Did your child (or you) have trouble with blending (or segmenting) - yea or nay?

[forty-two]

I'm trying to figure out how common this is. 

 

My answers are two "can't blend but learned to read anyway" (me and dd8) and one who was "can't blend and so can't read" but seems to be moving to "took a fair bit of explicit work to teach to blend" (dd6).  So my perception's a bit skewed ;).

 

ETA:  Adding in segmenting, since it's the flip side of blending and the two are correlated.

[ikslo]

DS still has a problem with b vs. d (even if he knows which one it should be, he writes the other and doesn't notice - daily it seems), but never had a problem with blending. 

[SilverMoon]

6 kids. 4 had no problem. 1 had a medium problem and took lots of explicit teaching. She wasn't really reading until third grade. The sixth one is only 4yo.

[sbgrace]

I had one who struggled with blending. He had over-all dyslexia level poor phonemic awareness despite lots of work and exposure, though. I used dyslexia friendly materials to teach him to read, but I honestly think he's just very visual-spatial perhaps. We worked really hard, but he reads well now. My other didn't have any issues with blending, but I began formal reading instruction older than is typical.  I suspect blending is something that clicks in developmentally at a certain point for many kids perhaps.

[Ellie]

I only taught one of my dc to read, and I used Spalding. It doesn't emphasize "blending." :huh:

[OneStepAtATime]

Both kids were very articulate but struggled with blending.  Reading was a challenge.  DS still struggles with some blends.  DD no longer does.  

 

Turns out they are both dyslexic and had some auditory discrimination issues.  Remediation with Lindamood Bell's LiPS program then Barton Reading and Spelling has helped DS (thought he should have done LiPS longer and still has some challenges).  DD did Barton without LiPS and it all smoothed out pretty quickly.  Unfortunately we waited until 6th grade to start Barton so she was behind by that point by quite a bit, but is now very close to grade level in fun reading, still a bit further behind on content reading (like science and history) and has no issues with blending now.  Spelling took off, too, after Barton.

 

I wish we had gotten evals MUCH sooner and started the kids on a program designed specifically for their areas of weakness/strength long before we did. Thankfully, even though we waited, reading remediation is moving along quite well.

[forty-two]

I only taught one of my dc to read, and I used Spalding. It doesn't emphasize "blending." :huh:

 

I may be conflating a few things.  Where I'm coming from is the idea that blending seems to act as a proxy for some important phonological processing skills - meaning that the inability to blend can be a sign of underlying difficulties that can make it hard to read phonetically, even learning with a method that doesn't involve blending. 

 

Also, Spalding involves segmenting words into sounds, right?  And segmenting - breaking a word into individual sounds - is the flip side of blending (putting sounds together into words); kids who can't blend generally can't segment well either.  Maybe I should add that into the poll.

[abacus2]

My oldest really struggled with blending. It finally clicked around age 7, and she learned to read. My middle child learned to read without any individual work; she just listened to what her sister was doing. My youngest is definitely blending without issue as she learns to read.

[forty-two]

I had one who struggled with blending. He had over-all dyslexia level poor phonemic awareness despite lots of work and exposure, though. I used dyslexia friendly materials to teach him to read, but I honestly think he's just very visual-spatial perhaps. We worked really hard, but he reads well now. My other didn't have any issues with blending, but I began formal reading instruction older than is typical.  I suspect blending is something that clicks in developmentally at a certain point for many kids perhaps.

I've read the same - that blending is a developmental skill - but it's a developmental skill that for some reason never clicked for me (or dd8 or my mom).  And whether it's the lack of blending or the underlying reason for lack of blending - whatever the reason, it's caused me quite a bit of trouble (in figuring out how to pronounce words not in my oral vocabulary, and in trying to learn foreign languages).   For the longest time I thought I was "just not good at languages" - it was a revelation to realize there was a very specific, hopefully fixable reason that I had trouble with languages.

 

Both kids were very articulate but struggled with blending.  Reading was a challenge.  DS still struggles with some blends.  DD no longer does.  

 

Turns out they are both dyslexic and had some auditory discrimination issues.  Remediation with Lindamood Bell's LiPS program then Barton Reading and Spelling has helped DS (thought he should have done LiPS longer and still has some challenges).  DD did Barton without LiPS and it all smoothed out pretty quickly.  Unfortunately we waited until 6th grade to start Barton so she was behind by that point by quite a bit, but is now very close to grade level in fun reading, still a bit further behind on content reading (like science and history) and has no issues with blending now.  Spelling took off, too, after Barton.

 

I wish we had gotten evals MUCH sooner and started the kids on a program designed specifically for their areas of weakness/strength long before we did. Thankfully, even though we waited, reading remediation is moving along quite well.

Both my dds flunked the Barton pre-screening, although dd8 was to all appearances fluently reading, and in fact loves to read :hunh:.  Spelling's been an issue, though, although as we do LiPS she's improving.

[hands-on-mama]

My first child just knew how with very little help. She started reading at 4. My youngest had problems with blending at first. She is slowly getting there. She is currently 5.

[ElizabethB]

My daughter could blend at 3 1/2 and was reading anything by the end of K.

 

My son could blend at 5 and took approximately 1 billion repetitions until he could read well. He slowly and steadily improved his blending speed from K to 3rd grade, sometime in the beginning of fourth grade he began to blend well and fast and can now read almost anything.

 

My daughter needed more repetition in math, my son needs less repetition in math.

[Raining Pineapples]

Our problem was with segmenting out the blends, only with one child. We use AAS and had to spend a few weeks practicing with words and pulling tokens down for each sound. It was the only place where we were stuck for a bit. She could read the words (blend) them fine. Pulling them apart was not as easy.

[wapiti]

.

[Coco_Clark]

I had one that took what seemed like FOREVER to learn to blend. Ok, ok, he "got" it at 5 1/2, but that was after a good 6 months of very explicit instruction and practice. Maybe the instruction did it, maybe it was developmental. I'm not sure.

 

My next was able to do it right away. In fact, he pretty much started reading the day he learned his letters at barely 4. No instruction.