Ds and Reading issues

[sweet2ndchance]

I don't know if anyone remembers but before Christmas I posted about youngest DS and possible dyslexia issues. He was language delayed, spent 5 years in speech therapy and though he graduated out just before his 6th birthday, they expected him to need to return to speech within a year or two. He had dysphagia with silent aspiration and on honey thick liquids until he was 3yo. He was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech also at 3 years old. He was 3.5yo before he really started talking in comprehensible sentences on the level that an 18 month old might produce. He caught up quickly, more quickly than anyone expected, but he has lingering speech issues. I know speech affects the ability to read, BTDT with my oldest son who also had speech issues. But oldest ds just made normal mistakes on a delayed timeline. Youngest ds makes some of the strangest mistakes I've seen after having taught all 5 of my other kids to read. He also progresses in fits and jags and sometimes regresses before progressing in his ability to read. 

I was working on getting ds signed back up for speech and services at the schools when COVID-19 hit so now everything is kinda on hold until everyone decides how to proceed. In the meantime, we went back to pretty much basic Spalding methods and he is doing really well with it and possibly even enjoying this method of instruction.

So, here is my question... I try as much as I possibly can to prevent ds from guessing at words but when he does guess he guesses a synonym of the word he is trying to read. For example, if he was reading the sentence "The dog was too frightened". He might read it , "The dog was too scared." Even if he has never seen the sentence before and there are no pictures for clues. If I tell him to try again and read the words that are there. He might say "The dog was too f-r-igh... it says scared." What the heck? If I force him to sound out and blend the whole word. He will get "The dog was too frightened." but he wants to know why scared is wrong when it means the same thing. I explain that he needs to read the words that are on the page and not substitute words that mean the same thing but he still does this on a pretty consistent basis. He understands shades of meaning and that frightened is the word the author chose to use because it creates a specific mental picture even if there are other words that could convey a similar meaning. But he still does this, over and over again.

So, is this something typical of dyslexia? Has anyone else's kid done something similar? Do I just keep correcting and explaining until I'm blue in the face and he will stop eventually or is there something I could do differently. Getting professional help for him is on the table, it's just on hold right now due to COVID-19.