visual tracking worksheets?

[mamashark]

I was browsing about the high noon website thinking about adding the sound-out chapter books to my wish list, and noticed the visual tracking books. Do these types of exercises actually help with the whole starting a word with whatever letter catches your fancy issue? My DD8 with dyslexia struggles to remember to get her mouth ready for the START of each word, and I was wondering if something like this would help her eyes not jump around the words picking up letters here and there as she goes?

[Pen]

19 minutes ago, mamashark said:

I was browsing about the high noon website thinking about adding the sound-out chapter books to my wish list, and noticed the visual tracking books. Do these types of exercises actually help with the whole starting a word with whatever letter catches your fancy issue? My DD8 with dyslexia struggles to remember to get her mouth ready for the START of each word, and I was wondering if something like this would help her eyes not jump around the words picking up letters here and there as she goes?

 

I often recommend high noon, and I did try one or two of those tracking books, but I am not sure what if anything they helped with beyond the reading program.   My Ds found them very difficult and frustrating as compared to the sound out chapter book materials and reading program ... possibly after his Waldorf experience which emphasized word families and looking at the right side end of word first it might have helped a bit .

ETA picking out letters of alphabet in order requires knowing the alphabet in order—which can be very hard in dyslexia ... and not necessary to learn to read

ETA I think sitting with him during reading lessons and using my finger to go left to right probably helped him as much or more

they would probably help more if there were an actual visual tracking issue

Edited April 29, 2019 by Pen

[PeterPan]

You have two issues, as Pen points out. 1) Does she have a visual processing problem? and 2) what do you want to do about it? To identify a developmental vision problem, you're looking for a developmental optometrist. Does this dc have all reflexes integrated? Primitive, vision, postural, etc. Has she had an OT eval? And a developmental vision eval?

After you have your data on the *extent* of what is going on then you can make your treatment plan. If you begin tracking exercises and her developmental vision issues are more extensive or she has reflexes not integrated or she needs glasses or OT, that could get really frustrating.

Dyslexia is not a vision problem, so you're talking about a co-morbid developmental vision problem, an OT problem, a working memory problem, something. Actually, honestly, I can't tell what in the world you're describing even, lol. The tracking exercises are good and are done as part of VT. But I'm unclear what you're saying is happening, which is why it sounds like you need to back up and get vision evals and get that sorted out. That way you can move beyond that and into the actual terms. (convergence, saccades, depth perception, blah blah)

[mamashark]

ok let me back up, the developmental vision dr. said her vision was fine, the regular eye dr. said her vision was fine. no glasses needed, and no tracking issues diagnosed. She has not had a full neuro-psych eval and we are not interested in spending the money on that right now, even though it would probably give us more info that would be helpful. 

So, what I'm noticing only happens in context of a sentence in a book. She's inconsistent at what letter sound she starts each word with. Sometimes "of" starts with the "/f/" other times it's correct. Sometimes she'll correctly read "was" and other times she'll start with /s/. Often she'll grab a letter from the middle of a word to start the word with so "lunch" will start with /n/. She'll often pick more than one starting sound from letters available in the word before she'll sound the word out. so "march" could sound like "/k/ /r/ /m/ Christmas" she fatigues within a few minutes and will start guessing so reading sessions are kept to 5-10 minutes. 

BUT in isolation, she's able to read a good number of words with automaticity. We've done a lot of word-level work this year.

She's gone through Barton levels 1, 2, and part of level 3. We couldn't get past the first few lessons on level three in a year and a half, (last school year I tried level 3 the first part of the year, re-started level 3 after Christmas break, backed up to level 2 after Spring break and tried again, getting stuck at the same point in level 3) so I switched to Spell-Links at the beginning of this year, and she took off for a few months, and that's how she is now able to read words in isolation - at least the words that she has been explicitly taught. We still use the Barton cues for sounding out and spelling and checking the vowel. On the QRI-3 that I had been trained to use in college (and I see they have updated that a bit since then...) she's reading on a pre-primer/primer level with comprehension, and I am seeing her start to volunteer to read verses in her Wednesday night church class (so she's developing some confidence).

There are a couple other medical things going on that lead us (me and the Dr.) to believe there's something neurological going on that could also be impacting her reading, and we are trying to address those issues as well, but it's not going to be a quick fix. I was just trying to understand how the tracking books might help, if there's not a developmental eye tracking issue. 

[PeterPan]

That's hard. Our developmental optometrist totally blew off ds, didn't want to treat, even though he has wicked low VMI (visual motor integration) per their own testing. She's like everything else is fine, go to OT. So we may find an optometrist who has an OT on staff, since regular OTs don't seem too hot at VMI, sigh. 

So you have neurological issues and the SLD and they're compounding each other. That's really challenging if she stalled out at the beginning of Barton 3. Some requisite questions. Does it change if you change the FONT SIZE? And does it change if you use an index card to reveal only a phonogram at a time? And then on the comprehension, has she had expressive/receptive language testing (I like the SPELT) to see if there's a language issue as well? That would be an SLP you'd want for that testing.

I think your gut to work on the physical tracking is right on. The HN materials are probably fine. Lane with RFWP has some really nicely developed visual processing materials that are broken into inexpensive, individual booklets. You might compare the samples on HN and RWFP to see what suits you. Lane seems to go through a lot more modalities and hit tasks more ways. My dd did what they called word races in her VT, yes, and they were to go that proper tracking trained. They would decrease the font, using patching, various lenses, and the kids would have to read every letter aloud, in order, marking the prescribed pattern. It was VERY fatiguing.

I think it's not going to hurt to try. I don't know how much the larger picture of her neurological issues is going to confound it. On the plus side, you've eliminated basic vision issues (convergence, etc.) so then what remains is the visual processing, like you're saying. It's *possible* if you tried another dev. optom. they'd bite. But yes, the HN or RFWP would be similar to what you'd be doing and probably worth the effort to try. Make sure you're working in short sessions to reduce fatigue. Like do 1-3 minutes and then go do something else. Better to do that 4-5X a day and reduce fatigue than to wear her out.

Also, if her neurological issues are holding back her reading, you'll want to make sure you're getting her access to the NLS/BARD. You can print the forms and have your ped sign them if he hasn't done this yet. I would DEFINITELY push that. We SUPER LOVE the NLS/BARD. They have an excellent reader device, apps, tons and tons of books, and it's pretty easy to use. Their search engine is under-powered, but other than that it's great. This way she can get the language input from reading. It sounds like it's going to be a while before the physical act of reading comes together for her, and it may continue to be fatiguing. Definitely bring in tech, lots of tech. Just normalize it and move on like this eye reading thing is just a blip. If you can't beat it, redefine normal, kwim? 

I'm sorry it's hard. I hope your doc can help you with the neurological issues. I think as far as the testing, if money is what's holding that back, I would go through the ps with a list of what you think probably needs to happen, advocate hard, and when they screw it up file for IEE (independent 3rd party evals). That's how our system is set up to make sure you get evals, and as a tax payer I WANT you to have those evals, kwim? That's what it's there for. It's not that hard to do. Who knows, maybe you'll say neurological problems and they'll punt and send you right to private evals!! It happens. But that's how you would get them. I think, given the gravity of what is going on (that she is failing to progress and get to grade level after MULTIPLE tier 3 level interventions) that it's time for evals, thorough evals. You'd want that IQ of course, but the SLP can run the CTOPP and a variety of language testing. OT can run VMI and whatever they'll do. That's how you can get it done, and the information may be helpful.

If you make a written request for evals now, they may get it done before school ends just to get it done. Technically they can work through the summer, but they won't want to, haha. So the district is gonna be like whiz bang, you're in. That's what I've seen. 

[mamashark]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

Does it change if you change the FONT SIZE? And does it change if you use an index card to reveal only a phonogram at a time? And then on the comprehension, has she had expressive/receptive language testing (I like the SPELT) to see if there's a language issue as well?

yes, larger font size helps.  Revealing a phonogram at a time would help too - she is fine with letters in isolation, even with words in isolation, but multiple words in a line, even a dibbles test with non-sense words, she doesn't always say the right sounds first. Actually, I did a dibbles with her this morning and it was terrible - she has no context or meaning to help her so she does very poorly with non-sense words: k o m turns into "moc" and n e j turns into "eng". She got 23 words correct out of the 50 she read. It took her 4 minutes and she was fatigued by the end.

Her expressive and receptive language are fine per the SLP, I can't remember which eval they used right now. She also engages in the books I read to her without issue. She is my social thinker/street smart girl - she can catch the nuance in situations and inter-personal stuff is her strong suit. 

[PeterPan]

And she's seeing a neurologist? That's a significant amount of difficulty to have after multiple tier 3 interventions.

[Pen]

 

5 hours ago, mamashark said:

So, what I'm noticing only happens in context of a sentence in a book. She's inconsistent at what letter sound she starts each word with. Sometimes "of" starts with the "/f/" other times it's correct. Sometimes she'll correctly read "was" and other times she'll start with /s/. Often she'll grab a letter from the middle of a word to start the word with so "lunch" will start with /n/. She'll often pick more than one starting sound from letters available in the word before she'll sound the word out. so "march" could sound like "/k/ /r/ /m/ Christmas"

 

I dont know if the tracking books could help.  If you try one I’d suggest going to the word one, not letters, because I think she could easily jump around looking for the letters.  

I think the HN basic reading program if she is old enough might help.  (Along with Sound Out books) 

And I think the Sound Out chapter books , perhaps along with their  workbooks could help a lot.  Being able to read sentences and paragraphs and whole stories of almost entirely CVC type words fluently before moving on to a word like lunch or march is , IME, huge.   The Sound Out Chapter books have larger type and simpler concepts and can be used by someone slightly younger than the basic reading program.

I think the way the readings are done in the regular program and Sound Outs promotes excellent left to right type reading—perhaps aided particularly if you (or she) will use a finger, pen, pointer or other guide to help as necessary 

you can even cut a rectangle out of an index card and use it to gradually reveal a word left to right.  However as fluency is reached the reading and eyes will be going faster than the hand can work  such a card.  And as fluency is reached the reading process becomes much more complicated than taking in a letter at a time.

Nonetheless, we went through the lowest CVC books many times , and first time through early books could be much slower than fluency speed.  According to the HN  advisor I spoke with, you even can read the whole Sound Out story aloud to the child the first time so that a basic understanding of characters, setting, and events is there before the child tries to grapple with the decoding.  My Ds didn’t do it that way, in part because he had the magical experience of The Red Cap for the first time changing words on a page into a story he could read for himself. In part because he likes to read things first himself for emotional reasons.

 

www.talkingfingers.com read write type program could also help in experiencing left to right word formation

 

5 hours ago, mamashark said:

she fatigues within a few minutes and will start guessing so reading sessions are kept to 5-10 minutes. 

 

That’s good to do very short sessions—

 

 

remind me of her age (I can’t see signatures even if it’s there)

[mamashark]

2 minutes ago, Pen said:

remind me of her age

she's 8

[Pen]

Then she’s just old enough for the HN basic program as well as Sound Out books.

[mamashark]

4 hours ago, PeterPan said:

And she's seeing a neurologist? That's a significant amount of difficulty to have after multiple tier 3 interventions.

The medical stuff is just now coming to a point where the dr's are listening to me and we've already tried all 'tier 1' and 'tier 2' medical interventions, so to speak so we are getting the referral now.

On the other hand, I did do some digging today and found a place that will do neuropsych testing under our insurance, so I'm on that wait list now, which honesty will be faster than the local school system - the system I'm zoned for has a reputation for breaking those legal deadlines and talking parents out of testing and I don't have the energy to fight them right now. 

3 hours ago, Pen said:

Being able to read sentences and paragraphs and whole stories of almost entirely CVC type words fluently before moving on to a word like lunch or march is , IME, huge

I think this is where I need to go next. Spell-Links was a good stop-gap for the inability to move through Barton level 3, and we will likely go back to it, but it had become tedious. Maybe we could try Barton 3 again, see if she can get past where we were before, since we already have it. 

[PeterPan]

22 minutes ago, mamashark said:

On the other hand, I did do some digging today and found a place that will do neuropsych testing under our insurance, so I'm on that wait list now

How long is that going to be? The advantage of a neuropsych, in your case, is they might, if they're worth their salt, be able to hone in on the part of the brain affected and help jumpstart your medical process.

I'm glad the doctors are starting to listen. What you're describing seems pretty significant to me, not accounted for by the SLD. If she's that frustrated, I would consider just doing something else for a while. Have you tried doing word searches with a highlighter? How does she do with those?

[Pen]

 

1 hour ago, mamashark said:

On the other hand, I did do some digging today and found a place that will do neuropsych testing under our insurance, so I'm on that wait list now, which honesty will be faster than the local school system - the system I'm zoned for has a reputation for breaking those legal deadlines and talking parents out of testing and I don't have the energy to fight them right now. 

That’s good.  You probably will learn more from private neuropsych testing 

1 hour ago, mamashark said:

I think this is where I need to go next. Spell-Links was a good stop-gap for the inability to move through Barton level 3, and we will likely go back to it, but it had become tedious. Maybe we could try Barton 3 again, see if she can get past where we were before, since we already have it. 

 

I’d suggest trying getting an  A level set of HN Sound Outs (the set with the Red Cap ) to help cement level 2 of Barton and achieve CVC fluency first.   We did all 3 sets time achieve fluency, but my Ds May perhaps have had more severe reading trouble than your dd. 

Barton has a different sequence than HN , but level 2 of Barton presumably has CVC and thus should have taught that level of words as needed for the bottom level of Sound Outs.  

If you are going to use Sound Outs, the time really is now, before Barton level 3 imo, not wish list for future.  

[geodob]

What can cause the difficulty that you describe, is 'Scotopic Sensitivity' of the eyes.
Which is caused by the light reflected off of white paper.
That is also related to the 'Saccadic movement of the eyes'.

Though you can do a test, to identify this.   Where you open a page of text for her to read. Using the Word program.
What it involves, is changing the 'white background', to tints of blue, red and yellow.
Have her read the text, with these different colored backgrounds. Observing whether any of the colors, enable her to read correctly?

[mamashark]

53 minutes ago, geodob said:

What can cause the difficulty that you describe, is 'Scotopic Sensitivity' of the eyes.
Which is caused by the light reflected off of white paper.
That is also related to the 'Saccadic movement of the eyes'.

Though you can do a test, to identify this.   Where you open a page of text for her to read. Using the Word program.
What it involves, is changing the 'white background', to tints of blue, red and yellow.
Have her read the text, with these different colored backgrounds. Observing whether any of the colors, enable her to read correctly?

Irlen's syndrome, right?  - I'll have to try this idea of changing the color on Word to see if that makes it easier for her, I know that I much prefer a darker background to a white background on the computer, in college I used blue when typing all my papers. But I figured that was just the intensity of the light from the computer screen because books don't bother me. 

[mamashark]

14 hours ago, PeterPan said:

How long is that going to be? The advantage of a neuropsych, in your case, is they might, if they're worth their salt, be able to hone in on the part of the brain affected and help jumpstart your medical process.

I'm glad the doctors are starting to listen. What you're describing seems pretty significant to me, not accounted for by the SLD. If she's that frustrated, I would consider just doing something else for a while. Have you tried doing word searches with a highlighter? How does she do with those?

it's aprox a 6 month wait but she said they are actively looking for another person to add to their team so they can move through the list faster, so she hopes she will be in touch sooner. 

Yes, it's significant to me too. We are trying to decide on what specific blood work we want to run by our next appointment.

Love the idea of word searches 🙂 I agree that backing off some and doing something fun would be a good idea. I've got a couple sound-out books from different authors that she can read, or has read in the past, we'll work on fun reading and word searches for a bit I think.

[PeterPan]

I'll be really interested to hear what comes of trying the different background colors for the paper. You notice Barton uses colored papers for her supplemental worksheets... You could see if it's considered heritable and run genetics. We learned way more running genetics and sniffing out every error that turned up than we did from psychs. Just 23andme and then downloading the raw data to crunch other ways like promothease. Now I have my brave on, so I look up the problem (in your case Irlen syndrome) and try to find some RS (SNP) numbers and look at the raw data, haha. There's a site that has info on the research for each issue too, but usually it just pops up when I google search.

A prospective genetic marker of the visual-perception disorder Meares ...https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22913027

genetic basis, biochemical and immunological of Meares-Irlen ...www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0034-72802016000500412&script=sci...tlng...

There's something to get you started. So the gene they're looking at is APOB. You would run 23andme, just the cheapest version, which is probably going on sale for Mother's Day (when all mother's should go for a cruise, hint hint) and then run the raw data from that through Promothease. At that point it will open in your browser and be searchable by keyword, so convenient. Pop in that APOB and you may get something. You can also save the entire html file btw to be able to open later, offline. Ok, I'm looking at our files, and 23andme cranked out 29 SNPs (allele pairs) for the APOB gene. Then it will mark them red (known bad), grey (less common variant but not known if it's bad), and green (fine). So you could google the RS number for anything marked grey or red and in short order you'll know anything more there is to know, boom. 

Costs $10 to use promothease and 23andme goes on sale for $69. So it's a lot of info you can search through to see what you can find for sub-$100. Cheaper than any doc and seemingly more informative. There are 12 known dyslexia genes and the RS numbers are in a study I've linked in the past. You might find the gene for whatever else is going on. You might find some anxiety, a vitamin deficiency, something easily treatable. Don't look for uber nasty things and plague soul. Only look for the good stuff like whether your grandkids will have red hair and how likely they are to go bald early if your dd becomes a man.

[Kanin]

On 4/30/2019 at 11:03 AM, mamashark said:

Actually, I did a dibbles with her this morning and it was terrible - she has no context or meaning to help her so she does very poorly with non-sense words: k o m turns into "moc" and n e j turns into "eng". She got 23 words correct out of the 50 she read. It took her 4 minutes and she was fatigued by the end.

I was watching an interesting YouTube presentation on The Reading League's channel. I'm not sure which one it was... anyway, they explained that speed (automaticity) with letter/sound connections greatly impacts word reading. Even when proficient adult readers read a word, they still register every sound, just in a tiny fraction of a second. So let's say a kid is retrieving the first letter sound slowly, then doing the same for each following letter (k-o-m), by the time they read the end the word, their working memory may have let go of the first sounds, or of the order of the sounds. That's why dyslexic kids will often seem to make careless errors in reading by "starting" with the last letter, when in fact they did start sounding out a word with the first letter, but their brains garbled it for them.

I would recommend lots and lots of practice with sound flashcards, like before every single reading session.

It's definitely a frustrating problem. One of my students has been doing short vowels ALL year. He still mixes them up. It's really getting both of us down!!

[PeterPan]

Total, total rabbit trail, and not that I'm saying it would help, but once you start talking automaticity you also have the RAN/RAS issue. you expect RAN/RAS to be affected in dyslexia, and it's amazing how many places online are saying that working on it makes no difference which is HOGWASH.

So it would at least be in the can't hurt territory. You can do it with arrows, colored dots, anything you want. For Mainer and those vowels, I'd solidify them with a LIPS vowel circle and make sure that you've taught discrimination very carefully by keeping them far apart and then DRILL those babies with some RAN/RAS pages. Just make a bunch of them with the letters and blow through them. I keep them in page protectors in a notebook.

23 hours ago, Mainer said:

It's definitely a frustrating problem. One of my students has been doing short vowels ALL year. He still mixes them up. It's really getting both of us down!!

Have you tried Attention Good Listeners? It has the best discrimination exercises I've seen, and you can weave in a bunch of skills/exercises with the pages. Like you can target rapid naming, working memory, etc. by how you use them.

[Lecka]

Can they blend these words if you give them the sounds slowly?

For my older son he could not.  

He also would not be able to remember sounds when he sounded out words, so I know that happens too.    

But it’s possible they wouldn’t be able to blend even if they were sounding out the words.

I can’t say I got a long way with this, but supposedly there is a strategy called progressive blending (iirc) where you pause and blend as you go, and it’s supposed to help with forgetting sounds.  

So in theory you sound out cat as c a ca cat, instead of as c a t cat.  

Edit:  and it could be visual, too.  Or it could be a combination.  But you can see about blending when the sounds are provided and it’s possible to isolate that, which should make everything else easier.  

If they can’t do it, I would still use letter tiles or other visuals, and not just beat a dead horse with asking a kid to orally blend who can’t.  But i think it is a good teaching method. 

But this gets into kids who can memorize sight words.  My son couldn’t so I never had to worry about that, but it is a reason some programs practice blending with letter tiles and nonsense words.  

Edited May 2, 2019 by Lecka

[Lecka]

I do also think it was helpful to my son to touch tiles as he sounded out, and I do think it helped him with the order.  I can link to what we used but it is similar in many programs.  

https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/using-letter-tiles/

This is what helped my older son get CVC.  

I was (briefly-ish) trying to use AAS with my son, before AAR came out, and we completely stalled in it and had to change when it got to consonant blends (CVCC), but it was great for CVC.  

It helped him to do series like mat, met, mot to work on just vowels.  

I also am pretty sure I ended up not working on all the vowels at the same time, I started with 2 and then added, I think I read a book saying a and o were the easiest to start with, and then add one at a time, but not e and i consecutively.  That was from Phonics A-Z by Wiley Blevins, I might not be remembering that order correctly, but after a lot of vowel confusion I know I got some good ideas from that book.  

 

[Lecka]

Good luck to both of you!  It is not easy.  

[Lecka]

For a cute idea, my younger son had a speech therapist who wrote letters on Megablocks let kids build words and take them apart for blending and segmenting.  It is engaging and very visual.  She was also working very hard to keep my son’s attention, and he probably would not have had much engagement for letter tiles.  

 

[Lecka]

Oh, my younger son also did (with other people) blending like in Reading Mastery or 100 EZ Lessons.

With this they made cards with a word, and a dot under the letter, and they touch the letters and then swoop.  It’s pretty explicit but he would still spend a long time practicing the same few cards.  

It is a change of pace though which can be nice.  

[Kanin]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

 

Have you tried Attention Good Listeners? It has the best discrimination exercises I've seen, and you can weave in a bunch of skills/exercises with the pages. Like you can target rapid naming, working memory, etc. by how you use them.

I haven't, but I'd like to. We did LiPS intensively for about 5 months, but it's obvious that we need to review and keep on practicing. Everything was SO solid around winter break, but after that there were field trips and special programs and spring break and all the things that disrupt schedules. 

[Lecka]

Oh, something else that I think helped my older son, was to also work on segmenting with Elkonin boxes.  I drew ___ ___ ____ on a dry erase board and he pulled down letters.  I did not have him write letters.  

[Lecka]

Mainer — that is frustrating, but there is nothing wrong with review.  My younger son has forgotten things similarly and I think it just happens sometimes.  

He forgot zoo animals one time (for a program about naming animals and sorting them by where they would live).  And we went to zoos all the time.  He did better with any animal on Go Diego Go, and farm animals, and pets.  But he forgot zoo animals completely one time, when we expected him to remember them.  

Sometimes we take it as a sign to review more, sometimes we take it as a sign there was just something particularly hard about it!  

[Lecka]

I have also seen a lot of picture sorts for auditory discrimination, they can be fun.  I have not seen Attention Good Listeners but I think it sounds great.  

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Mainer said:

Everything was SO solid around winter break, but after that there were field trips and special programs and spring break and all the things that disrupt schedules. 

Something with tape and the sounds and holding it in, sigh... 

If you refresh him, then are they there for him? Or is he still crunchy after he warms up?

But yeah, I REALLY like AGL. It's worth the money for you to track down.

Edited May 3, 2019 by PeterPan

[Kanin]

6 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

If you refresh him, then are they there for him? Or is he still crunchy after he warms up?

 

Depends on the sound... if I cue him by showing him how my mouth looks, he gets it. Some days he's solid, others, not. 

[PeterPan]

18 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Depends on the sound... if I cue him by showing him how my mouth looks, he gets it. Some days he's solid, others, not. 

it almost sounds like a proprioception/interoception issue, where he's not feeling his mouth and realizing how the sound feels in his mouth. Did you use a mirror when you did LIPS? You could get the activity cards for the interoception curriculum (Kelly Mahler) and try her activities. You're wanting to raise awareness of his mouth. Kazoos, lolipops that he rolls around, big candy, gum, small stuff, being dry, fizzies, something hot/warm, something crazy cold. 

With my ds, I was using the PROMPT neuromuscular inputs, so I was actually touching his face, having him FEEL the jaw drop, having him FEEL the rounding and retractions. These are really important sensations. 

So to me, if he's looking at you, then he doesn't remember what they felt like.

Or at least it's a crazy idea, lol.

I also don't teach them exactly straight to LIPS. I put my own funky labels to each and I worked a lot with connecting the physical feel of the production to the list of sounds. We went through the vowel circle and did the chant and had our hands under our jaws and would FEEL the jaw drop. And we'd do that over and over and over...

Edited May 3, 2019 by PeterPan

[Kanin]

2 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

it almost sounds like a proprioception/interoception issue, where he's not feeling his mouth and realizing how the sound feels in his mouth. Did you use a mirror when you did LIPS?

Oh yeah, we used the mirror for months. He actually got crazy good at the short vowels and a couple others (ee/ea, oo). He would always feel the sounds in his mouth when spelling and reading. But after all the breaks and stuff, it's leaked out a bit. Ugh. 

[Lecka]

My older son used to be this way and so was Displace’s son.  We used to call it “glitching.”

For my son I know it could be related to fatigue.  If he made many mistakes in a row, he had fatigue.  I might not know why, but he did.

Sometimes he could get flustered and then I think anxiety could be part of it.

Then sometimes it would just be one sound here and there, and it worked best for me to provide the sound.  

My son eventually grew out of it but it took years.  

That’s very interesting about the interoceptiom idea, because my older son had some sensory seeking things with his mouth, and he also used to pack food in his mouth.  That can be a sensory thing too.  

My son who has autism never did this.  

[Lecka]

I wonder if there is any way you could make up a review sheet that someone else can go over with him to review?  I don’t know if that would work.

Right now it is getting close to summer break here and I wonder if he will be in anything in the summer where someone could review with him, or if you will see him over the summer.

 

[Kanin]

11 hours ago, Lecka said:

Sometimes he could get flustered and then I think anxiety could be part of it.

 

Yes, this definitely plays a HUGE part!

Interesting about interception... he definitely likes to chew his sweatshirt strings, etc.

I'm hoping to arrange something for the summer 🙂 

[PeterPan]

chewing is a funny thing. My ds' stopped completely after we got a particular reflex integrated. It was in his hands, because the hands and the mouth connect for nursing. Basically we just brushed and annoyed his hands every day till the body figured it out and was like fine, done. His chewing wasn't extensive as some kids', but he was also mouthing. So maybe digging in on reflexes to see what causes what can help. I mean the brushing was a nothing. Can the kid do it to himself? What a funny reading session: And now Johnny, scratch your palms while I show you flashcards...

[Lecka]

Just an idea -- maybe keep the mirrors.  

I've had it explained to me -- that if there is sensory seeking, that means the child is not getting as much feedback from their body, and that is why they are seeking more.  

So he may not have an easy time getting information from his mouth positioning from feeling it, and more from being able to see it.  

Plus he sounds like he did really well when you were using mirrors.  

There's supposed to be a combination of hearing and feeling, and then the mirror adds seeing, so it is worth thinking about.  

My son did also do touching his face to notice things, and that was something he could be told to check, if he wasn't hearing or feeling (just from his mouth).  So that is another option, too.  

I think you are "supposed to" just link the sounds to the mouth positions and then be able to use the mouth positions (or just have had the learning take place at that point) but I think sometimes feeling the mouth positions is also hard.  

For my son being in speech therapy, I have seen him have long pauses to follow directions with any thing like "move your tongue up, touch your tongue to the back of your teeth," and I think it was the mouth part, not the listening-to-oral-directions part, because he would be faster/easier with following other kinds of oral directions.    Edit:  It would come across like it was harder to be aware of what was going on in his mouth.  

Edit:  Oh!  I was trying to think what this was, but they did have pictures of something about his mouth and a picture, with a key word, that he could look at, and then have that be a cue for him to make the sound.  He used that a pretty long time in speech therapy.  So it was a visual prompt also.  

Edited May 3, 2019 by Lecka

[PeterPan]

He can touch his face while he forms the movement with the mirror. I doubt *you* can touch his face, because you're not an SLP and don't want your hands on a dc. But he can!! 

-vowels that retract= smilies--> look in the mirror, see the retraction, use thumb and pointer of one hand or pointer/pointer with two hands and put them in the corners of his mouth and FEEL the retraction.

Now what happens when it turns out the kid isn't retracting and that's why he's not feeling it and remembering? Haha, well there you go.

I'm being lazy and not listing the rest, but that's how you could get more input. Mirrors plus his hands on his face. For the jaw drops, thumb on his chin or flat hand under chin, both would work. For rounding, he can round his fingers like holding a marble only around his lips. That's your /oo/ type sounds. 

That's the type of input my ds was getting. It was hands on face AND hands under chin AND mirrors and and, sigh. 

And still they're going to forget. When you've done all you can, they'll still be weak because it's a disability. I mean it's not like my ds is always perfectly sharp. it degrades because it's a disability, sigh. 

[Kanin]

7 hours ago, PeterPan said:

What a funny reading session: And now Johnny, scratch your palms while I show you flashcards...

Haha... I'm already considered a bit "out there"... maybe I'll try this NEXT year 😂

[Kanin]

6 hours ago, Lecka said:

I think sometimes feeling the mouth positions is also hard.  

I agree, and honestly I'm shocked that the kids I've worked with really catch on to it so fast! I thought it would take months for a kid to learn all the different names, brother pairs, etc., but nope. A couple of weeks, max, and they're suddenly experts. 

[PeterPan]

5 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Haha... I'm already considered a bit "out there"... maybe I'll try this NEXT year 😂

Here's a list https://www.brmtusa.com/what-are-reflexes  

and here's the Babkin https://www.brmtusa.com/the-babkin-reflex

I think that's what I was reading about. All I know is it worked, lol. I'm just like fine, if we stroke it and it annoys the tar out of you, then we found the spot that needs to be worked, lol. And it really got noticeable improvements very quickly. You could use a nylon nailbrush and have them brush with that and then have them stroke their palms with their nails. 

Or see if your OTs will check for retained reflexes. Then we could REALLY start a revolution, lol. 

[Kanin]

4 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

 Or see if your OTs will check for retained reflexes. Then we could REALLY start a revolution, lol. 

Oh, the OT does check! And every eval I've read says, all the kids have 'em. Not sure what the OT does to address it, though. I'll have to ask. 

[Lecka]

My older son was in 1st grade when he started at a nice university speech clinic, 2x/week, doing stuff like Lips (they adapted to his speech sounds and made up their own pictures, but it’s very similar from what I can tell from seeing samples and YouTube videos), and they told me when he started to expect it to take 2-3 months, and it ended up taking 10 months.  So I agree it usually takes weeks and then sometimes it takes longer!  For my son most of that time was spent working on “self-monitoring” which basically meant — he could do everything, he just kept making a lot of mistakes.  And then it was hard for him to tell.  

But he did get it in the end!  

[PeterPan]

24 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Oh, the OT does check! And every eval I've read says, all the kids have 'em. Not sure what the OT does to address it, though. I'll have to ask. 

And she might not get the time. We were working on these reflexes every single day. They're pretty much more is more better. 

[PeterPan]

27 minutes ago, Mainer said:

Oh,

If you would stop giving 'em m&ms every time they make the error... 

No but seriously, you could reward self-monitoring and catching their own errors or them using their tools/strategies...

Edited May 3, 2019 by PeterPan

[Lecka]

My older son’s OT made a laminated paper for him for retainer reflexes and he could do them pretty independently with some small supervision (he would have been in 4th/5th grade at the time) and a resource teacher or resource aide would supervise him doing it, they had a mat in that room and the resource teacher would schedule it for him.  That is how he got practice every school day.  

I never had him do it at home, or maybe I did a few times, at the time I was very busy with my younger son.