Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional When remediation becomes hot housing

A good place to be although a bit uncomfortable.

DS6 was determined to have dyslexia, dyspraxia and dysgraphia last Oct. He has worked very hard and now his teachers say he is reading at a second grade level if not a bit higher. As an entering first grader this puts him about a year ahead.

We are following the plan in the neuropsych assessment. Toe by Toe at home, lots of reading together and Lindamood Bell this summer.

So this means our six year old who is ahead at least a grade is spending twenty hours a week of his summer break doing reading tutoring.

Anyone else deal with something like this?

If the child is also gifted remediation efforts need to continue until achievement matches ability. So, for example, my son has dyslexia, and we didn't stop with the extra effort devoted to reading until his achievement was at the 99th percentile, and even then I monitored his reading for several years and did tune ups as necessary.

I would agree with Kai. Until his reading is commensurate with his ability (is it in the 140s?), which would be at least within a standard deviation, the reading deficit is as severe as being more than a grade level behind would be for an NT kid. And it is very important to do remediations like TBT and LB now, while he is young, and doesn't have a huge store of memorized reading vocabulary yet.

Yes, his ability is a 140+ level.

I think what I am struggling with is how to explain to teachers, tutors, etc. that him being one year ahead or even two years ahead isn't enough and that we are going to keep doing extra work (on top of year round school) until he is ____ years ahead. (Not sure what 99.99% on achievement is in grade equivalents)

I was not even sure if ability/achievement equality was a possibility. I was just thinking we were trying to lessen that huge almost 60 point gap. It is working obviously but there is still work to be done.

He handles it all really well and is good natured about all the extra work. So that isn't the issue.

It is more how to frame our goals without sounding like crazy tiger parents and losing creditability. It is one thing to talk about 2e generally and everyone agree that yes, yes he is very bright boy and everyone has strengths and weaknesses and then another to lay out expectations that he be working ____years ahead by _______ time and we plan to measure his progress at regular intervals to see that this is happening.

All of this is being done privately so we aren't dealing with a school district. He goes to private school and Lindamood Bell currently.

I think, if possible, it would be best to frame it as wanting his percentiles to line up as much as possible rather than in terms of years ahead. One reason is that with ability in the HG+ range, grade equivalents become meaningless fairly quickly in that by mid-elementary (or even earlier) all the grade equivalents come back as 13+.

i never thought of that as something to do. Personality comes into play. Ds7 statistically has the highest IQ for his school. I never thought he should test highest in his year.

Without remediation he could begin to rely on bad decoding strategies (e.g., guessing based on context and the initial letter, identifying words by shape, etc.). Once these methods are set, they can be very difficult to break. And he's obviously got the ability to develop some of these alternate strategies.

His tutors should know how important it is to form a strong foundation in phonological awareness & effective decoding methods. If they don't seem to understand, then I'd seriously consider finding someone else.

KJP, we've been through remediation for two 2e kids (one dysgraphic + expressive language disorder, one dyslexic). FWIW, we didn't ever look at the remediation relative to grade level or even (honestly) to ability level (much) - more on that below. The one thing that we did that was a little bit different than your approach is we never attempted to send them through the equivalent of 20 hours a week in the summer (or even more than 1-2 hours per week with tutors and therapists) during school. Our kids, quite frankly, got tired and burned out, and the benefits of the extra time with the tutor were stripped by that level of burn out. Both of my 2e kiddos had to work really hard at their remediation/etc - and to put them through that much time working on the thing that was both *hard* and that they quite honestly don't like to do, was just too much for them. In the "long" run I also don't think it held them back terribly in accomplishing what they need to accomplish in "catching up" (more on what that means below too!). I basically looked at elementary school as the time you work on filling in the basics of those skills, and that got my ds far enough over his written expression hump that he was able to be placed where he needed to be intellectually (as much as you can within the school district) entering middle school and high school. He is still working 1 hour per week with an SLP through the school year and also works individually with me at home as time permits. My dd is still in elementary school and still not as "caught up" with her reading skills, but she's made enough progress that I expect she too, will be in a good place all around re skills needed to take advantage of advanced programs going into middle school. OTOH, neither one of them is ever going to be "independent" with these skills in the same sense that neurotypical kids are. DS has to use AT and also relies on consciously using specific strategies when he writes. DD needs audio books to take in knowledge at her ability level while continuing to build her reading skills.


I wouldn't explain it in terms of *justifying* it to teachers - unless your ds is receiving individualized instruction through school. I would mention it if it is helpful to you in understanding his performance at school, and I would be sure that you're on top of what his academic needs are at school and be sure the tutoring is addressing them. Other than that, I'd keep a very separate frame of mind re tutoring (outside) vs school. Tutoring to build reading skills is important in and of itself - emphasize that to your ds if he questions why you are doing it. Explain the same to his teachers. I'm guessing your ds is not the only student who is being tutored outside of school. If his teachers choose to view it as hothousing, so be it.


I think it's important to not worry about reaching grade equivalents and also not to over-think tests such as the WJ-III Achievement tests etc - they are really really valuable for determining specific skill set areas and tracking progress on those specific skills, and it's ok to try to get your ds to the same level of score there (percentile) as he is on ability. It's also important, though, to focus on *why* you are remediating - it's not about reaching a grade equivalent or percentage etc - it's about giving your ds the skills he needs to support the level of learning he ultimately wants to do and to support him in the work world, and finally to allow him to enjoy life outside of school/work.


FWIW, (and keep in mind - I'm not a professional, just a 2e parent) - I am guessing here you're talking about comparing something like WISC (ability) and WIAT or WJ-III (achievement). Our 2e ds' WJ-III Achievement tests still don't match his ability and still have quite a bit of scatter in them (although, otoh, we saw one subtest spring from 10th percentile to 98th percentile after SLP work targeted at that specific skill). Anyway, what has been more *useful* to us (working within the school district) are the TerraNova/etc type scores... and yes, those scores *did* come up into the same percentile range as ability for ds after he received remediation and accommodation. DD, otoh, scores just extremely erratically on everything - and for her, I think part of it is test-taking skill, wanting to rush through, combined with her dyslexia.

{quote]It is more how to frame our goals without sounding like crazy tiger parents and losing creditability. It is one thing to talk about 2e generally and everyone agree that yes, yes he is very bright boy and everyone has strengths and weaknesses and then another to lay out expectations that he be working ____years ahead by _______ time and we plan to measure his progress at regular intervals to see that this is happening.[/quote]

I wouldn't lay out those expectations with the school - I'd just include details of what he has accomplished/etc with as much as you can provide in the way of data to show the progress.

If it's his tutors you are having difficulty explaining your expectations and goals to - I agree that it might be time to look for new tutors. We haven't ever had any of our tutors suggest our kids *stop* or not shoot higher. We have had professional tutors/therapists graduate our children from their services when our kids had reached their goals with that person and that person also was not used to working with older/more advanced kids.

Best wishes,

polarbear

As usual, polarbear has put it very well, and very thoughtfully.

I'll add that, from the standpoint of effective remediation, although the recommendation of most of the programs of this type (OG, LB, TBT) is for 4-5 sessions per week, in fact, the research says that many kids will derive nearly the same benefit from as few as two sessions a week. (This may or may not be your kid, of course.) So if you're torn between maintaining his progress over the summer and giving him more of a summer vacation, you can pretty safely cut back by half without sacrificing a great deal of reading/spelling progress, and pick it up again in the fall. Especially if you are doing both TBT and LB, which are pretty much the same general approach.

Our DD (FSIQ 146) has a handwriting disability, primarily ligament laxity related. At 5 we were told full time keyboarding by yr2-3 and to be happy if she could tick boxes and sign her name as an adult. I undertook a persistent therapy regime through yr1 (she was accelerated so she started yr1 at 5.5yrs). One year later she was 2yrs ahead of age and 1yr ahead of grade for handwriting speed and neatness, suddenly the OT thought she might make it all the way through the junior years with handwriting not keyboarding. Another year later, reduced but continued therapy, and she is no longer producing those sorts of massive gains and the other kids are developing normally (ie catching up and over taking). Her neatness is still very good for age but her speed is back down to the 25th and falling and we are back to expecting full time keyboarding very soon.

Essentially what we were seeing was a HG+ child with exceptional understanding of what we wanted her too do, given the right tools and therapy, applying everything she had to making her body do it. But there are limits...

Dyslexia is a different kettle of fish than a physical handwriting disability but keep in mind that this sort of thing can happen. My dyslexic child (different child) did not read well until yr4+, but once she started to crack the code she's gone from strength to strength and never dropped backwards, there have been some slow downs but not enough to lose ground. She's in yr7 and still has some odd issues but she's well above grade and increasing her gains not losing them.