interconnected, global view of literature that she needs; and she has written, in the past year, nearly 100 pages of her favorite quotations in a commonplace notebook. We discuss them often, and what I hear her doing is approaching them from the standpoint of a writer, an artist whose tool is language. Fortunately I know enough about (mostly British) writers in the past whose educations took very unconventional forms to see that this is very much "work" although it may not seem so if one is only looking to see standard academic output. And I can see that her resistance to traditional, continual writing assignments is functioning to protect her creative and artistic ways of approaching a literary text -- not simply defiance or laziness.

 

It was enlightening to read about how your son moved from being a consumer/gamer to becoming interested in technical and highly sophisticated aspects of programming and technology. Sometimes, when you're in one of the sort of holding patterns that these kids can be in for a good while, it feels as though they're stuck and they're never going to move beyond it. So thank you so much for that encouragement in your children's stories. They sound like great kids. And how lucky they are to have your understanding and support.

[Guest]

Ok, I wanted to pick up with this idea of gestures and dyslexia a bit more. Yllek, you've said your ds eats up the ipad, and so does Michele's. And y'all linked to that MSNBC thing that I started watching and didn't get to finish. I'm wondering, if you put all this together, if the issue is that literally it's easier for them to gesture than it is to verbally express. My dd has this STRONG desire for an ipad. Someone told me I should go macbook air instead, but I think that misses the GESTURE component of this who visualization and communication thing.

 

Mine has actually been very very late in coming to the computer at all, and resistant to an iPod and an iPad until this year (at age 15). I don't know how much of this is reluctance to try anything new, and how much is related to fine motor issues that make gesturing for her fairly rudimentary and pretty infrequent.

 

What does your dd want to do in particular with the iPad? What sorts of things is she attracted to that she can do with it?

[Sugarfoot]

That's a really interesting question. With so many viewpoints on how you get into autism (genes, vaccines, predisposition that gets pushed over the top, etc. etc.), I'm not sure how pat or across the board that would be with the details thing. And would it vary with age of beginning the autism symptoms? Or is it a brain type (in addition to biochemistry) that common to the predisposed? I don't know, that would just be hard to sort through. But as a method of looking back at the child you have and asking if they could both, then that's pretty interesting. The other sad thing to ponder is whether the dyslexic autistic kids DO occur but end up being the ones who are lower functioning. For instance dyslexia, apraxia often occur together, and apraxia and autism often occur together. So it has to be that you get the three together in some cases. And those might not be the kids showing up on these boards as HFA and confusing diagnoses. I don't know. I'm just saying I see lower functioning kids with autism and apraxia going into our speech therapy place, and they just break your heart. I don't know them well enough to know their mix of what's going on, but it can't be pretty. It might be that our own kids' experiences won't extrapolate well to a population, kwim?

 

It's definitely complicated, that's for sure! So many things overlap. I was talking to my DH (a physician who's much more interested in the biology than the behavior, lol) and his remark was, "anything is possible." In many ways, I think the brain is like the final frontier of medicine. It's such a mystery. ;)

 

Ok, I wanted to pick up with this idea of gestures and dyslexia a bit more. Yllek, you've said your ds eats up the ipad, and so does Michele's. And y'all linked to that MSNBC thing that I started watching and didn't get to finish. I'm wondering, if you put all this together, if the issue is that literally it's easier for them to gesture than it is to verbally express. My dd has this STRONG desire for an ipad. Someone told me I should go macbook air instead, but I think that misses the GESTURE component of this who visualization and communication thing.

 

So did anybody get any reading done last night? Time for you who just got the book to start chiming in! :)

 

I haven't come across anything about gestures yet, but I know my DS loves technology of any sort. He literally picks it up and starts using it. We were on our way somewhere out of town, and he said, "There has to be a shorter way. It's right over there." In his spatial mind, he knew we were close, and yet the GPS had us still on the interstate for several more miles and then circling around. Finally he said, "Where's your phone?" I gave it to him, he pulled up some sort of mapping thing that I didn't even know existed, it even showed us moving along, found an alternative road, and there we were.

 

And he's gestured in a physical way, if that's what you mean, and I'll have to watch what you mentioned, forever. Right now, I'm watching DS 4 do the exact same things...

 

I do think these things are connected. He thinks in pictures. Putting his thoughts into words is like translating everything into a second language before speaking. It's easy to see how hard it is for him, and yet the thing with the phone and the map, he can do that in 2 seconds flat...

[PeterPan]

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n Here's that link again, if anyone missed it the first time. It was on 60 minutes, not msnbc, sorry. And it was Michele who originally directed me to it. I'm just pulling all the thoughts together.

 

KarenAnne--Maybe your own aversion to and avoidance of technology has colored your dd's? Definitely get the idea of unwillingness to change. Me too. I don't think the fine motor is the issue. You'd just have to take her to an Apple store and see what happens. I did, and that was where dd fell in love. I still haven't figured out why she wants one. I think she had a mind meld or something. She likes the games, but she likes reading on it. She's UBER-opinionated on this and RADICALLY, adamantly opposed to e-ink readers. We're at the point where an e-reader would open up the world to her. Like Gina's ds, dd will use these devices and seek out all sorts of stuff you wouldn't expect. It's like an open door with no limitations, deep sea diving without the anxiety of a tank, free access without all the LIMITATIONS they normally experience. Their limitations could be small (not being able to drive) or huge.

 

At least I think that's what's happening. It's so expensive, I've tried to just sort of open my mind to all the things it could do. Me, I could go on in my own boring way and not even notice. I think though the technology opens doors for them. My real concern with it is addictiveness.

[Guest]

Filmmaking is something that I never in a million years dreamed he would become passionate about, although he did start setting up elaborate scenes with his Playmobil and then videotaping them at the age of 7. And now, well, what he does just totally amazes us. We've been so fortunate to be able to travel to some of the festivals that the kids have been invited to, and we've met some wonderful professionals in the process. I can't even begin to describe what a shock it's been to hear these people describe my son as a gifted cinematographer and filmmaker. It's just been beyond anything I could have imagined. And here I was, just a few short years ago, thinking that he may never be able to read.

 

 

I watched The Sheep Rustler trailer, and there was one wide shot that looked like it was taken from ground level, with the brown grasses blowing, the gray sky, and the small horse in the background, that just blew me away! Really gorgeous! And I loved the background music. Set just the right mood of kind of uneasiness but not real out-and-out blood and thunder.

 

When it says trailer, is he making or has he made a longer piece as well?

[PeterPan]

Ok, where's the link? :)

[wapiti]

I skimmed through maybe the first 30 pages of DA, and so far, it was what I expected, though I'm nowhere near the guts yet. I'm starting to wonder if my brother is dyslexic (he is a lefty and was mediocre in school even though he worked very hard, and now he is uber-uber-successful).

 

[PeterPan]

Blech, I hated See It, Say It, Do It. A bunch of mumbo jumbo. Lots of it will be old hat for you and common sense for the rest. I say skim it and get back to good stuff. One hour is all it's worth.

(feel free to have an utterly different opinion, lol)

Edited October 24, 2011 by OhElizabeth

[Tokyomarie]

I spent a bit of time on the website and I have to say, it is one of the most visually elegant and beautifully designed sites I have seen. I also loved the writer's bag and am coveting one!

 

The other thing that was wonderful was the totally, absolutely, intensely focused look on your dd's face as she was stitching and dyeing. There was just nothing else in the world for her at that moment.

 

Thanks so much for the compliments on the website! I'm pretty proud of what dd & her husband have accomplished in the last year. I have some of their smaller products and I have seen the smaller bag. They are very well put together.

 

It's also so encouraging to hear the trajectory of your son's interests -- particularly that shift from consumer to producer. Dd is an enormous, rabid consumer of fiction (mostly classics and satire) and plays at the moment. Sometimes I get really anxious about it: there's no "schooly" output! But I can see that she is building a huge base of work from which to form that interconnected, global view of literature that she needs; and she has written, in the past year, nearly 100 pages of her favorite quotations in a commonplace notebook. We discuss them often, and what I hear her doing is approaching them from the standpoint of a writer, an artist whose tool is language. Fortunately I know enough about (mostly British) writers in the past whose educations took very unconventional forms to see that this is very much "work" although it may not seem so if one is only looking to see standard academic output. And I can see that her resistance to traditional, continual writing assignments is functioning to protect her creative and artistic ways of approaching a literary text -- not simply defiance or laziness.

 

I think sometimes what happens with these kids is that they are taking in ideas & turning them all over inside where we can't see it happening and then all of a sudden, whoosh their own ideas, which have been influenced by what they've taken in, come tumbling out where we get to enjoy them. But you can't make the ideas come out before their time.

 

It was enlightening to read about how your son moved from being a consumer/gamer to becoming interested in technical and highly sophisticated aspects of programming and technology. Sometimes, when you're in one of the sort of holding patterns that these kids can be in for a good while, it feels as though they're stuck and they're never going to move beyond it. So thank you so much for that encouragement in your children's stories. They sound like great kids. And how lucky they are to have your understanding and support.

 

Thanks again! Two years ago I was in that holding pattern with my ds. That's when I finally had him professionally evaluated because it seemed like we had been on hold forever. That was useful, because we did get connected to a couple of professionals who were able to help break up some log jams in learning & now we are getting back on track.

 

I have gotten such good encouragement from the moms here, though. Reading all your ideas & curriculum recommendations has truly sustained me over the years.

[peacefully]

.

[rafiki]

.

[PeterPan]

Yllek, when he did that writing for the comic strip on the ipad, was he using a stylus or typing? And typing on the ipad or on a keyboard? What do you think of the reasonableness of using the ipad to type paragraphs and papers in Pages? She'd use a wireless apple keyboard, not the touch screen.

 

I got side-tracked and was rereading sections of the Sally Shaywitz book on dyslexia. It has an interesting chapter on diagnosing it in bright/high-achieving kids. Basically she says you go by the sniff test (looks like it, smells like it, is it) rather than numbers. She talked about reading speed, how they infer from context, that their brightness allows them to memorize and not need to sound out more words than other dyslexics, which is why it doesn't show up as easily. She gives a ton of diagnostic criteria. Now I want to have dd read some non-fiction out loud to me and see what happens. I'm wondering if that has been the whole issue with her refusal to read non-fiction all these years. Shaywitz also recommends that Denny-Nelson test (sp) the Eides had mentioned.

[peacefully]

.

[merry gardens]

Does anyone still wanting to discuss it on this long thread, or shall we start a new one?

 

I got the book and am most of the way through it now. Loving it. :) I find the book very encouraging--and I needed some encouragement.

 

I definately find some of those strengths in my dc--including my children who do very well with academics. Maybe it says this somewhere in the book, but those strengths are not limited to people with dyslexia. Perhaps people with those strengths are simply more prone to dyslexia.

[PeterPan]

Yes, please keep going here!!! I just got side-tracked reading Fletcher's book "Learning Disabilities" and haven't gotten back to finish DA! I'm sure people would love to keep going.

[peacefully]

.

[PeterPan]

Yllek--It took me a while to open my mind to Freed (or free my mind to Freed?) because I was stumbling over his blanket labels. I finally decided I would just play with bits of his ideas, see if they fit, and worry about his gross generalizations later. I think sometimes the problems are contradictory and make Freed's ideas either not work or need modification. Take his idea of modeling writing by having the parent do it. Well that's the way we've done grammar for years (I parse and diagram the sentence, you watch, eventually I let you diagram if you beg hard enough), and it worked out great. So as a teaching technique, it works. But when you try to transfer it exactly to writing, the reality is my dd can't handle the distraction of having me work with her, she needs to be left alone. But her teacher in her co-op class (who, bless her soul, is birds of a feather with dd) somehow manages to work them through the writing that way and have it work. Did I just contradict myself? I think I did. So there's an even worse conclusion, lol. You might have the right technique but be the wrong person to implement it and get it to work. Dd's writing is working this year, because she's working with someone who's as out in left field as she is on these things. She doesn't work as well with me.

 

I think I may have gotten UDB before I started making notes on notecards. The lady that wrote that refrigerator book comes to the homeschool conferences around here.

 

So how does DA strike your dh? I'm fascinated that he can read it. I mean that doesn't sound right, but not every adult dyslexic will read like that. I'm still waiting to see what happens with dd in the testing and how they parse all this out. I keep trying, ever so slowly, to plug through this Fletcher book. It's the first thing I've found that approaches it the way I would, explaining the process, what they're trying to distinguish, the 4 subtypes of each label, how you discriminate between them, etc. I feel like I'm finally reading something that makes sense instead of pep talks. But there's a lot of gobbleygook in it too, lots of references to studies. Zonks me right out, so I never seem to get through more than about 2 pages, lol. At this rate it will only take me a year to finish the book. ;)

[OrganicAnn]

Oh my I am coming in late. My DH brought Dyslexic Advantage home from the library. We've been really enjoying it. My DD fits the "N" to a tee. She could act out stories all day long and use stories to remember things very well. She has not be diagnosed as Dyslexic (yet). But she does have reading difficulties. She loves subject that involve stories (loves Story of the World).

 

I haven't finished the book yet. I was going to come and suggest this great book, but sure enough instead I find a thread with about 12 pages!

[peacefully]

.

[Mom-ninja.]

I was just coming here to see if there was a thread about this book.

 

I am really liking it. It's opening my eyes to so many things about my ds and dh.

[Mom-ninja.]

So how does DA strike your dh? I'm fascinated that he can read it. I mean that doesn't sound right, but not every adult dyslexic will read like that.

 

My dh asked me to buy him the audio book. It's on my list to buy.

[PeterPan]

My dh asked me to buy him the audio book. It's on my list to buy.

 

The perfect dyslexic response, lol! Well it will be interesting to see what he thinks! I've never even mentioned it to dh, and I doubt he would be interested or have time. He's not self-absorbed or reflective about these things. For him it was just something you work hard and deal with.

[PeterPan]

Anyway, dh is always reading something. He reads more than I do.

 

This is what I was curious about, how a person like this TESTS with the np and how they can see the reading disorder. Well it's all just fascinating. I must just be impatient for our testing, lol.

[nono]

My dh asked me to buy him the audio book. It's on my list to buy.

 

I have my copy from Audible. It's a good recording. I am listening to it daily while I do my morning 1 mile wake up on the treadmill.

 

I love the book so far, as it is favoring my pet theory that we constantly compare complex brains to simple, straight-forward ones, while only appreciating the "standard" of straight-forward. So, since the authors seem to be agreeing with my pulled-out-of-the-air theory, they must be onto something. :D

[merry gardens]

Oh good! I'm glad to read that others are still interested in discussing DA.

 

I read about what DA terms the "M" skill previously in the Gift of Dyslexia. (Incidently, I agree with the DA footnote regarding that book.) My family has several engineers on both sides. My ds who struggles with reading likely has that "engineer gene" too, but not all of the engineers in my family have dyslexia. That's one reason I commented earlier that not everyone with the strengths discussed in this book has dyslexia.

 

The next strength discussed in the book, the Interconnected or "I" strength took me by surprise. It didn't sound specifically like dh or anything I had ever really noticed before in my dc--it sounded like me! I don't have dyslexia, or at least I don't think I do. I did fine in school--not fabulous, but definately above average. I may not have enough insights to pull my grades down far enough to be a problem, and/or perhaps my insights weren't too far off from where the teachers wanted to go. I definately sometimes see connections that other people don't see. Ironically, I just never thought of this as anything unusual. I thought most everyone thought interconnectedly.

 

My children have the "I" strength too, but theirs is not as well developed as mine. The top-down and several other strategies the book discussed for this trait are strategies and techniques that I find helpful. I instinctively use many of those things with my children because I remember being annoyed when teachers asked us to learn information when I didn't see the connection to why I needed to know it. While I try to accomodate that strength, it can feel overwhelming some days to deal with several children prone to interconnected thinking! While I see and experience the benefits to interconnected thinking, I can also understand why this skill is discouraged in traditional schools.

 

There are numerous other parts of the book that got me thinking about several different thing or that tied into things that have been on my mind recently. The comments on the pessimistic vs. optimistic mindset also struck me. That's too much to go into now and it takes me along an entirely different train of thought.

Edited November 7, 2011 by merry gardens

[peacefully]

.

[LaughingCat]

That's one reason I commented earlier that not everyone with the strengths discussed in this book has dyslexia.

 

This is my biggest problem with the book - I am a classic "I" yet not dyslexic. The book doesn't address the idea that there are those that fit in their theory but aren't dyslexic ( nor does it address how that changes the theory in regards to how to help those with dyslexia).

 

OTH DD8 does not appear to fit their schema yet has many signs of dyslexia. When I said this on a different thread someone (OhElizabeth?) asked if DD8 was diagnosed dyslexic - and she is not, however I just last night re-read "The Mislabled Child" section on dyslexia and she still fits in there (issues with visual & auditory, visual memory, etc - I don't have the book with me to say the exact category she seemed to fit so well into) as well as also fitting many of the criteria on various online lists - even after re-mediation with VT (and great improvement in reading ability). IMO the Eides should have addressed this possibility more clearly as well.

 

However, I did think the theory was interesting, and I'm waiting to for the book to come back to me from the library to give it a 2nd chance - only this time I won't be reading it as a book that I hope will help DD8 but as a theory of mind - to see if it hangs together that way. I definitely had expectations of the book going in and I'm hoping that the 2nd reading will be more neutral.

[wapiti]

The book doesn't address the idea that there are those that fit in their theory but aren't dyslexic

:iagree:

 

I'm not finished skimming it yet (lol) but I also wondered why they didn't write it in a way that would better suit the dyslexics reading it, e.g., by putting the outline of characteristics before the anecdotes for each section rather than after. I keep skipping through the stories to get to the bottom line, and then go back to look at the stories (though I'm not dyslexic, I think of that as a vsl-sort of reading strategy).

[Mom-ninja.]

Has anyone looked into the writing programs suggested in the book?

 

I wonder how they compare to WWE/WWS.

 

Also while reading the section on writing, did anyone think of IEW as a program that seemed to fit what they were talking about?

 

My ds struggles with writing and I'm always wondering if WWE/WWS is a good fit for him. We've never tried anything else.

 

I also found the part on not focusing on sentence diagramming interesting. I'm wondering if I need to go in a different direction with grammar.

 

How do you think MCT grammar/writing fits into the suggestions from this book?

[peacefully]

.

[merry gardens]

Has anyone looked into the writing programs suggested in the book?

 

I wonder how they compare to WWE/WWS.

 

Also while reading the section on writing, did anyone think of IEW as a program that seemed to fit what they were talking about?

 

My ds struggles with writing and I'm always wondering if WWE/WWS is a good fit for him. We've never tried anything else.

 

I also found the part on not focusing on sentence diagramming interesting. I'm wondering if I need to go in a different direction with grammar.

 

How do you think MCT grammar/writing fits into the suggestions from this book?

The book mentioned "From Talking to Writing" by the Landmark school, which is something we're attempting to use here. It's great and very thorough, but it requires teacher prep. It covers grammar in a different and very explicit way. I don't know how it compares to IEW or the other programs you mentioned, but if your son struggles with writing, the book "From Talking to Writing" basically teaches how to spoon feeds grammar and writing in very explicit terms.

 

I like a phrase used in DA, something about knowing, (or rather not knowing,) "the sense of a sentence". What DA wrote about writing helps ease my guilt that we don't do more writing here. Thanks to largely to Barton, and now to this Landmark book 'From Talking To Writing', my son does have the "sense of what a sentence is." DS isn't writing a lot, but he can write complete sentences. I cut back what I ask him to write to make sure only to give him what he can do successfully. We're slowly making our way through parts of speech, and then practicing using them in sentences with frameworks. Also, ds is just now finishing Barton 5, which deals with several common suffixes. I'm ad libbing a little with there to elaborate more on how the suffix changes the part of speech a word is, as Kelly mentioned.

[PeterPan]

I was really struck by those suggestions too. My dyslexic dh has always said that he just didn't get writing until he took freshman composition in college, which were taught through the Rhetoric department. Those courses focused on logic, discourse and argumentation. They also tightly connected sentence and paragraph construction to those concepts.

 

 

Interestingly, that's what this writing teacher is doing at the co-op. She's using assignments and methodologies from the writing classes her kids took in their freshman year at Northwestern. (It's a hs level class btw, not elementary, lol.) And what you're saying might be part of why it clicks with dd. There's a lot INSIDE of her (analysis, thought, worthwhile things to say), and the traditional "classical writing" approach didn't care to pull that out at all.

 

Her imitation of whole, excellent language has always been proficient enough that I didn't really find that a worthwhile goal or something to torture her with.

 

Diagramming is not trouble here, but like Yllek it has always been a very comfortable, gentle process for us. Shurley and then diagramming just one of the three daily sentences plus any sentences we dragged out of CW, WT, etc.. Nothing heavy or serious. Might not be as great as some kids in xyz curriculum do, but FOR HER I think the result has been great. She's *willing* to do more and thinks it's no big deal, which is of course half the battle.

[Sugarfoot]

Has anyone looked into the writing programs suggested in the book?

 

I wonder how they compare to WWE/WWS.

 

Also while reading the section on writing, did anyone think of IEW as a program that seemed to fit what they were talking about?

 

My ds struggles with writing and I'm always wondering if WWE/WWS is a good fit for him. We've never tried anything else.

 

I also found the part on not focusing on sentence diagramming interesting. I'm wondering if I need to go in a different direction with grammar.

 

How do you think MCT grammar/writing fits into the suggestions from this book?

 

Interestingly, my dyslexic loves IEW and MCT, but for different reasons/things. MCT puts grammar in a story form, which he loves, because without context, grammar seems like just a bunch of disconnected facts that he can't remember.

 

IEW has been the most pain-free writing program for us. He prefers the DVD versions. :) We've struggled mightily with writing. It comes so naturally to me. My graduate degree was in a writing-intensive field. I have had such a hard time trying to pass it along to my DS. When I watch the IEW DVDs with my DC, I'm just in shock at the level of detail he goes into when explaining things to the kids. I'm thinking, "Do you really need that spelled out to you? Doesn't everybody just KNOW that?" :lol: Well, no, they don't! My DS, in particular, is so grateful to have someone telling him exactly what to do and how to do it.

 

IIRC, Andrew Pudewa's youngest son is dyslexic. So there you go. :D

[PeterPan]

IIRC, Andrew Pudewa's youngest son is dyslexic. So there you go. :D

 

Call me crazy, but I think Pudewa himself is. Not sure if he said that or I was concluding it or what.

[Mom-ninja.]

I'm seriously considering getting IEW.

 

I guess I'm afraid of it because I've heard it's so overwhelming for the teacher.

 

*I* like WWE. I don't want to give up my lovely WWE, but I need to think about what works for ds.

 

Would it be crazy to do MCT, IEW, and WWE? Not all on the same days of course.

 

Of course, I can tell myself that WWE will work just fine for my middle ds so I'll still be able to use it.

 

My ds does well with dictation, and his narration summaries are getting better. Yet, I keep wondering if IEW would click for him just a bit better.

 

Should I let go of WWE?

[merry gardens]

I'm seriously considering getting IEW.

 

I guess I'm afraid of it because I've heard it's so overwhelming for the teacher. ...

I've seriously considered it several times and always backed down because I was afraid. Teaching writing to my 12 and 10 yo sons scares me! I found great comfort when reading in DA that Vince Flynn wrote poorly in college. There's hope for my boys! :lol:

[wapiti]

I still have to read through much of this thread, but I want to get some thoughts down before I return this to the library. From page 181:

 

It's important to realize that not all problems wiht reading comprehension are caused by dyslexia. Students who read fluently and decode well but still comprehend poorly generally have other issues with attention or language. In contrast, students with dyslexia will generally show problems with decoding and fluency but will understand texts much better when hearing them read than when reading themselves. This difference helps pinpoint the source of their comprehension problems to the reading process itself.

 

My dd (who is not dyslexic) is in the first group, decodes well but has a history of having problems with comprehension. My issue with this paragraph is the second part, that dyslexics understand better by hearing than reading. For those of you with diagnosed dyslexics, has this been the case? I was under the impression that the language problem showed up in either circumstance, reading or hearing (as is the case with dd). The situation of understanding better with hearing than reading strikes me as a possible vision processing thing rather than a language-based processing issue that I thought of dyslexia as. Now I must be all mixed up. Or, maybe this fits well into the earlier statement made in the book that dyslexics are good at inferences (which can be a large part of comprehension at more advanced levels). My dd is the opposite, struggling with inferences and in turn comprehension generally. Alternatively, I don't see why a person couldn't be both dyslexic and have the sort of language issues my dd has that can cause issues with comprehension/inferences.

 

I think the section on writing sentences and paragraphs is interesting and I need to go back and read it more thoroughly.

 

Note that the appendix includes a ready-made list of recommended accommodations for students with dyslexia. This is the sort of list that would be presented at the end of a neuropsych's report to a school, and any parent of a dyslexic student should read it over. Also note that the next section of the appendix includes a list of resources. FYI, the Eides have set up a website for the book that includes a section on homeschooling resources. There may be a bunch of interesting info on the website.

 

I can't say that I care for how the book was written. I appreciate the bullets, though they're a bit wordy. What I'd like to do is copy down the little bullet point lists and make it into an outline. I also wish they had included more specific information about the link between dyslexia and difficulty with handwriting, for example (which plenty of kids struggle with who do not have dyslexia). They mention working memory, but I have kids with handwriting issues who do not have a working memory problem. I have to wonder whether there is some other problem. This is the trouble with skimming this sort of book; I have a more-muddled view of dyslexia after reading the book than before, and I agree with one of the PPs (that I read several days ago lol) that the book doesn't seem to explain the people that have the same strengths who are not dyslexic, i.e., presumably do not have the corresponding weaknesses.

 

Ds5, begging me to find his socks, just took the book off my lap and said, "Look mommy, it's the rotten egg!" :001_huh:

[RamonaQ]

 

For those of you with diagnosed dyslexics, has this been the case? I was under the impression that the language problem showed up in either circumstance, reading or hearing (as is the case with dd).

 

Yes.

The situation of understanding better with hearing than reading strikes me as a possible vision processing thing rather than a language-based processing issue that I thought of dyslexia as.:001_huh:

 

I actually think it is the phonological processing problem....which often I think can look like it is vision.

[wapiti]

Yes.

 

 

I actually think it is the phonological processing problem....which often I think can look like it is vision.

 

Thanks! But if it's a phonological processing problem, why is it easier to hear out loud than to hear in one's head? I assume that a "phonological processing problem" goes beyond simply recognizing a sound that is associated with a group of letters, or is that what it really is? I thought it was recognizing the sound as distinct from others. I'm sorry I'm such a dunce...

[Tokyomarie]

My dd (who is not dyslexic) is in the first group, decodes well but has a history of having problems with comprehension. My issue with this paragraph is the second part, that dyslexics understand better by hearing than reading. For those of you with diagnosed dyslexics, has this been the case? I was under the impression that the language problem showed up in either circumstance, reading or hearing (as is the case with dd).

 

My son has much better listening comprehension than reading comprehension under normal time constraints, though reading comprehension improves dramatically when given extra time to complete the task. He scores low on fluency measures; decoding at this stage in his life is not bad, but he had a lot of difficulty learning how to decode in the early elementary years. He has a clear history of phonological speech deficits, but also demonstrates visual difficulties & has been recommended for vision therapy. Since he is a highly resistant adolescent, we haven't done the VT. I'm hoping at some point before he finishes high school, he'll decide to give it a try.

 

My daughter, whose official diagnosis was mixed receptive/expressive language disorder really fits the dyslexic profile as put forth by the Eides. Once she learned how to read well, she learned much of her language through the medium of print because of her auditory processing difficulties. As an adult, she has good listening & reading comprehension, but based on some things she's mentioned, I suspect she would score lower on fluency measures than her overall academic achievement would predict.

Edited November 13, 2011 by Tokyomarie

[PeterPan]

Wapiti, your take (dyslexia as phonological processing problems that affect but written and auditory comprehension) is in the book I was reading today. I can drag out the title, it's downstairs. Fletcher, that awful expensive and coma-inducing book I keep mentioning, gives 4 causes for comprehension problems and shows studies that break them down by percentages. Attention caused basically 25% of the cases of comprehension issues, so you're exactly correct that you could have a dc with attention issues causing their comprehension problems. And as Marie said, I think their game is to parse out what is and is not there.

 

Yes, this has been the perpetual plague with me and the Eides. They are a little bit willing to go out and diverge from the rest. That could be good (since of course all this stuff is just made up labeling and a bunch of fluid categories) IF THEY'RE RIGHT. And it could be fallible.

 

I'll try to drag out the Fletcher book and get back with those categories and stats. It was pretty interesting, just not memorable.

[PeterPan]

Ok, a few tasty chunks from the Fletcher book "Learning Disabilities" chapter 7 on reading disabilities/comprehension. He has 3 chapters on reading disabilities and breaks them into word recognition, fluency, and comprehension.

 

p. 185--Neurobiological research specific to children with LDs involving reading comprehension is also scant. (compared to more studies available on LDs involving word recognition)

p. 186--four subgroups of poor readers, had difficulty in: only decoding, only listening comprehension, both decoding and listening comprehension, and orthographic processing/speed. He then goes on to discuss why the IQ-achievement definitions of WLRD (word level recognition disorder, aka dyslexia) doesn't hold up and refers you to chapter 3. In addition to this problem, however, a defintion based only on discrepancies between listening and reading comprehension will not isolate a specific subgroup of poor comprehders because it does not address the measurement of word recognition skills. It is not possible to define a group with specifidc LDs in reading comprehension without formally measuring word recognition abilities and ensuring tha tthese skills are in the average range.

Then he goes on to talk about more studies.

p. 188--Children with good decoding/poor comprehending often have more basic deficits in vocabulary, morphoogy, and understanding of syntax that impair reading comprehension. ... not typically severe enough to classify them as speech and language impaired...The comprehension of reading can be no stronger than the comprehnsion of language, a clear example being vocabulary (where can decode but not understand)...

p. 188--Language coprehension and listening comprehension are sometimes both used to refer to receptive language skills. However in the reading comprehension area listening coprehension means more than just receptive language skills. it includes discoure-level processes that serve as overarching control processes that impact reading and listening coprehension. Thus "listening comprehsnion" is a term that needs to be unpacked...Children cannot understand written language any better than they can understand oral language.

p. 189--(I'll summarize.) He makes the case that working memory limits the ability of the reader to infer meaning of vocabulary from context, ie. they lose the context (picture, whatever) by the time they get to the word. He gives studies of brain damaged kids to support this idea.

p. 189-191--having explored reading comprehension on the basis of word recognition, oral language, and working memory, he now looks at higher order processings: inferencing, prior knowledge, copmrehension monitoring, and story structure sensitivity.

p. 194--Although decoding and reading comprehwnsion have been shown to be dissociable, children who are good at decoding but poor at comprehending may begin to fall behind in their decoding skills in the later school grades.. because of diminished experience with text. As they read less and truncate their expsore to less common words, their sight word vocabularies do not keep pace with those of peers who have stronger comprehension abilities and read more fluently. Morever, their poor ability to use semantic cues to decode less frequent words may constrain high levels of lexical development... a Matthew effect.

He then goes on to discuss MRIs and issues if inheritability.

p. 196--In particular, semantic and syntactic components of language development are heritable, commonly characteristic of chidlren with oral language disorders, and certain affect reading copmrehensions...In contrast, children wwhose primary problem is WLRD have language difficulties that are more specific to phonological processing and that lead to impairmens in word recongition. It cannot be said that LDs that specifically involve poor reading coprehsnion are inherited, but it can be said that the language copmonents of these disorders share distinct heritable features.

 

Then he goes on to talk about instruction strategies. I'll keep looking. That was all cool, but it still wasn't the section I was remembering. More to come. :)

[PeterPan]

Ok, more cool stuff from Fletcher. Probably old hat to some, but it's still interesting. Now we're looking at chapter 5: Reading Disabilities: Word Recognition.

 

p. 86--WLRD=Word-level reading disability=dyslexia. You expect both word level recogntion issues and spelling (decoding and encoding)... there are individuals for whom spelling, but not word recognition, is a problem.

He then outlines the cognitive processes they look at (phonological awareness, rapid naming, phonological memory, visual processing, auditory processing).

p. 95--...concluded that children with dyslexa may have difficulties with speech perception that correlate with reading and phonological processing ability, but found little evidence for generalized auditory processing difficulties. (but then he sites more studies that show this isn't always the case)

p. 99--he mentions several methods of attempting to create subtypes of dyslexia.

p. 104--He explores the history of definitions of dyslexia.

p. 111--discusses MRIs of dyslexic brains

 

His chapter 7 on fluency is a lot of the stuff you'd expect (rapid naming, etc.).

 

Now I think I've found what I was remembering, and apparently my memory was screwy. I had used the index to read sections in the book where he talked about executive function (EF) and working memory as they applied to LDs. Surprisingly, he has very few occurrences. You remember we saw him discuss working memory in the chapter on comprehension. Now he's discussing attention as it affects written expression. So this is chapter 9, Written Expression Disabilities.

 

p. 242--More recent studies have specifically examined written expression subtypes using empirical approaches to classification... The cluster analysis yielded four writing disorder subtypes: (1) writing difficulties with both fine motor and linguistic deficits; (2) writing difficulties with predoiminantly visual-spatial deficits; (3) writing difficulties with attention and memory difficulties; and (4) writing difficulties characterized by sequencing problems. Most of the children were characterized by the first two subtypes.

 

Jumping back to his chapter on classification, definition, and identification.

p. 57--In most instances, these appear to be comorbid associations: A child with disabilities involving ADHD and a domain-specific LD appears lke a child with ADHD through the behavioral lens, and like a child with LDs through the cognitive lens. However, when both forms of disability are apparent, the cognitive and academic deficits invariably appear more severe.

 

Well I'm out of time. What I'm getting at there is that it had me very curious how you could distinguish what is being caused by ADHD/EF/working memory and what is being caused by the LD, whether it's reading comprehension or written expression or whatever.

[wapiti]

So the plot thickens, eh. Thank you very much for writing all that out!!! I might have to get the boring Fletcher book after all - it certainly sounds far more useful to me personally than DA (which I am glad I did not purchase, at least not yet). I thought I was going crazy, about oral vs. written language, so it's good to know that there may be differing points of view in this area. (on that note, I wish DA was, at times, more detailed/specific/technical, more like The Mislabeled Child.) Now to re-read what you wrote... :)

[PeterPan]

Yeah, Fletcher is pretty cool. It is the only thing that has made sense to me, at least if one CAN make any sense of that, lol. Clearly I don't make enough sense of it. :)

 

Now I'm scanning a section in the classification, definition, identification chapter, trying to see if I can understand the role verbal IQ scores play in this. Michele had mentioned high verbal IQ scores as disallowing for certain things. There are some references to the IQ/achievement gap. He seems to indicate that a low verbal IQ goes with the LDs, but I could be reading it wrong. I'm on pg. 40-41. "As vocabular and other lexical measures are related to both reading copmrehsnion and verbal IQ, the lower verbal scores are hardly surprising. However, in a recent study of typically acheiving readers, verbal IQ was found to account for only a small amount of the variability in reading comprehension skills. After verbal intellectual skills were accounted fro in different models, significant unique variance in comprehension was predicted by text integration skills, metacognitive monitoring, and working memory."

 

That's stuff I made notes on in the earlier posts.

 

I keep mentioning Fletcher, because he's what our np mentioned as using when I asked him about the Eides. He didn't even know who the Eides were, so the Eides must not be that influential, the popularity of their books notwithstanding. This Fletcher is who he mentioned, and Fletcher seems to be one thorough dude. Like you're finding, it's not for the faint of heart. I read a little to fall asleep at night and just try to mull on it. This has actually been helpful to talk about it and outline it, because it's like a big bite of steak you can hardly chew. I keep trying to use stories I've read here on the boards to ask questions. For myself, I'm just happy to have the chance to learn some of these terms and get used to the concepts. What amazes me is how FORMATIVE this all is. They really don't have a clue, so they just keep learning and relabeling, all on the fly. And after a while you start to catch on that they label the kids and then study them to decide what the labels mean. Crazy, eh?

[merry gardens]

.... My issue with this paragraph is the second part, that dyslexics understand better by hearing than reading. For those of you with diagnosed dyslexics, has this been the case? I was under the impression that the language problem showed up in either circumstance, reading or hearing (as is the case with dd). The situation of understanding better with hearing than reading strikes me as a possible vision processing thing rather than a language-based processing issue that I thought of dyslexia as. ...

My ds understands information read aloud to him at levels above his reading skills. A slp report identified phonological problems when he was 6. Later, he couldn't start Barton until he did LiPS. Yet, overall, he understood oral language. The exception was for some words that sounded similar to other words so that caused him some confusion. That improved significantly as his phonemic awareness improved, but even before it resolved, it wasn't a big problem as he generally understood oral language.

 

Phonological problems get in the way of learning to decode accurately. Even though the person may know what words means when they hear it, they may have trouble blending letter sounds into words. They may misread the word, or guess wrong or even just skip it altogether if it's too hard. They might even sound the word out correctly, but read it in such a choppy way that they don't recognize the word. Or read so slowly that by the time they are finished decoding a word, they forget many of words they previously read. That contributes to reading comprehension problems that wouldn't happen if they were listening to it read aloud.

 

Vision issues can look something like that, but it's not caused by the same thing. Vision problems can also exist along with phonological problems--and that can complicate trying to find the source of the reading problems.

Edited November 14, 2011 by merry gardens

[merry gardens]

So the plot thickens, eh. Thank you very much for writing all that out!!! I might have to get the boring Fletcher book after all - it certainly sounds far more useful to me personally than DA (which I am glad I did not purchase, at least not yet). I thought I was going crazy, about oral vs. written language, so it's good to know that there may be differing points of view in this area. (on that note, I wish DA was, at times, more detailed/specific/technical, more like The Mislabeled Child.) Now to re-read what you wrote... :)

Yes, thanks Elizabeth. It sounds very interesting and it might be worth reading. But for now, I'm just going to read Elizabeth ABC* version (*Already Been Chewed) of Fletcher's book. I'm tired enough to fall asleep on my own. Good night.

[wapiti]

Ok, thanks Merry!! That makes sense.

 

Thinking out loud some more, what about auditory processing - somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought there may be some aspect of auditory processing that was responsible for dyslexia, but it sounds like that's not the case. Can a person have both dyslexia and auditory processing disorder of one form or another.

 

Oddy enough, I'm starting to think that, not only is my dd not dyslexic, but her issues are the opposite - while comprehension is an issue whether it's written or oral, the oral seems to be somewhat worse than the written (in spite of vision issues and all). I've got to stop thinking out loud, because I'm only confusing (and embarrassing) myself, LOL; I was just going down the road of auditory vs visual learners... nah, doesn't make sense :tongue_smilie:. Ok, maybe I'll make Fletcher part of my next big amazon order...

[PeterPan]

Fletcher is expensive and coma-inducing. I don't really recommend buying it, just borrowing through the library if possible. Like Merry said, I already gave you the ABC version of some of those chapters.

 

Yes, Merry is parsing it the way Fletcher does, that a dyslexia/WLRD/reading disorder label is specifically phonological processing. Even the Eides parse this all very carefully, if you notice. On their site the explain that they use the DSM coding, then in their book they refer to a more global "dyslexic processing." The two are not the same.

 

And yes, there's someone on the boards here with both dyslexia and apd as official diagnoses for their dc.

 

Wapiti, you have or have not actually done the evals with this dc? I fully understand if you haven't, was just asking. Even with this Fletcher book you can't sort anything out. It's really not a symptom-driven process, like we're wanting it to be. It's stats and scores and quantifying stuff that we can't quantify at home (naming, fluency, attention, etc.). Then they read the tea leaves. So it's helpful for me in getting familiar with the terms to understand what the np means when he finally uses them, but I sure can't turn it into self-diagnosing, if that makes sense. It's just too complicated, and I have no way to have objective scores without the help of the np.