Reading and speech problems

[athena1277]

I don't usually hang out here on the special needs board, but I have heard that those who do are so very helpful. My ds has a speech delay and has been in speech therapy since he was 3yo. He has a lot of trouble with articulation and especially with putting ending sounds on words. He is in K this year and learning (slowly) to read. We are 1/3 of the way through the school year and still struggling with CVC words. He often will do things like sound out a word, then say it with a different ending. For example he will sound out the word "rug", then say "run". Other times he seems to just guess the word based on the first letter.

 

The way he reads sounds so much like the way he talks that I have to believe there is some correlation. I am wondering if any of you have had similar experiences and could suggest ways to help him. I would also love to read some research about why these 2 problems are related.

 

Thank you!

[VinNY]

My dtr is apraxic of speech and has CAPD. So she couldn't process sounds nor know how to use the muscles to make the sounds.

 

We are now with a PROMPT certified speech therapist and oral-motor expert. Prior to that she was in varied public and private speech therapies.

What worked well at home was Earobics and LiPs. My dtr would avoid certain sounds because she couldn't make them (motor planning issue as well as dysarthric tendencies with tongue and jaws ). Since she was exhibiting dyslexia, we went with Recipe for Reading after working through LiPs.

 

What has your SLP say about your child?

[athena1277]

My dtr is apraxic of speech and has CAPD. So she couldn't process sounds nor know how to use the muscles to make the sounds.

 

We are now with a PROMPT certified speech therapist and oral-motor expert. Prior to that she was in varied public and private speech therapies.

What worked well at home was Earobics and LiPs. My dtr would avoid certain sounds because she couldn't make them (motor planning issue as well as dysarthric tendencies with tongue and jaws ). Since she was exhibiting dyslexia, we went with Recipe for Reading after working through LiPs.

 

What has your SLP say about your child?

 

He is in speech therapy through the local ps. He moved from the pre-K to regular school speech program this year, so his teacher has only been working with him a couple weeks. I have mentioned to her the struggles he has had with reading, especially endings and she is trying to incorporate written words into his therapy instead of just endings in an attempt to help him make the connection in both spoken and written words. He doesn't have any hearing or other physical problems causing his speech struggles.

[Lecka]

This sounds maybe similar to my son.

 

My son happened to be referred to private speech therapy after K. They did a little different approach than he had had in school speech (since age 4) and it helped him. He needed help in learning to hear letter sounds (particularly for consonants) and tell them apart.

 

I looked at Lips for him when I found about it, and from what I can tell, it looks similar to what he did in his effective speech therapy. He was in speech therapy for almost a year working on it, though, it was not easy. He is still in speech therapy now at school (in 2nd grade) but it is much more minor.

 

I would suggest you look the book Overcoming Dyslexia. My son is more in that direction. I also read a book about auditory processing disorder called "like sound through water" and it did not sound as much like my son. But I think that it is really possible for that to be worth looking in to. It was good for me to look into, definitely.

 

http://www.readingrockets.org/shows/launching/brain/ This is a link to a PBS special. The sections bio-mapping the brain and baby's first reading skills talks about how some kids are not hearing sounds the way they should. This is what I think the problem was for my son. Recommended treatment will be lips or speech therapy (targeting it, maybe not just articulation) or maybe a reading tutor. Some people do well with a computer program also. Personally I tried a computer program but it did not work, but now I think maybe it could have worked if it was to supplement his speech therapy. But just a computer program does work for some. I think my son's problems were too severe for that.

 

Anyway I think this is a direction worth looking at.

 

He has worked hard for it, but my son is right at grade level in reading right now, for 2nd grade. Reading programs for dyslexia really can be effective for many kids. They are much better suited than the usual reading programs.

 

As far as school.... my son's school is honestly a good school, the school with the highest test scores in a small university town (one high school, two middle schools). But they really do not have any input. They really do not. He is getting a lot of help with speech therapy and OT for handwriting and I do like his school, but they are not a resource for reading for him. He has had to learn at home, so that he can follow along in school. They even do Dibels screening but when children who do not do well on it do not catch up with a (imo) pretty minimal (very minimal compared to what my son required) phonemic awareness program, they do not have a Plan B. Plan B is basically to keep falling behind and shrug their shoulders and think he is a nice kid. I have spent many hours with my son and his private speech was 2 hours/week one-on-one. His school does not provide that kind of time and it can just take time.

 

So anyway I do recommend looking at Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz and seeing if you do think he fits it.

 

As possible second books to read if you have time, I like Straight Talk about Reading and Parenting your Struggling Reader by Susan Hall and Louisa Moats. They talk about some things. They are at my library. I own a copy but if your library has a copy, The Good School by Peg Tyre, I have pg. 110 bookmarked talking about early reading skills and how to catch up, the importance of early intervention for many kids (kids who have a "roadblock" preventing them from making progress, which is the case for some kids, but not all kids), and that kind of thing.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Lecka

[Lecka]

Another thing you can work at is the screening test for Barton. Barton is a reading program that has a really good website. The first level starts with phonemic awareness. For children who are not ready to start with her Level 1, she recommends using another program prior to starting her Level 1. But even if you do not use Barton, it can be good information to see how your child would do on her student screening.

 

http://www.bartonreading.com/students_long.html#screen

 

You can jump down to student screening.

 

Also, for what Lips is, it is a curriculum designed by one of the founders of the Lindamood Bell tutoring centers. She was trained as a speech therapist and worked with children with learning difficulties also. It teaches students to associate letter sounds to the shape of their mouth and things like that, if they are not hearing the differences in sounds, it is a way to teach them, that works for some kids. The principles are incorporated by a lot of people -- speech therapists, reading teachers, reading tutors.... if they happen to be incorporating them. Imo you don't have to have the literal, actual Lips program to do similar activities. But it is a well-known program and if you search on the Lindamood Bell website it looks to me like the results are good for kids who need it.

 

I think it is good to look for information for a little while before picking a program or deciding to look into tutoring or looking into getting an evaluation. My husband's insurance did pay for all my son's private speech therapy, though. We got a referral from his pediatrician and took him to a university speech clinic. His school speech teacher very kindly pointed me in that direction b/c she knew she didn't have time with him and was not helping him make progress.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Lecka

[MomatHWTK]

The word building games at Starfall.com have been beneficial for two of my littles. I think one does have some language problems. The games basically drill hearing the different sounds and switching out the sounds at the beginning and ends of words to solidify the concepts. I know there are more in depth therapies out there though. The Phonics Toolkit touches on the issue lightly. I think what you would be looking for are exercises in "sound differentiation." The assessments will be for "articulation and phonological awareness". Here's an example:

http://www.tn.gov/education/speced/doc/71309SLIART.pdf

Edited October 25, 2012 by MomatHWTK

[merry gardens]

Yes, talking comes first, then reading. Speech problems can indicate there's something off-track with language processing. Since your dc is already in speech, I'd ask the slp to test your child's phonological awareness for sounds within words.

 

Also, has his hearing been checked recently? (Be aware that some auditory processing problems can't be tested at that age. Auditory processing isn't simply hearing---it includes what the brain does with the sounds that the ears hear.)

 

Another thing you can work at is the screening test for Barton. ...

http://www.bartonreading.com/students_long.html#screen

 

You can jump down to student screening.

 

Also, for what Lips is, it is a curriculum designed by one of the founders of the Lindamood Bell tutoring centers. She was trained as a speech therapist ....

:iagree:

 

 

Some children need extra work to hear--or notice-- the sounds within words. Barton covers works on that skill, but some people don't even have enough phonological awareness to start with Barton. (That's why Barton has the screen.) We used a portion of LiPS, then Barton.

 

(There are other programs sometimes recommended, like FastForWords and Earobics, but LiPS and Barton are what I use/used. Barton and LiPS address reading specifically, in addition to hearing sounds in words.)

Edited October 25, 2012 by merry gardens

[athena1277]

Thank you all for all the info and links. I will be looking into all the suggestions!

[PeterPan]

Just want to echo the recommendation to look into PROMPT and to make sure you have an *accurate* diagnosis. Apraxia often doesn't get diagnosed, but it could very well be what's going on with your ds. Traditional therapy struggles to be effective for it. PROMPT is *dramatically* more effective.

 

Our therapist has all her apraxia kids go through Earobics, so that would definitely be good. I would like to interject something though about the "normal" pattern for K5. You're doing a sound-it-out approach, which does not always work for SN kids. My dd never could sound out words, flat refused. Turned out she had working memory issues, etc. etc. going on. Anyways, I taught her to read using SWR, which had them SPELL their way into reading. You say the word, say the sounds, form with letter tiles or write, then read it back. (think whole word) With him, if he can't EASILY and comfortably say the target word, I wouldn't even ask him to. I would spell two words with tiles and ask him to chose between them. So he reads, but he doesn't speak. He should have have to speak and read aloud beyond what he can do comfortably. That doesn't mean he can't recognize and move forward. It just means you separate out the speech. And it's why you get a new speech therapist, but that's another discussion.

 

So for reading, I would switch over to OG and whole word together and use tiles, pointing responses, etc. Remove the parts that aren't working and use what he has that DOES work.

 

The other thing is that even with everything I could do with her, my dd didn't read till February of K5. I know that sounds great compared to what some people go through (till 8 or 9 or later), but in the moment it felt like an ETERNITY and like it was never going to happen! We tried and tried and tried and TRIED AND TRIED AND TRIED, and it was February of K5. So whatever you've got in your head about how it ought to be working is not developmentally valid. Kids do not all just start to read because someone shoved them through a curriculum. Kids read when it clicks. When it's not clicking, it's either they're not ready or the materials and methods aren't connecting or a combo of the two. You back up, try a new way. I backed up *3 times* with my dd, restarting the program completely. Seriously. We went A-I *3 times* in SWR!!! 3rd time through was the charm. They will read when they're ready. You can remove roadblocks, and you can use better methods. However, even beyond that, they JUST HAVE TO BE READY.

 

So don't fret the 3 months into K5 thing, please. For real that's not the issue. It's probably a combo of several things. It doesn't feel that way, I know. It's his age and his speech and his hearing and maybe some vision or attention that you don't realize yet and the curriculum not being the right type and... But even when you get everything else perfect, he's still not gonna start clicking till that brain is ready to start clicking.

 

BTW, my dd's first books? Calvin & Hobbes comics. She went from nothing to READING, reading real stuff (my emails, notes to dh, etc.), literally overnight. She never did sound out until years later when we did VT. She still tests behind by a strong percentage on her phonological processing compared to her actual reading level. Her actual reading level a year ago was age 30+ on the Woodcock Johnson. Reading later than month 3 of K5 will have NO BEARING on your dc's IQ or final outcome. :)

Edited October 26, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[PeterPan]

Yes, talking comes first, then reading. Speech problems can indicate there's something off-track with language processing. Since your dc is already in speech, I'd ask the slp to test your child's phonological awareness for sounds within words.

 

...

Some children need extra work to hear--or notice-- the sounds within words.

 

Actually the bolded isn't *technically* correct. It *is* possible to teach a non-verbal child to read. Requires very different methodology http://www.halo-soma.org/main.php?sess_id=fde9db4044c3b117026db6a65038548f The op might find it interesting to look at some of the videos at the Soma Halo website to get ideas about how to work with her ds *without* using speech. We want to speak with them as much as possible, but we don't need to force things that aren't ready and aggravate them or have them feeling frustrated or inadequate. For things where we need to workaround, there are alternate ways of connecting and getting responses. I finally got to read the book by the Soma Halo lady, and I found it FASCINATING.

 

We're using Earobics right now. It took a bit of finagling, because I had to run it on an older version of the os for our mac. Should work fine on Windows, but Apple changed things with the newer os making Earobics not work. We have the kinks out now, and I actually have dd going through it too. There are two separate disks (1 and 2) in the current version, and within level 1 there are 3 levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced). I decided to try her on intermediate. It's enough to be tingly but not hard enough to make her squeal. I suspect if I put her in advanced she'd get overwhelmed. It's fascinating to me to see where this is going. It's so nice to turn over all this phonemic awareness stuff to a computer, mercy! The software is so THOROUGH. Takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes to run through a section. Ds enjoys doing his as well. So it's a lot of bang for the buck and I highly recommend it to the op.

[merry gardens]

Actually the bolded isn't *technically* correct. It *is* possible to teach a non-verbal child to read. Requires very different methodology...

When I wrote "talking first then reading" I meant that's what is normal for development. Of course, difficulty with speech doesn't always equate with reading problems. One of my dc who spoke with a lisp picked up on reading by overhearing me work with her older brother who is dyslexic. But the speech problems that athena described--leaving off sounds at the end of words--that's the speech pattern that I heard in two of mine who struggle with reading who had phonemic awareness problems. Their problems with both speech and reading intertwined. Happily, their progress in those areas also intertwines.

Edited October 26, 2012 by merry gardens