Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Stealth dyslexia - how do you know?

Another poster wrote about stealth dyslexia in a recent post. How do you know if your child has it? I've been concerned for the past couple of months that DS6 perhaps has mild dyslexia because he sounds out words and syllables backwards sometimes, inserts sounds into words that aren't there, leaves out sounds that are there, and mixes up similar sight words. His reading continues to be a struggle compared to his critical thinking and math/science skills.

His first grade teacher says this is normal first grade reading behavior, and the testing specialist who did his IQ testing in 2010 and his KTEA testing last April said that he showed as advanced in reading (although only by 6 months, compared to 2+ years in math), but agrees that his reading skills are anomalous considering the rest of his cognitive abilities are one to two years ahead. His FSIQ is 130 (98th percentile) and verbal subtest is 137 (99th percentile) on the WPPSI. Processing speed is down at 55th percentile (don't remember the exact score).

For awhile I thought he couldn't have dyslexia - he's in the advanced reading class, although in one of the lower groups in the advanced class, and his KTEA test showed him about 6 months advanced for his age. Then I started wondering if the rest of his smarts are covering it up - for a child whose cognitive abilities are one to two years ahead, reading at grade level is really reading one to two years behind.

DH has some of the same reading issues DS has, which also makes me wonder if it's something more than just a child who's slow in reading.

So how do you know if your child has stealth dyslexia versus having a child who's just stronger in math/science and slower in reading?

It can be difficult to tease out reading problems at this age - because the students are "just out the gate" so to speak, it is fairly easy to score well on many measures of reading. But, there are red flags that can be considered (many that you you listed such as sight word difficulty, missing/inserting sounds when reading etc) as well as tests that measure the underlying processes for reading.

My sense is that a school evaluation would not yield you the information that you need. Instead, would be better off seeking help from a reading specialist, neuropsychologist or even maybe a Speech and language pathologist with an expertise in literacy/reading. They would most likely test the underlying phonological skills and naming skills needed for reading. THey would also look at patterns within his cognitive profile (for instance relatively weak processing speed compared to verbal comprehension) for clues.

Here is some info on some of the tests:
http://www.concordspedpac.org/Whichtest.htm

Hope this helps!!

I am far from an expert, so my response is based solely on my own experience with raising three gifted kids, one of which has dysgraphia.

As a parent of a gifted child, I think one of the biggest challenges is to not expect our children to be equally gifted in all areas. And I also think it's tougher on us to discern when our child has a learning disability because of the masking that can happen due to their higher IQ's and ability to adapt.

That being said, listen to your gut. My son was very advanced in many areas at a very young age, but there were warning signs early on as well. When he wrote on a page, he wrote as if he didn't even see the lines on the page. His writing drifted off the page so that by the bottom of the page, he could only get one or two words because of drifting so far right. He couldn't tie his shoes. Or ride a bike. Or zip zippers. But he could produce his own movies, compose his own music, and memorize entire audio books.

And because he wasn't two full years behind in school, he didn't qualify for testing.

But my gut said something was wrong, no matter what the school said standards of normal development were.

I took him to a private psychologist who diagnosed him with a severe dysgraphia. He's now 11, and the interventions we put in place when he was 6 have made all the difference in his level of successes with things that the experts weren't sure he'd ever master.

So my only real input is to say this: listen to your gut.

Your situation sounds similar in some ways to ours. Our oldest dd is HG with no major 2e issues. Dh has ADD and, I suspect, dyslexia. Dd11, the younger of our two, has been dx with ADD, inattentive type, and I still wonder about dyslexia. Her GAI on the WISC at age 7.5 was in the 99.9th percentile and her reading scores, while above grade level, never come close to matching that. At age 8.5 we had more private testing done and her reading comprehension was in the top quartile while her speed was in the bottom quartile.

What I see still (she's in 6th grade) is a child who doesn't like to read and who reads slowly. She also continues to be an erratic speller who spells the same word multiple different ways in the course of a single page.

When she was younger, she could sound out and read challenging words like "extrapolate" but frequently substituted words like "for" instead of "from," for example which made comprehension challenging. She also frequently lost her place on the page and would stop mid-sentence to insist that the sentence made no sense where it would have had she read the entire thing.

For us, it is hard to tease out whether it is just the ADD or whether there is something more there. We've had some success with supplements for ADD but we've not tried prescription medication.

My dd6 was diagnosed with dyslexia over the summer (between K and 1st grade.) In case it helps here's what we saw:

I noticed a hand-eye coordination issue when she was about 18 months old but was unable to get the pediatrician to refer for a fine motor eval until she turned 5. I kept getting the explanation that she was "so far ahead of the curve" on most things that something that is age appropriate appears to be a deficit when it is not. I kept bringing it up until finally when she turned 5 I basically demanded the eval before she started kindergarten. Of course it showed a significant deficit and we began OT and PT in a furious effort to get her to grade level before starting school.

Her kindergarten experience was just awful - she was in an extremely punitive environment and totally shut down. While she would read for us at home - not enjoying it and not always easily - at school she would not even acknowledge that she knew her letters. Every time I asked for assistance with either the fine motor or reading we were told "She'll never qualify - she's too smart." We were at a regional magnet with multi-age classrooms but the school was required to contact our town to explore the issues and they never did. The school's literacy specialist refused to make eye contact and changed the subject when we raised the question of dyslexia.

It was June of her kindergarten year before we finally got the information on who to contact ourselves. When we met with her we explained some of what we were seeing with dd's reading - at times reading easily at other times it was as if the words just disappeared from the page, sometimes reading the correct word but moving its placement in a sentence, almost always confusing "b" and "d", adding or leaving out sounds, recognizing a word on one page but being totally unable to decipher it on the next page, etc. She tended to use the pictures and context for reference rather than working to sound out the words. The school psych from our town who held this meeting and did the special ed testing at first scoffed and told us she couldn't have dyslexia if she was able to read so well at some times. When she saw dd�s handwriting she realized that something was going on and decided to do a full special ed eval.

The testing showed 98% percentile for oral comprehension, 5th percentile for visual perception and processing speed. She was also clinically anxious from her school experience so I believe these numbers were probably somewhat off but they clearly showed a gifted kid with significant learning disabilities. When the school psych told me the results she started by saying "You were right � I didn�t believe it but you were right!"

We changed to our local public school who is taking a major interest in her since her scores were so unusual. She is receiving pull-out special ed daily to work on the reading while participating in the highest reading group for comprehension. Apparently there are 4-5 other first graders with very advanced comprehension so I think she will be in a group with them soon even while the special ed teacher works on her actual reading skills. As far as reading at grade level really translating to being behind yes, a relative who is a pediatrician specializing in ld issues made it clear to me that based on my dd's comprehension anything below 4th grade reading level would be considered remedial.

I hope this helps. I know that if I had relied on the school to pick up on this my dd would have been way, way behind before it was caught. Smart kids do indeed cover up the deficits. Look for how your ds does when he is tired � that is when his giftedness is least likely to mask the problems.

Good luck!

DS14 still has poor decoding skills. His reading comprehension is excellent, but his spelling is very erratic. In grade 1,he was reading about a year behind where he was supposed to be. After 18 months of phonics tutoring twice a week, he was reading chapter books. His rapid naming skills are very low while his VCI is very high, and his decoding skills were at the low end of average.

The Mislabeled Child book by the Eides and their blog got me thinking about stealth dyslexia, and we had it confirmed with educational achievement testing.

I am struggling with the same kind of issues as several have posted but we are a few years farther along so finally arranged private testing for DD9 (HG), scheduled for next month.

I first noticed the typical letter reversals in K and 1st grade and heard the same comments about normal first grade issues. This with a student reading around 3rd grade level in early 1st. In retrospect I noticed that she tended to be a whole word reader and struggled using phonics to sound out new words. DD skipped 2nd and went to 3rd successfully, remaining in the top 5-10% of the class. I still saw occasional letter and number (usually 3s) reversals, but not frequent.

Got to 4th grade and noticed that she would ace spelling tests, but then not be able to spell the same words in writing activities a few weeks later. She was reading fluently, still assessed about 2 grade levels above grade. But I started to notice difficulty in reading aloud - she would skip or replace words, struggle with sounding out and pronouncing words that she was capable of using in conversation. None of this was what I would consider frequent, but enough that I noticed. She stuggled with the increased writing requirements in 4th grade, also. She couldn't write as fast, which usually meant she didn't write as much.

Since 4th grade she had complained of vision problems; visits to the regular eye doctor showed no problems, but based on her insistence the Dr. finally prescribed minimum reading glasses, which she uses consistently. Now we are in 5th and still every once in a while I see the number reversals. Still struggles somewhat with spelling, still struggles with the writing, especially keeping up with the class, taking notes, copying the schedule, etc.. She seems to do fine with reading comprehension and vocabulary, but really seems to have difficulty with making inferences from reading. We can discuss any book she has read for pleasure and she can relate specific scenes as well as character motivation and plot points, etc, but reading short passages from the school curriculum and making inferences in a test/assessment context is kinda hit or miss.

It was hard to make the decision to move forward with the testing, since this doesn't really look like a problem, but something is not quite right. I'm just not sure how much of this might just be developmentally normal, which is why I've waited so long. After discussing with the psych who will do the testing I decided to go ahead and do the testing now, rather than waiting to see if it gets worse. The advice I got from the psych is that middle school is often the place where she sees these types of issues really manifest in the HG/2E students. That is the point where the instructional materials become too dense to pick up context cues that they rely on in other types of reading. Prior to this point some of these students camouflage these difficulties by working around them but it becomes more difficult the further they go in school. I figured I'd rather know sooner than later since it's so much harder to recover once things go downhill than it is to prevent falling off the cliff in the first place.

I didn't even try going through the school though, because I'm sure they don't see a problem - she is still in the top 5-10% in her grade, reading 2+ grade levels ahead, and actually seems to have a good teacher fit this year. Besides as reluctant as they were about the acceleration, I'm not interested in giving them anything they could use for an "I told you so" moment. So I sypmathize a lot with you and the other posters about the concern that school doesn't think anything is wrong.

Just a little perspective from later down the road. Not that I have any answers yet.

Ditto to almost every single thing written above...

Acing spelling tests and then never able to spell or read the word again.

Achievement testing all over the board. GORT scores wer 95-99%-ile and she read at 5-6th grade level in grade 2
BUT she skipped words that she did not know or inserted nonsense words that started with the same letter.

Unable to sound out words. In fact, I have NEVER heard her even attempt. It is always wild guesses. But, with her fabulous memory she can remember a lot of words if she is exposed to them often enough.

Couldn't tie her shoes, ride a bike, tell left from right.

Biggest red flag to me was mistakes on tests due to misreading test questions. Her comprehension is amazing in long passages with lots of context to help her guess at words. With short test questions, one word wrong means the question is misunderstood. She has failed math tests due to this.

She fit every single sign of dyslexia EXCEPT the reading part. But, when you pay very close attention you can see that she has memorized words and she is unable to decode even the easiest of words.

Reversing b and d (these are the only reversals)

Spelling is atrocious!! Printing very messy re: mild dysgraphia

Flat out refused to write anything. Written output did not even come near her cognitive abilities.

Two suggestions for you to check out:

http://dyslexicadvantage.com/forum/topics/stealth-dyslexia-writing

http://dys-add.com/videos/dyslexiaSymptomsSolutions_Part01.html


And read The Mislabeled Child!! Awesome book!

This basically sums up my ds, who has been diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder, Dysgraphia, Disorder of Written Expression and an Expressive Language Disorder. He fits the Eides' description of a stealth dyslexic but the professionals we work with don't define his diagnoses as "Stealth Dyslexia" - it seems to be only recently that some private professionals are picking up on the Eides' take on it and using the term in a diagnostic sense.

polarbear

I agree with many of the other posters. I agree you should get your child tested if you suspect a problem. It will be good for you to know what is going on. At the same time, be cautioned that a stealth dyslexia type diagnosis may not get you very far with school.

Our experience is similar to many here. I noticed many of the omissions and reading errors that you mentioned. DD technically was at grade level in kindergarten and first grade. With the exception of one subsection one of the many times that she had DIBELS screening, she always tested as proficient or advanced. She entered a GT classroom in 1st grade based on CoGat and NNAT tests administered by the school district. I was told that she had nonverbal and quantitative strength areas and was high average verbally. My gut didn't buy it.

She struggled through 1st grade. I dubbed it the year of tears. Weekly spelling packets became a major battle ground. In fact, any writing became a huge fight. School still held that nothing was amiss. She was at or above grade-level in everything and still appropriate for a gt classroom.

We paid for private IQ and achievement testing after first grade. WISC-IV came back as highly gifted with no areas of concern, subsection scores ranged from 97th to 99.9th percentile. Based on IQ, the tester indicated that she should be a couple years ahead in school. WJ-III scores were a different story -- broad math was high, broad reading was very, very average and her spelling subtest came in at the 3rd percentile. The educational psychologist included some other screener for dyslexia. She concluded that DD was dyslexic and dysgraphic. We paid for further testing through Lindamood Bell to try and nail down the specific areas of concern. The results were scattered all over the board, including higher comprehension scores on some of the more difficult passages. The tester had no experience with 2e kids and did not understand DD at all. She theorized that DD had higher comprehension on the ones that were more interesting(?) Most of DDs reading scores hovered around the 50th percentile so the salesperson asked me why we were there.

School hasn't completely bought the dyslexia argument and they say many gt kids have writing issues because "they taught themselves to write so early." I have managed to get her a 504 that gives her more time and access to assistive tech. I don't know how long I will be able to keep these accommodations.