Should I do FLL 1 and WWE 1 for my speech delayed, maybe dyslexic, maybe apraxic kid?

[heres_a_llama]

Hi all,

My son turned 6 in August and is in his kindergarten year. We're finishing AAR pre-reading next week and should start AAR 1 soon; he's making solid progress with Heggerty preK, HWOT tK, and BYL Level 0 for literature/geography. He receives speech therapy 3x/week due to his previous evaluation determining he is in the 3rd percentile for articulation and has the intelligibility of someone half his age.

In early December, he will receive a differential diagnosis between childhood apraxia of speech and phonological delays; in the late spring, once we have more data with phonics, he will receive a psycho-educational evaluation. We are seeing a lot of signs of dyslexia and possibly ADHD in him.

As I start to plan for next year in anticipation of Black Friday sales, I'm trying to figure out our game plan. When I look at everything that I want to get done with him, I think I might be setting us all up for misery? My daughter would also be in her K year next year (OPGTR, Math with Confidence, Zaner Bloser, reading list from TWTM 4th edition and along for the ride with everything else). Here's my current dream for next year for him:

First Grade Game Plan

• Phonics: finish All About Reading 1, start AAR 2 after
• Phonemic Awareness: Heggerty Phonemic Awareness K
• Spelling: start All About Spelling 1 after AAR 1 completed
• Penmanship: Handwriting Without Tears K, 1st
• Grammar: First Language Lessons 1
• Composition: Writing With Ease 1
• Math: Right Start Level B, Saxon Morning Meeting only Level 1
• Science: RSO Life 1
• History, Geography: SotW 1
• Literature: TWTM 4th edition literature suggestions for ancients
• Judaics: one a day from My Weekly Sidrah, Yisrael Sheli, Our Jerusalem, and You Be the Judge
• Extras: speech therapy, swimming, karate, Hebrew School, Cubscouts, music lessons
   

Am I correct in thinking this looks like too much given his speech delays? If so, what would you recommend cutting? I was thinking WWE first, then maybe Judaics at home since he'd still be in our synagogue's religious school for two hours a week, followed by FLL? Thanks for any advice from the more seasoned homeschoolers.

[Rosie_0801]

That'd be too much even without speech delays. 🙂

I'd leave spelling and composition for another year, but probably two. Focus on the reading and penmanship. Since he's attending synagogue, you could cut the extra Judaics unless he particularly enjoys it, or make it informal over dinner chat. FLL could easily wait, but it's quite gentle, so you may not need to. Let SOTW wait until next year when his sister will be a bit older and play with a bit of geography and maybe some prehistory dvd if you're into that sort of thing.

It helps to move between different modes of learning: reading, writing, listening, watching. Often little kids can only learn new material in one area at a time, so, for example, you have to put maths in maintenance mode if you're pushing ahead with phonics, and when they hit a wall there, put that into maintenance mode while you move onto new material in maths. 

[Clarita]

Writing with Ease 1 starts with writing whole sentences and HWOT K is just single letters and numbers. So I think WWE would be too much if your son would be in HWOT K for penmenship. Or your son would be beyond HWOT K for penmenship.

FWIW if it were me I would start looping your daughter into AAR pre-reading now then next year your son do AAR level 1, daughter do AAR pre-reading (again if needed and/or quicker). I think you'd keep your sanity better if they were on the same reading curriculum (even moving at different paces). If your daughter is quick at reading you may even get the added bonus of your daughter catching up and both kids could be on the same lessons at some point. Same reading curriculum, same teaching style, same manipulatives set up. 

[PeterPan]

None of it matters when he's unintelligible.

New SLP who does PROMPT. 

New SLP for expressive language.

New SLP for literacy. (yes, that means three)

Evals for ASD, not ADHD, because apraxia almost never occurs in isolation. (cp, asd, nvld, downs, something)

OT eval for retained reflexes, because those hold back language development.

Audiology evals with someone who specializes in APD to make sure you're treating all the ways you process language.

Knock yourself out with all the academics you want after that. Anything he has energy for is fine. In our house, speech was the most important thing. He can be intelligible. My ds had moderate/severe apraxia and did PROMPT for his apraxia up until the covid shut down (age 11 ½). We drove 2 ½ hours each way for 9 ½ years to get him the best therapy. You can be intelligible way before you get all your sounds.

All the academics you're wanting involve language, so it really depends on what you're wanting to do with them. You just have to see how it goes with him, but you're wise to do way more testing than they're telling you and build a bigger team if you want good results.

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

nt

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

nt

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

nt

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[PeterPan]

nt

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[caffeineandbooks]

15 hours ago, heres_a_llama said:

First Grade Game Plan

• Phonics: finish All About Reading 1, start AAR 2 after
• Phonemic Awareness: Heggerty Phonemic Awareness K
• Spelling: start All About Spelling 1 after AAR 1 completed
• Penmanship: Handwriting Without Tears K, 1st
• Grammar: First Language Lessons 1
• Composition: Writing With Ease 1
• Math: Right Start Level B, Saxon Morning Meeting only Level 1
• Science: RSO Life 1
• History, Geography: SotW 1
• Literature: TWTM 4th edition literature suggestions for ancients
• Judaics: one a day from My Weekly Sidrah, Yisrael Sheli, Our Jerusalem, and You Be the Judge
• Extras: speech therapy, swimming, karate, Hebrew School, Cubscouts, music lessons
   

Am I correct in thinking this looks like too much given his speech delays? If so, what would you recommend cutting? I was thinking WWE first, then maybe Judaics at home since he'd still be in our synagogue's religious school for two hours a week, followed by FLL? Thanks for any advice from the more seasoned homeschoolers.

Agreeing with Rosie that this would be too much for just about any kid!  I would also hold off on AAS for another year (at least), and save WWE until he's reading simple books comfortably.  For literature I'd read lots of picture books and sometimes do related extension activities - eg How To Make An Apple Pie & See The World - you make the pie; for The Very Hungry Caterpillar maybe you can keep a caterpillar in a jar until it turns into a butterfly and then release it; that kind of thing.  For history and science I'd read picture books too.  This is not short changing your kids, it's giving them age appropriate information in a sustainable way (won't burn you all out) that leaves a little extra in the tank for the therapy and learning challenges you are going to be dealing with. 

Story of the World is awesome and we're on our second loop through it now.  The one thing I'd do differently is I wish I'd waited until kid #2 was old enough to join us.  A younger can usually join in for books 1 & 2, but the books' target range increases through the series, with book 4 being aimed at grades 4-8, so kid #2 was "too young" for the entire loop.  He's enjoying it far more this time around as an 8 year old than he did as a tag-along 4.

Are you doing all those extras now?  Every family is different, but there's no way I as the parent could sustain a sane homeschool ritual and also play taxi for all those other things.  I would think about how many extracurriculars you think you'd like, and plan to do one fewer than that.  Margin is good 🙂

Wishing you all the best as you think through your options and make some plans.

[Lori D.]

Welcome to the WTM forum. I see by your post count that you are new. 😄

Agreeing with @Rosie_0801 and @caffeineandbooks about that is way too much for any 1st grader, much less a child with so many diagnoses. Both Rosie and Caffeine & Books, as well as myself, all had children with learning issues, so we all are speaking from that specific experience and viewpoint. 😉 

Below is what I would cut for next year:

First Grade Game Plan

• Phonics: finish All About Reading 1, start AAR 2 after
• Phonemic Awareness: Heggerty Phonemic Awareness K
• Spelling: start All About Spelling 1 after AAR 1 completed
• Penmanship: Handwriting Without Tears K, 1st
• Grammar: First Language Lessons 1
• Composition: Writing With Ease 1
• Math: Right Start Level B, Saxon Morning Meeting only Level 1
• Science: RSO Life 1
• History, Geography: SotW 1
• Literature: TWTM 4th edition literature suggestions for ancients
• Judaics: one a day from My Weekly Sidrah, Yisrael Sheli, Our Jerusalem, and You Be the Judge
• Extras: speech therapy, swimming, karate, Hebrew School, Cubscouts, music lessons

Why I would cut:

- Spelling
Get phonics and reading dialed in first. Also Spelling is frequently not started until 2nd grade for children with NO learning disabilities/delays, so there is NO problem for you waiting until he is 8yo or so to start Spelling.

- Grammar
Many people wait until 3rd, 4th, or even 5th grade to start a formal Grammar program, with NO problems in waiting; many people just hit grammar in 4th, 6th, and 8th grades -- again, with no problems; if you really MUST start Grammar this year, then do FLL aloud together, gently, while curled up together on the couch -- make it a sweet and gentle time 2-3x/week, with no pressure

- Composition
Nope. NO need to start any formal writing program before 3rd grade even with a neurotypical child. A child with learning delays can wait even later. Maybe NEXT year, when he is reading fluently, then consider just adding in very gentle occasional things like a 2 sentence thank you to grandma for the birthday gift, or a 1 sentence response to a journaling prompt. And you can have him practice oral narration aloud to you -- NO writing needed. 

- Saxon Math
Well, I'm biased. I hate the abstract presentation of Saxon, and it was extremely overwhelming for my DS#2 with stealth dyslexia and ADD. If wanting to add in a math supplement, I'd go with Miquon -- very hands-on and discovery approach, which can work well for children with dyslexia who are "whole to parts" learners -- see "big picture" and intuit patterns, and then get down to the parts that make up that pattern. Check out the Education Unboxed videos to go with the cuisenaire rods (which are used in Miquon), even if you don't want to use Miquon.

- Literature
Sure, enjoy some of those WTM suggestions -- but don't limit yourself to ONLY reading about the ancients. Enjoy all the wonderful high quality picture books out there. And some of those early chapter books that are classic children's books that you can do another type of read-aloud. Have a weekly "poetry and tea and cookies" time to enjoy some fun selections out of children's poetry books. 

- side note about Science 
And honestly, Science does NOT have to be a formal program -- up through 6th grade it can be lots of exploration and following bunny trails of interest with lots of library books, kits, hands-on activities, field trips, nature walks, age-appropriate educational science videos, discussions and asking why and looking up things. That really helps children develop learning skills and keeps alive a love of learning. You could easily combine your 6yo and your Kinder child and read through the Let's Read and Find Out About Science series, and do activities to with that; watch The Magic School Bus series and read those books; visit your local museums, and do nature walks -- collect leaves, look for bugs and flowers, take a magnifying glass and examine the bark on trees and lichen on rocks...
 

[PeterPan]

nt

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by PeterPan

[heres_a_llama]

On 11/23/2021 at 2:12 PM, PeterPan said:

None of it matters when he's unintelligible.

New SLP who does PROMPT. 

New SLP for expressive language.

New SLP for literacy. (yes, that means three)

Evals for ASD, not ADHD, because apraxia almost never occurs in isolation. (cp, asd, nvld, downs, something)

OT eval for retained reflexes, because those hold back language development.

Audiology evals with someone who specializes in APD to make sure you're treating all the ways you process language.

Knock yourself out with all the academics you want after that. Anything he has energy for is fine. In our house, speech was the most important thing. He can be intelligible. My ds had moderate/severe apraxia and did PROMPT for his apraxia up until the covid shut down (age 11 ½). We drove 2 ½ hours each way for 9 ½ years to get him the best therapy. You can be intelligible way before you get all your sounds.

All the academics you're wanting involve language, so it really depends on what you're wanting to do with them. You just have to see how it goes with him, but you're wise to do way more testing than they're telling you and build a bigger team if you want good results.

I appreciate your edit. I'm new here and it's obvious that you speak from years of personal experience. I know per your original post that these replies were offered from a place of good will when you were having an off day (which we all have!)

The reality for my family is that we cannot afford the course of therapies that you've outlined above. We're struggling to pay for the 1x/week session for my daughter and the summer and school break sessions for my son (who receives from the school district from his IEP during the school year). We have one income, are tied to the area due to family care obligations, and have abysmal medical insurance from my husband's work. We can't afford marketplace plans and don't qualify for a subsidy. 

I would appreciate guidance on how to afford sessions from 3 SLPs and an OT. I can better understand how to budget for the evals which are presumably a one-time expense or once every three years.

[Lori D.]

8 hours ago, heres_a_llama said:

I appreciate your edit. I'm new here and it's obvious that you speak from years of personal experience. I know per your original post that these replies were offered from a place of good will when you were having an off day (which we all have!)

The reality for my family is that we cannot afford the course of therapies that you've outlined above. We're struggling to pay for the 1x/week session for my daughter and the summer and school break sessions for my son (who receives from the school district from his IEP during the school year). We have one income, are tied to the area due to family care obligations, and have abysmal medical insurance from my husband's work. We can't afford marketplace plans and don't qualify for a subsidy. 

I would appreciate guidance on how to afford sessions from 3 SLPs and an OT. I can better understand how to budget for the evals which are presumably a one-time expense or once every three years.

((((hugs)))) That is SUCH a difficult situation. It is so inadequate that all I can do is offer sympathy and hopes that you'll be able to find resources that work for your child AND work for the family budget.

[PeterPan]

23 hours ago, heres_a_llama said:

We're struggling to pay for the 1x/week session for my daughter and the summer and school break sessions for my son (who receives from the school district from his IEP during the school year

PROMPT is only done once a week. So first you find the therapist and get the diagnosis. Then you get a pro bono disabilities lawyer and fight the school to get them to pay for effective therapy since theirs is ineffective. And you get the autism diagnosis and get him qualified with your county for additional funding. And you join a parent FB group for your area and find a county with higher funding and move to that county. Moving 29-30 minutes, one county, can change things.

There’s stuff you can do yourself to make up the rest but PROMPT you can’t do yourself. We can teach you the rest on LC and point you to free and low cost resources. Your state may have a disabilities pending library.

No one else will fight for your child’s ability to speak but you. 

[PeterPan]

Also check is your district required to provide services? Some are, some aren’t . So if they are, you get evals to make data and you write IEP goals. Then they’re compelled to provide service. Those “3 SLPs”=pages of IEP goals. No evals, no data, no goals , no service. So you get the evals to provide the data to compel them to write the goals and provide service. They don’t OWN the tests you need, which is how they short circuit that.

In the school system, it's a team approach. So "3 SLPs" is doing it privately but in a school setting those goals would get spread across a variety of people on the team.

Edited November 30, 2021 by PeterPan

[Cake and Pi]

On 11/29/2021 at 10:34 AM, heres_a_llama said:

The reality for my family is that we cannot afford the course of therapies that you've outlined above. We're struggling to pay for the 1x/week session for my daughter and the summer and school break sessions for my son (who receives from the school district from his IEP during the school year). We have one income, are tied to the area due to family care obligations, and have abysmal medical insurance from my husband's work. We can't afford marketplace plans and don't qualify for a subsidy. 

I would appreciate guidance on how to afford sessions from 3 SLPs and an OT. I can better understand how to budget for the evals which are presumably a one-time expense or once every three years.

I feel you. I have four kids, all with alphabet soup diagnoses, and every one of them needs several different kinds of therapy. Forget paying for it all, it's not even logistically possible to get each kid to all of the separate appointments each needs in a given week without two stay-at-home-non-working parents!

Our solution: we don't do everything at once! We usually only do one or two kinds of therapy per kid at a time, and we cycle through the needed therapies and supplement with a sprinkling of recreational activities that can help work on areas that are on therapy breaks.

You could reasonably alternate between kids and rotate through therapies, especially if you continue working on at-home exercises (therapy homework) between rounds.

(Admittedly, we have gone into significant medical debt trying to meet all our kids' medical and therapeutic needs. Lame sauce. No particularly helpful advice for that one. One of my kids recently qualified for buy-in Medicaid for disabled children and that has already made a huge, HUGE difference for our family finances.) 

[PeterPan]

18 hours ago, Cake and Pi said:

Our solution: we don't do everything at once!

Not only that, but what you learn with one you apply to the rest. PROMPT is the only thing where that's harder, because it's very specialized. Not impossible, because there is parent training you can do (I've done it. Actually, if I had been good with my hands, I should have started SLP course work when ds got his diagnosis.) Everything else he might need (narrative language, etc. etc.) she can learn and then apply it to all the kids, making her initial investment in learning a great value.

Reality is it can be hard to find therapists to do what needs to be done, even if you have a (seemingly) unlimited budget. Learning how to do things yourself is definitely a big piece.

18 hours ago, Cake and Pi said:

qualified for buy-in Medicaid

Yes, this is why she needs to *start* by getting full diagnoses. She needs the diagnoses that open the doors to the extra funding that is out there. Some counties in our state literally *completely meet* all prescribed therapies, etc. They just have enough tax base to do that. Ours does not, lol, but an adjacent county does. And with more complete evals her dc will *probably * qualify with SSI/Medicaid. My ds would except that before 18 they look at income. It probably varies by state, but the list of categories they look at for qualifying is very diverse. It includes learning issues, communication issues, developmental issues, etc. So even though we might look at a person and say "his global diagnosis is autism" it really varies how many of those boxes a person ticks. And it doesn't have to be an ID (intellectual disability) kind of situation. 

I went through three lawyers (two pro bono, one paid) before I got my ds' disabling condition as autism in his IEP. That was several years of stress and pretty ugly stuff. It all boils down to evals. I found the evals that would show my ds' issues which gave the data which forced them to change the disabling condition and get him qualified for more funding. *I* found the evals (by the grace of God). I literally BEGGED THE SLP to buy the tests. Even the private SLP we were using didn't own them. At the time we weren't using anyone for expressive language, and really I only know of *one* SLP in the big city near us who is banging it out with expressive language. Unless you find an SLP like that, they don't own the tests. There's a really great SLP for literacy in the big city, but she doesn't take all types of funding. There's another practice that does, but frankly I'm not sure their SLP doing literacy is as qualified. (well trained with the extras) 

I think I used to be a nice person, deferential. Now all I am is crusty. Too many years of IEP fights and cynicism, too much asking for help and not getting it, too many times trying people who bill at 5-8X my dh's salary who STILL can't be bothered to buy the correct materials or tests for what they're claiming to do. 

[PeterPan]

19 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

severe fructose malabsorption.

That is AMAZING. So you found this with genetics or by elimination or it's a syndrome or?

When my ds was young, it was popular to use a supplement blend that was supposed to be magical. My ds didn't tolerate the fish oil in it (like REALLY did not, made him smell like fish and go ballistic), so we did flax oil. That *did* give a noticeable bump, enough that if he didn't have it before his sessions he didn't do as well. But it was more like smoothing the works, making the connections work better to do the work the therapist was trying to do, rather than curative on its own.

 

[PeterPan]

9 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

Most of my kiddos have had various GI issues

You know it's funny because I read about this in autism, that GI issues are super common, and other than a tendency toward gut dysbiosis we really haven't had anything remarkable with the gut at all. I guess it's just a mercy. But I think it also means that it's not a *mysterious* explanation, because you knew something was wrong and just didn't know what. Considering how much inflammation in general (from shots, from whatever) affects speech, what you're saying makes sense. My own speech went down after covid shot 1. So with shot #2 I got iv**me**in, which kept down the inflammation enough that didn't happen. So both real and not something the op has to worry about if she doesn't have GI symptoms. 

9 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

Omegas did make him hyper active

Oh that's interesting. I've never noticed anyone saying that, so that's just curious. Omega 3 seemed to help my dd's ADHD a *little* and they will say it for that. But it's slight. But making you more hyper, that would be wild, lol. I found something in our genetics about which omegas you tolerate and how you process them. I've lost track of it, but there's probably some explanation for what you were seeing.

I think that's the trouble with a lot of this stuff (psychiatry, DSM, etc.). We're looking at the outside and symptoms and presentations can overlap for very different reasons. So we get labels but they don't reflect the underlying genetics and can miss explanations that lead to a different diagnosis. Like me, I have an "anxiety" diagnosis, but when I dug in on the genetics I found I'm homozygous for something that causes anxiety as a symptom, which means I actually have a different diagnosis. So the anxiety is still there, but a different diagnosis was more explanatory. To me it's that constant weakness of the DSM and all our methods, that they're looking at the outside and trying to sort things out. For apraxia, there are known apraxia genes. I'm pretty sure they were in our 23andme data and that my ds was ticking one. So you could have all kinds of scenarios (apraxia gene maybe heterozygous and bent that way PLUS the fructose malabsorption pushing it even further, no apraxia gene and all inflammation, inflammation plus omega 3 not processing well which is also genetic, etc.). 

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Lovinglife123 said:

 It’s bad enough lately I have wanted to put him back in school,

I don't know how old he is, but my ds is 13 now and has puberty hitting the fan. It's interesting. On the one hand, I always have this we need to do more guilt thing, and on the other I have the get through puberty safely and call that success path. I think sometimes we have to define success by doing what is right for our kid, not by looking at others.

[Helpdesk]

Perhaps these articles from our website can be of help.  One of them was written by a staff member who faced these challengesl