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Difficulties learning to read/suspected auditory problems


rowan25
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Hello,

 

My 6 year old is struggling greatly with learning to read, both with phonics instruction and sight word instruction. Based on family history and informal observations, I am suspecting some sort of auditory discrimination issues. He passed the hearing test at the pedi's office just fine, but they only test using tones, not words or letter sounds.

 

Is there a test out there that will test a child's ability to hear/understand letter sounds? I feel very at sea here. That may not be the correct question to ask. I do intend on bringing my thoughts up with his pedi, but that won't be for at least a few weeks, as we are deep into Super Bowl and Mardi Gras down here. I was hoping that I could do some research before then, but I frankly don't know what to look for. If you need more information, please ask and I'll do the best I can to answer.

 

I know he is young. I know that he hasn't mastered all of the sounds (th). I know that boys mature later. But my mama instinct says there is more going on here than just second born, class clown boy going on.

 

TIA,

Aimee

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This website has consonant pairs nicely arranged (stops, fricatives and affirmatives) so you can hear them separately and also see what letters they are. Then, you can figure out words that have both pairs and see if he can hear the differences. (fan/van, pat/bat, tan/dan, etc.) It also helps many of my remedial students to see and hear the sounds being made. I would try them both at the beginning and end, they make slightly different sounds at the beginning than the end, the sound of t is slightly different in tap and pat, so you want to try both tan/dan and mat/mad.

 

http://www.uiowa.edu...ech/phonetics/#

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I don't know about phonics instruction, but a SLP should be able do do some of that testing. Another angle to consider would be developmental vision issues, which can be ruled out by a www.covd.org optometrist. Auditory processing issues would be officially diagnosed with a special type of audiologist.

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Thank you, everyone. I appreciate your answers greatly. It's nice to go somewhere and not have everyone tell me how young he is and how it will just happen. I'm going to spend some time this weekend looking through the links and researching the various tests mentioned.

 

Again, thank you so much,

Aimee

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My son may have had a similar issue and he was helped by speech therapy. I was recommended to take him to private speech (by his school speech teacher).

 

For my son they called it a "phonological process." That is the term they used.

 

He had trouble learning some letters of the alphabet, as they would sound the same to him.

 

His issues were with consonants, in particular "fast consonants" that can't be held, like b,c,d,g,k,p,t. Especially at the end of a word and especially as part of a consonant cluster.

 

I totally agree with the Barton screening as a way to check this, or if you just know -- from seeing him mishear words or write words a crazy way... This week my son came home with a spelling pre-test with kilogram spelled pilluggram. The thing of thinking a k was a p used to happen all the time. Now it is something that happens no more than a couple of times a week. (with any sounds). The website sounds great, too.

 

I think it is good to check in to. It was frustrating for my son and he is happier now. He also had a lot of articulation errors that weren't really improving with school speech and that was his main reason to go to this speech. But they addressed hearing the sounds as well as making the sounds.

 

Edit: I looked into lips after finding out about it, it is the pre-program recommended by Barton. I think my son's speech therapy was very similar.

 

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