Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional 2E dyslexia parents (or other E

I am curious what advice seasoned parents would give regarding this situation. My son is almost five. Despite having a really high IQ score, he can't sound out most words, struggles to write his name and in general gets letter sounds all mixed up. We do a phonics app together and he always gets p,d,b,q mixed up and u and n mixed up. He read "bye, bye" as "pye, pye" yesterday.
His subtests were fairly even (I remember block design being the highest), he sees an OT for sensory issues, and we have been doing some HWT (it has not been without tears for us, by the way).
I made a similar post a few months ago about scores not adding up with ability. Several people mentioned that they had high scoring kids who didn't read early. I am just a little more concerned now because he seems like he is trying and something isn't clicking.
Also, my FIL is an outrageously successful 2E dyslexic (and proud of it!). He definitely sees his dyslexia has giving him an edge in his area of expertise but remembers struggling in elementary school.
Perhaps, it is my kindergarten jitters. I just don't want to see him struggle for years if there is something we could do to help earlier.
My current plan would just be to wait a year or two and see how things progress. For those of you who have dealt with these concerns, what would you do?

It's normal for it not to be clicking at this age. There's a reason that historically kids weren't taught to read until age 6 (don't get me started on recent trends), and in some high-literacy European countries they aren't taught to read until age 8 or 9. There's a maturational thing that has to happen in a brain before the visual/attentional system can figure out what to do with all those little loop-de-loops on the page. Age 4 is simply too young to be deciding it's dyslexia. More likely, he simply isn't reading-ready yet.

I think we parents of gifties tend to freak ourselves out a little about things like this. We're so used to our kids being way out ahead of the curve that them being merely normal in some area looks really weird to us.

My own 4-year-old is on track to have a larger vocabulary than her kindergarten teacher (I exaggerate only slightly), but she is hopeless when it comes to small-scale spatial stuff like puzzles, and she's showing no signs of being an early reader. I periodically have to remind myself not to worry. Her visuo-spatial skills aren't behind, they're normal.

I agree. But I would also advise to read
The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain
so you can understand FIL better.

I know that Dyslexia isn't generally a visual problem, but it sure is worth it to check his visual system, both with a standard Optometrist, and a Behavioral Optometrist. It took a bit of extra time for my son's visual system control to mature, and his reading just didn't click in until late kindy/early first - in spite of knowing the letters and letter sounds at age 2! I sure wish I had had a place to post about that way back then - it was scary.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

From the other perspective let me just say that we also picked up on things early and were told over and over that DD was soooo far ahead of the curve that things that were age appropriate just appeared to be deficits. In our case, though, it turned out that they appeared to be deficits because they WERE deficits. I can't help but wonder if things would be easier for DD now if we had been able to convince people to follow through on our concerns when we initially brought them up.

I hope your teacher and school will be more responsive than ours if you continue to have concerns. We were told repeatedly that they would not even consider her for testing. "She'd never qualify - she's too smart." It was only after they tried to require that she attend summer school because she was reading below K level that we were able to get her tested. Luckily she was identified that summer between kindergarten and first grade. Still considered early to be identified but I look at as losing 2 years since we initially started asking about dyslexia when she was 4.

So he may be just fine - hopefully he is. I would not wait a year or 2 if your concerns continue, though. Things may start to click for him once kindy gets underway. Mine also has a larger vocabulary than many of her teachers and is hopeless with puzzles. She, though, has a fine motor and visuo-spatial issue along with the reading stuff. We have a second neuropsych eval scheduled next week so I am assuming we will finally get the formal diagnoses of dyslexia and dysgraphia - a bit more complicated than having just one or the other I think.

Good luck and try not to stress. Stay observant and ask questions but don't freak yourself out if you can help it.

I'm another 2E mom who will encourage you to get testing and intervention immediately-- BEFORE it becomes an issue. Early intervention for dyslexia can make a world of difference. It's very likely your son has it considering the writing and reading issues you describe, but most especially combined with the fact that his grandfather has it-- there's a genetic component. While neither my husband nor I have it, it turns out his uncle does. I don't believe intervention will take away his dyslexia, but it will give him tools to mitigate the problem.

My son with dyslexia is a twin. He never had trouble with letters or letter sounds, but he just could not sound out. His DYS twin learned to read at 3. I started to wonder about a reading issue at 4 because the boys are so similar otherwise, but I realized it's ridiculous to worry about dyslexia in a 4 yo. At 5, he told his K teacher he was worried he'd never learn to read, which she ignored. He made very little reading progress in K, but she said it just clicks later for some kids and she admonished me not to compare him to his obviously brilliant twin. This went on for 2 more years. So at that point I had suspected for 3 years there was an issue, and teachers were telling me there wasn't. Sadly, I wasn't informed enough to do something about it. I wish someone had grabbed me by the shoulders when he was entering K and said "GET HIM TESTED." So, that's my story. You have nothing to lose by getting him tested, but he has a lot to lose if he has dyslexia and isn't taught in the way he needs to learn.

ETA:
I also wanted to add that my son had the same writing issues you describe. Writing was and continues to be torturous to him. His name starts with a "J," and he still reversed that letter up until 2nd grade-- on his own name!! The woman who diagnosed him said that it was his writing that made the dyslexia most obvious to her.

I also want to mention another reason why it's important that your son read at the level of his IQ-- my son with dyslexia missed about 5 years of reading time and practice compared to his twin without dyslexia (ages 3-8). His twin devours books and spends almost 2 hours a night reading magazines, encyclopedia-type books and novels, and that began well before age 5. That is a LOT of information going into a developing brain that my dyslexic twin didn't have. We did read to him a lot, but we have 3 kids, so I couldn't just sit on his bed and read for an hour (although he would have liked that). He's a good reader now, but has decided he doesn't like reading. I really wish we could have prevented that.

Ditto to Pemberley's experience. 4-5 is a *tough* age because it's true that developmentally, the things you've mentioned may be right where a child is supposed to be - or they may be signs of a potential learning challenge, and it's really too soon for a teacher etc to know for sure just from academic performance. There are two red flags for me in what the OP wrote: 1) you're worried - I tend to trust a mom's instinct, and... 2) your child has a close relative with dyslexia. Dyslexia and related LDs may cluster in families. I'd also look for emotional clues in your ds - does he do his schoolwork happily or does he fight it, get frustrated etc.

FWIW, our ds has severe dysgraphia and many of the symptoms of stealth dyslexia as defined by the Eides. He also was doing everything you mentioned above that your own ds is doing - at almost 5. When he started talking, there was no doubt he was amazingly intelligent - the kind of intelligent that had adults' jaws dropping when he spoke. He went to a Montessori preschool for several years - and never chose any of the work that involved writing/learning letters etc. We tried teaching him the alphabet at home and he wasn't interested. In the meantime he was building amazing Lego structures, drawing incredibly detailed art, creating amazing tiny and detailed clay models, and talking like an adult. He loved loved loved having us read him huge books, but he wasn't interested in learning to read. We kept thinking he was a quirky smart kid (and he is lol). Then he got to kindergarten and he didn't write much. When he did write he reversed those letters you mention. This is a brief synopsis of my conversations with his first three years of elementary school:

K: "Should we correct him when he reverses his bs and ds?" Teacher: "No, it's developmentally appropriate. All the kids do this at this age."

1st: "Should he still be reversing his bs and ds?" Teacher: "Don't worry! It's completely developmentally appropriate. Lots of kids still do this at this age. We don't worry about that until 2nd grade."

2nd, beginning of year: "It seems like he is still reversing his bs and ds, and we thought he wouldn't be doing that by now." Teacher: "It's not unusual to still be reversing b and d in 2nd grade. We don't worry about that until 3rd grade."

2nd, spring of second semester: Our conversations with the teacher were over, ds was having panic attacks at school and at home, and his world was imploding on him.

These were a few of the other things we heard from teachers along the way:

K: "You just think he's smart because he uses such big words when he talks."

2nd, beginning of year: "Your ds isn't smart. He's lazy. He's staring off into space when I am talking to the class. He won't write anything."

2nd, spring of second semester: "Your ds has ADHD. I know it, I've seen it before."

FWIW, our ds does not have ADHD. He did have severe anxiety by the end of 2nd grade due to not understanding why he was having such a hard time trying to write when all the other kids in his classes were moving ahead and he couldn't figure out how to make the letters work on paper. We saw a private neuropsych that spring semester of 2nd grade and that's when he was diagnosed. Could it have been caught in testing earlier? I can't tell you that for sure, but I know that there were two key things that showed up on earlier IQ testing that he'd been through for a gifted program that were red flags: a relatively large dip in Processing Speed (coding) vs other subtest scores, and extremely low handwriting speed observed by the person administering the test (who felt it was nothing more than perfectionism). If we'd been to a neuropsychologist at that point in time, I don't know if they could have reliably given the extra tests he received in 2nd grade and made a diagnosis, but I know they would have asked additional questions which would have been enlightening and we'd never given a thought to: questions about early development (when did ds start crawling/walking/talking) etc. Other questions I can't remember right now too! One question for sure - did we have relatives with dyslexia or learning challenges (we do).

My two dds have also both struggled learning to read - for different reasons. One had severe double vision, the other has a deficit in associative memory. Neither one of those were things that were in any way obvious to us until they both entered school and started learning to read and it came slowly *as well as* started writing and we saw things like letter reversals etc.

So clearly I fall in the camp of - it can't hurt to look into it. You have a worry and you have a family history of dyslexia. You might have your ds tested and find out he's right on track developmentally and there is nothing to worry about and you know what? That is powerful information in and of itself - you'll know you don't have to wonder or worry! OTOH, if he is dyslexic or has a related challenge, you'll be able to start now with remediation and accommodation, and trust me, you'll be glad you knew early. Even if it hadn't helped at all with academics, if we'd only known in kindergarten that our ds is dysgraphic it would have relieved so much worry and anxiety in *his* life that we just didn't realize was there.

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - syoblrig was posting at the same time I was, so I didn't see the post until I'd posted, but... fwiw... if I'd seen it I would have said "ditto" to everything there too!

pps -I realized when I re-read all of this it probably sounds dismal and scary - and it's not! My ds is going into 7th grade this year and he's doing *great* in school.

I avoided addressing the developmental issues that did not mesh with what we saw intellectually because they still fell wi thin normal developmental guidelines. I also wonder if my son wouldn't be struggling so hard if we had fought for earlier intervention.

Trust your gut.

Yes!! I've said over and over to friends and family "I just don't know what normal is." For example, DS8 was 24 months when he mastered the alphabet, which thanks to DD9 (16 months) made me think he was delayed. Good grief.

I think most/many G&T kids (2E or not) have areas of "normalcy" which is... normal. Coming from a 2E perspective (DS8 ADHD) I see "normal" as a deficit, but I have to remind myself that isn't always the case.

Ditto, ditto polarbear, syoblrig and ABQMom! My DS11 was not reading at end of K (at 6yrs 3mos) and I spent the summer doing extra work through a reading class and tutors to get him up to speed. He still mixed up letters too, including, most bizarrely, p and m. He had the p/m confusion all the way through 1st grade.

Everyone kept telling me he was within normal, a late bloomer, but he was really struggling with dysgraphia. The "wait and see" approach apparently works well for a lot of kids because of the broad range of developmental "normal" but it's a terrible disservice to kids with dyslexia and dysgraphia.

I wish I had listened to my gut with DS before he was labeled a lazy underachiever who simply refused to write and spent so much time in the nurse's office with stomach pain due to school anxiety. He didn't get diagnosed until 4th grade when I had him privately tested. The school never identified him because he is bright enough to compensate well most of the time. That compensation takes quite a toll on the child though. Arrgh I still feel guilty about it.

As another mom of a HG dyslexic, I agree with all of the others who have said not to wait. I wish we had tested my DD before the end of first grade. It is amazing how quickly damage to self-esteem manifests.

I am curious if there is anyone out there with an HG kid where late reading was "perfectly normal." I think part of the problem is that school's just don't see that many three sigma kids so they don't know what is "normal" for a kid with an IQ of 145+.