"Asynchronous" language ability in a child dx'ed with Asperger

[Manhattan_Mom]

My almost 6yo ds, on the one hand, has 140 verbal IQ, excellent expressive language, a knock-out vocabulary (has correctly used conspicuous, invidious and similar), outstanding comprehension of material read aloud and loves, loves, loves looking at books.

 

He can't read.

 

He can't read despite loads of exposure to written words, being read to daily 1hour+, worksheets, two years of preK and almost a year of K (technically I afterschool).

 

Yet when it comes to decoding "The cat sat.", he is gets very tripped up.  Here is what I see at home:

1. Confusion between name of letter and sound of letter

If he sees "up" he says, "yuh-yuh-yuh" (for the sound of the *word* "u").  Or for "go" he says "juh-juh-juh" for "gee" rather than "guh," the *sound* for G.  

 

2. Tries to decode words in the wrong direction

 

Sometimes he starts sounding out the last letter first, so "cat" is "t-t-t..." This is especially true if he doesn't know the first letter right away.  He seems to scan the whole word and pick the letter he knows first.

 

3. Lock down

 

After a few corrections, he frequently goes into "lock-down" mode and flat-out refuses to try decoding.  

 

4. Rejects attempts to point out words while reading

 

He asks me not to point to words when I read aloud to him - brushes away my fingers and says I'm "blocking" the page.  Sometimes he's willing to "echo read" but he does not seem to connect the words to the sounds being read aloud.

 

5. Lack of interest in or spontaneous/opportunistic attempts to read

 

He never points out letters or words on signs, or in books spontaneously.  

 

6. Likes writing pseudo-words

 

On the upside, he spontaneously writes 'captions' on his drawings.  So for example a drawing of a laser will have the 'word' "TZZ" for "zap" next to it.  Because I'm afraid to discourage the only spontaneous activity he attempts with words, I do not attempt to correct spelling.

 

Any thoughts?  

[bakpak]

Since he's interested in spelling, could you start with that instead? Start with the -at words and see if he makes any progress? I'd try some sort of moveable alphabet and keep the # of items in front of him very low. He may well be overstimulated by everything that's on a page, even if it's as simple as a Bob book level.

 

It may be too late, but I would stop using the letter names and just use the sounds for now. I did this with my DD and it was fine...she had no problem picking up the letter names afterwards. The more you use just the sounds to refer to them, the better it will stick (& simplify for him).

[kbutton]

I suggest you cross-post this question to the Learning Challenges board as well. Lots of 2e questions come up over there. It sounds like he needs to work on phonemic awareness, but there are others much more qualified to post on that. I think you will receive valuable advice over there from folks who might not look at this portion of the forum very often.

[JeanM]

My oldest ds doesn't have Asperger's, but otherwise your ds sounds very similar to where mine was many years ago. What helped us was "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and lots of patience. We were homeschooling so we could continue to read aloud and not stress about his reading progress.

[Uff Da!]

nm 

 

[EndOfOrdinary]

I thought of Sequential Spelling. It spells words by ear. Much like the pp who suggested teaching -at words, the program goes through a whole week starting with at, then sat, then bat,cat,vat,rat, etc. the idea is to let the student find patterns in the words. You write the words with different colors for each "chunk" that is its own sound. When you add an "s" to cat and make cats the s is a different color so the student can see that you are building words.

 

Good luck! I think the learning challenges board might be able to give you some more details.

 

If it makes you feel any better, my mother is a literacy specialist. She always tells parents, "Nine. If they cannot read - not that they aren't interested, but that they actually do not have the ability - by nine, then you need to have it checked."

[ThoughtfulMama]

Did the diagnosis open up any extra services to you at school (or outside of it)?  I would look into that first.  Being almost 6 and not reading is not a big deal, but with the amount of time it sounds like you've put in it must be frustrating to you (and him) to not have the reading readiness skills down pat.

[Black-eyed Suzan]

Hugs. I know it's frustrating when your verbally precocious child is struggling with reading.

 

DS7 didn't read until after he was 6. I had a long reply composed, but lost it, so here's the short version.

 

What helped:

- an Orton-Gillingham program (in our case, Spell to Write and Read, but there are others). The phonograms helped him make sense of why the letters made different sounds at different times. He could read CVC words using OPGTR concepts in Carol Barnier's Roadblock game (Google it) before we started, but SWR helped it click.

 

- discovering his vision issue. He has "convergence insufficiency" and has a hard time focusing on the words on the page. Now I see it in eye rubbing, cocking his head, covering one eye, but before he could read it was just reluctance. He passed his regular eye exam; most don't check for it. A COVD optometrist will. You may also try asking your regular optometrist specifically about testing for convergence. If that's it, large type with lots of contrast and not a lot of visual clutter helps, too.

 

Although he's now reading 1-2 grade levels ahead, he still doesn't read anywhere near his listening level. We do high level read alouds and audio books so his vocabulary and comprehension will continue to grow as he's learning.

 

Hope that helps!

[kiwik]

When he had the IQ test did it include phonemic awareness? (the WJiii cognitive does but I don't know about the others) there may be some clues I. The testing he has already had.

[Tracy]

Here are some thoughts that I have after using Spell to Write and Read for 4 years.

 

1.  Stop using the names of the letters.  In SWR, we learn the sounds of the letters first so that the mind is not cluttered with the names of the letters.  Even if you don't use the program, if you get some phonogram cards from SWR, Spalding, or Logic of English, you will have a very good tool for this.  

 

2.  Before a student can sound out a written word, he needs to be able to sound out an oral word.  One game I got from SWR was very helpful for my ds in this respect.  Gather a basket of items whose names have 2-3 sounds (pen, dog, knife, cheese, chair, book, etc.).  You are going to say the sounds of the word separately, and the child is supposed to figure out which item it is.  So for example, you say to the child, "Find the /p/ - /e/ - /n/," and he blends the sounds into the word "pen" and picks out the pen from the basket.  When he gets good at this, you can switch roles and have him separate the sounds as he asks you to pick out an object.  And you can add challenge by adding words with 4 or more sounds.  

 

Consider using one of these spelling-first, explicit phonics programs.  They systematically train the child to sound out words and show him how all of the spelling rules work.  

[Manhattan_Mom]

Awesome ladies, I'm printing out your replies so I can read through them carefully and make notes in the margins.  tracymirko, kiwik, suzan, ThoughtfulMama, EndofOrdinary, Winter Wonderland, JeanM, kbutton and bakpak - thank you!  Will feedback after a careful read and digestion of the excellent suggestions.  Again - THANK YOU!

[seastar]

Have you considered trying a whole word approach? Lots of people with ASD do better with this style rather than phonics.

[seastar]

Also, what is his working memory like? A large discrepancy between this and VCI can have an impact on phonics too.

[Heathermomster]

I am assuming that your child had a WISC-IV...If so, what were the working memory and processing speed scores?  

[nitascool]

Okay, so here is what I would do... from a been there done that mom.

My son has Aspergers. He was/is so smart but really struggled to read. So learning to read meant a lot of hard work on both our parts. In retrospect I wish I'd gone with my instinct because I was sure he had a vision issue and his doctor said he didn't.

 

At age12 ds was still having serious writing issues though he was reading well above grade level. We took him to see a Developmental Vision Therapist. He has Convergence Insufficiency the doctor told us that she had never seen a child with CI so badly who could read. After therapy he more then doubled his reading speed and his writing has improved by 6 grade levels.

 

Looking at what you have written about your son I would be looking into this. My son has 20/20 vision but still had tracking issues. A regular pediatric ophthalmologist can not diagnose tracking and other issues you would have to go to a Developmental Ophthalmologist. There are other issue that could be going on besides Aspergers and I find that I need to be diligent to make sure we're not missing an issue that isn't an Aspie thing.

 

He told me often that it was too hard, from a kid who really tried to learn it. So we dropped the program with all the bells and whistles. We used leapfrog fridge phonics magnet set (lower case only at first), they didn't yet have the cvc set I used with my last two. I got all the leapfrog videos too (I think they are all on Netflix now) for him to watch at his pleasure. I dropped any phonics program until he could consistently tell me the sounds of the letters. We played with the Fridge Phonics for about a month and I quizzed him often as we were out and about.

 

We talked about how every animal makes a sound, just like every letter makes a sound. At Walmart we'd point out the big W and sometimes I'd say to ds look at that big "w" (sound of whish). Sometimes we'd ask what does that big letter say. We watched each video at least 5 times before beginning phonics. We did the alphabet song lots with the sounds rather then names. Every where we went we pointed out the letters in the environment. We said, "Look at the letters all around. We humans sure do uses a lot of letters to make so many words" about a million times before it clicked.

 

I went to the Dollar Tree and bought sentence strips (the ones you can write and rewrite on) and a matchbox car. I taped one sentence strip to our chalk board so that we could work on blending (you could just tape it to the wall). We chose to use Phonics Pathways because it is the simplest program to uses ($35 for a K-4th grade phonics program is extremely cost effective as well). Some of the other programs just have to many components, colors, pictures and distractions for Aspies.

 

So in lesson 1 of PP the child reads blends of sa se si so and su. So before doing the first lesson the child needs to know all the basic sounds... the sound of all the vowels a, e, i, o, u and the consonants b, d, f, g, h, j, l, m, n, p, r, s, t v, w, z. Did you notice that not all the consonants are in this list? c, k, q and x are not taught at the beginning of blending because they have more then one sound or an odd rule and I thing g is toward the end (g is a hard one because it has both hard and soft sounds).

 

I would make sure he knew each letter sound. Then I wrote out sa on the strip and drove the car over the strip and read sssss aaaaa then he had his chance. We would try to drive faster sss aaa then finally sa (with dd we used a unicorn instead of a car). We only used lower case letters, no capitals. We'd do this through all the blends. So for a week or so we did sa, se, si, so, su races. Then a week of the ma, me, mo, mu... then we'd do a week of mixed sounds. We adjusted as needed and sometimes did more and sometimes less. When we got through all the blend pages doing this game and I knew he could make these blends I got the book out and we read these pages in the book. I think the first 20 lessons or so. You may be able to do this with other programs if you modify. Before going to the CVC words we did the blending race again. We spent 15 min. two to three times a day doing the game.Even at this slower pace he was able to complete the program and learn to read at 4th grade level before the start of 4th grade.

 

I did notice that when we went to the book he slowed down even though he did know all the blends. We ignored the writing prompts because my ds has fine motor delays.