Need to hear your best "late blooming" student stories. Late reader etc.....

[battlemaiden]

I have a dd who turned 7 last December. She is a sweet child but has been slow to do just about everything- writing, letter sounds, gross motor, fine motor, you name it.

 

I really think she is just a late bloomer. I'm not a big fan of testing her for any "problems" at this age. My gut tells me she just needs some intensive mommy time and some confidence. She has very little confidence.

 

I would love to hear some stories from you veteran moms. Tell me about those children who were slow out of the gates but still won the race. I just need a little boost.

 

It wasn't a struggle for my first two and honestly the two siblings below this dear child are moving along rapidly.

 

Hearing your stories will really help me, and hopefully others, to be more patient.

 

Thanks so very, very much.

 

Jo

[Old Dominion Heather]

Well, I'm not a veteran mom, but my sister was like your daughter. Mon homeschooled us both. I was reading well at 4 or 5. Rachael struggled to read well and didn't read independently until she was about 9 or 10. She preferred to be read to until she was about 17 or 18! Now she reads everything she can get her hands on. She is 21, finished college and doing fine. :D

[battlemaiden]

Heather- that's what I'm talking about. I know those stories are out there. Thanks for sharing.

 

Jo

[beansprouts]

My friend's son didn't read well until he was about 10 years old. By 12 he was devouring history books and (unabridged) classical literature. When she sent him to high school he tested at post-graduate levels. He is a senior this year and considering attending college as a history major :cool:

[Sue G in PA]

were "late bloomers" so to speak. My ds8 didn't take ANY interest in learning to read until he was 6. When HE wanted to learn...he really took off and is now reading way beyond grade level. Ds9 was a late reader as well. My ds5 is JUST now starting to recognize some letters and sounds (thanks to LeapFrog Letter Factory Video and MFW K!). She'll be just fine!

[kalanamak]

and later told me he'd been glad I was a girl so some man would take care of me (the joke is hubby is a SAHD and I did eventually go to med school, though late). I have a brother who made vroom vroom car noises at age 17, and he grew up into a completely mature, hyper-responsible guy with a professional job (he did not mature until at least 25). After my father died, my mother noted he was "giddy" when young (I didn't meet Papa until he was in his fifties). I can't imagine it, but believe it, given how long some of the rest of us took to mature.

 

My father sat and read with me every night. I was so wiggly and silly and ready to drop everything and run with the big dogs (older brothers). When it finally hit, it hit.

 

Math was another story and the nickel didn't drop until I was 21! 21! I was as amazed as anyone else. One day I was looking in horror at the algebra I was taking at a community college (an act of desperation) and I said "these symbols just stand for words and the rest is logic" and POOF, A+. Prior to that I'd done little but wet my knickers in math. Darned '60's "new math".

[Tammyla]

I've got one here. She didn't read well until almost 9 and still didn't love it. Then by age ten she became our reader. Honestly, we have to tell her to put the book down to eat, go to bed, take a shower you name it.

 

I'll admit getting kind of worried around age 7, but she was compliant, doing her lessons and making slow progress. We just stayed the course as there were no other red flags. Once her small motor skills became easy with writing her reading took off. ;)

 

Blessings~

[chiguirre]

Well, my ds is a whopping 2 or 3 weeks older than your dd, but I was tearing my hair out over his reading about a month ago. He just couldn't read fluently, he was sounding out everything and was in a real rut. Since he does have a diagnosis I'm prone to panic, even though autism and reading are fairly unrelated (some kids read early, some late, some never...)

 

What helped ds gain confidence is the Pathway preprimer First Steps. Since it looks like a real book (ds' words) because it's hardcover and fairly thick, 140 pages, ds was proud of being able to read it. It has a very controlled vocabulary with only 6-8 new sight words per lesson and there's not much to sound out. Ds's speed and confidence took off with this book. I'm amazed at the difference. He's more willing to try other books even if he doesn't know all the words, so we can finally read some early readers. He read Go, Dog, Go with very little help and I think we'll be able to tackle Little Bear soon. I'd highly recommend this book if your dd can sound out words, but just isn't taking off with reading.

 

I hope you can find something that gives your dd the confidence to read. Slow and steady really does win the race and it's far more important that they love reading than that they're the most advanced reader their age.

 

Good luck!

[Ellie]

she wanted to do everything herself and resisted my every effort to teach her to read. I pushed through WRTR for 6 weeks when she was 5, and when she was 6, and 7, and 8. Threw a little of R&S's Unit 0 (it has a different name, now) into the mix. Did WRTR for 3 months when she was 9, and that was it.

 

When she was 14 I started a school at my church and she went with me. I had "skipped" her a grade when she was 11 and enrolled her in the school as a sophomore instead of a freshman. I pondered whether to have her take the 9th or 10th grade SAT at the end of the year but went ahead with 10th, and she tested post high in almost everything, including English. When she started taking classes at the community college at 15, she was a little slow, but after a year she was ace-ing all her classes, including all the English and lit classes.

[prairiegirl]

My ds is a month younger than your dd and I was starting to get worried. I did get a test to administer to him by myself as he has speech problems and there are a few other red flags that are a concern. But I just wanted to encourage you in that I can see a difference in my ds in the past few weeks. He wasn't able to do his blends but he is starting to now and he was also not getting the concept of long vowels but, lo and behold, he's got that now, too.

 

If you do not see anything else in being a problem for your dd, just keep plugging away. I have started spending about 10 min. with him reading in the morning, and then 10 or 15 min. more in the aft. I also have started reading with him every day, not just on school days. We are also doing more reading games and I think that has helped as well.

 

Julia

mom of 3 (8,7,5)

[DollyM]

It was hard NOT to compare him to his older sister. SHE read early and voraciously. Writes like a pro. Very easy to school.

 

HE hit brick wall after brick wall during those early elementary years. But I could tell he was a much deeper thinker than his sister (at similar ages.) He thinks differently and wants to know the bigger more global picture about whatever he's interested in. She learns sequentially and must have information given to her "in order."

 

He preferred to be READ ALOUD to pretty much all the way through middle school. He's in 9th grade now and reads with remarkable degree of comprehension. Gets thru that horrid BJU Biology Book with no trouble at all - and can find information and synthesize it well. But in 6th grade, while he was academically ready for the concepts in Apologia General Sci, he could NOT read it independently. I read it aloud to him and he aced all the quizzes, etc.

 

During the summer after 7th grade things started coming together with regards to reading. I sent him to 10 day summer camp with "Eragorn" (sp? the big fat book about the dragon, written by homeschooler ? Anyway, it's huge.) And he claimed to have finished it when we picked him up. I didn't believe him and made his sister quiz him on it to verify (I didn't read it.) So in 8th grade I started giving him "da woiks" to read independently and now ... well, we're not looking back!

 

I'm so glad he was home during those "non-reader" years - I just kept plugging away at phonics programs, easy readers, comprehension workbooks, etc. And I never watered down his CONTENT areas - even if (as Apol. GS) I had to read it aloud to him. I never made a big deal of it, and he never EVER suffered under some stooopid idea that he was "behind" or "dumb."

 

Now he regularly proves to he rest of the world what a bright articulate kid he really is - but I shudder to think what his experience WOULD HAVE BEEN if he'd been forced into a traditional school scenario.

[EKS]

Story 1: I know a boy who didn't read until he was 8. By 8.5 he was reading books liked Kidnapped. But he still wouldn't write. I don't think he started writing until he was 10 or so. He is now 12 and doing high school level work in all areas.

 

Story 2: My son didn't start really reading until he was almost 9. He was slow in the motor skills department, talked late, was generally behind. We started homeschooling him when he turned 7. He is now 11 and reads unabridged classics because he wants to. He is working ahead of grade level in several areas (science, math, grammar). Writing also seems to be coming together for him this year too.

 

My son has had several diagnoses. Some were right on and some were just disturbing. The testing and diagnosis process was painful and took several years. I worked intensively on reading with him for three years. He did vision therapy and occupational therapy. He also had no confidence at age 7 because he didn't have anything to be confident about.

 

I think it is a mistake to wait for confidence to develop. Confidence is developed by experiencing successes. For some children, success is simply not going to happen without intense work, be that targeted therapy or focused lessons and practice.

[Robin Hood]

I don't have a story....yet....but I know will. I know some late bloomers and I question them to no end. I also question successful homeschoolers about their favorite and most hated subjects and how did it effect their choices in colleges and careers. I am very encouraged by that alone.

 

One homeschooler I recently questioned is very successful in the computer graphics end of the movie industry. His rates are so high that major producers hire him to teach others the how to do it. But he is leaving the industry because it's end is lonely and unfullfilling. It's too transient. The party life holds no interest for him and he wants to go back to school. He wants to be a teacher, get married and have a family. The producers think he is nuts. After spending some time with him, (he was not a late bloomer), I asked him if he liked math in school. He said no and he never did well. I asked him if his career needed him to know math and he said absolutely not. So I quit harping on my dd. I make her learn what she needs to and that is all. She'll figure it out when and if she has to. She is 2 years behind her peers and I am ok with that now.

[Kathy in MD]

By the time he was 7 he thought he was stupid. All his friends could read, but he couldn't. Even his cousin who was 2 years younger could read.

 

When he was 7, we started getting him tested. He had so many problems, he would never had learned how to read without therapy. It took several years to complete his therapies. Now he's 13 and can read and learn, but he still bears the scars - the lack of self-confidence and disinclination to work through difficult academic problems.

 

You may be correct, your dd may only be a late bloomer. But what if you're wrong? The best, fastest way to uncover that is to test. If you test now and nothing pops up, all you're out is some time and money. But if your dd does have a problem, then you can start getting her the therapy or remedial materials she needs NOW. She will not have struggled unnecessrily for 2 years or more.

 

No, I don't advise patience in this area. I listened to others who preached patience when my ds was struggling. My ds still pays the price today.

[readwithem]

my dd didn't like to read to herself till she was about 10. SHe would do it but only the bare minimum. She loved to be read to all the time - I think maybe she was afraid I would quit reading to her :)

 

Now at 16 she reads at least 2 hours per day between her assigned book and her "fun" book. She carries a book with her every time she gets in the car.

[Michelle in MO]

whom I've recently gotten reacquainted with through the internet! She was my best buddy in elementary school. Apparently, she struggled all through elementary school with reading. In summer school, the teacher yelled at her for being "stupid" (or something like that) and she said she didn't read another book until she got out of high school! She struggled through college, off and on, until finally, late in life, she discovered she had an undiagnosed learning disability---a form of dyslexia. She was majoring in chemistry at the time, discovered books on tape, and was given special permission to have extra time for exams because of the reading disability. Now she has a PhD in chemistry and reads voraciously (the actual hand-held books) and is working on writing a couple of novels. She's also working on her second master's degree.

 

BTW, her thesis topic was something about understanding HTLV-I enzymology and lead inhibitors for the treatment of HTLV-I infection! It was pretty impressive (at least to me, a non-science-oriented person)!

[Claire]

By the time he was 7 he thought he was stupid. All his friends could read, but he couldn't. Even his cousin who was 2 years younger could read.

 

When he was 7, we started getting him tested. He had so many problems, he would never had learned how to read without therapy. It took several years to complete his therapies. Now he's 13 and can read and learn, but he still bears the scars - the lack of self-confidence and disinclination to work through difficult academic problems.

 

You may be correct, your dd may only be a late bloomer. But what if you're wrong? The best, fastest way to uncover that is to test. If you test now and nothing pops up, all you're out is some time and money. But if your dd does have a problem, then you can start getting her the therapy or remedial materials she needs NOW. She will not have struggled unnecessrily for 2 years or more.

 

No, I don't advise patience in this area. I listened to others who preached patience when my ds was struggling. My ds still pays the price today.

 

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I didn't do anything for my dd until she started coming home from school saying she was stupid because all the other kids could read and she couldn't. She was 8yo. Testing showed severe phonemic awareness delays and severe visual efficiency delays. We were able to fully remediate her reading (to above grade level) in two years, but at 17yo we still deal with some of the fallout from loss of self-esteem in the early years.

 

Because the OP mentioned slow gross motor and fine motor development, I would highly recommend starting out with an occupational therapy evaluation. Find a good OT, call their clinic, describe your child, and then ask about insurance coverage for an eval. Clinics deal with insurance companies every day and can usually tell you *exactly* how a referral needs to be worded or coded. Even if this eval shows nothing delayed, you will benefit because you will be able to rule out an entire class of vestibular development problems.

 

I too bought into the "late bloomer" philosophy. My dd wouldn't have bloomed at all if I had not sought out testing and remedial services.

[Jackie in AR]

You may be correct, your dd may only be a late bloomer. But what if you're wrong? The best, fastest way to uncover that is to test. If you test now and nothing pops up, all you're out is some time and money. But if your dd does have a problem, then you can start getting her the therapy or remedial materials she needs NOW. She will not have struggled unnecessrily for 2 years or more.

 

No, I don't advise patience in this area. I listened to others who preached patience when my ds was struggling.QUOTE]

 

I completely agree. I, too, listened too long to others who preached "late blooming."

 

If something is wrong, you don't want to wait. My dd had just turned 9 when we finally decided the time had come. We should have done something much sooner.

 

(Sorry, battlemaiden, I know this isn't what you want to hear. But it might help someone else who is trying to decide what to do.)