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.

I should also add that like Polarbear we don't do "therapy" during holidays, we do it school days only. We do, however, make sure their extracurricular are carefully chosen and significantly therapeutic. Climbing trees and ropes and monkey bars are all significantly therapeutic for my DD with the hand issues, but they aren't "therapy" to her, so is Piano. Swimming, circus classes and piano have all been major parts of my Dyslexic child's therapy - massively improving left/right integration, crossing the midline, and sequencing skills. And we push back pretty hard if they try to quit an extra that we consider to be still a genuine therapeutic need.

Thank you everyone for the replies.

The summer timing of Lindamood Bell was necessary because the center near us is seasonal. My in-laws are also seasonal residents and are his transportation for his sessions.

DS has several issues (dyspraxia, dysgraphia, dyslexia, SPD, and a connective tissue disorder).

With this "E" combo and the giftedness, there is always something to work on. He finished up a two year stint of OT in May. Last year he had both OT and PT for a while.

DH and I work full-time. I also spend about 1.5 hours in the car commuting everyday. DS is in school from 8:00-5:30 M-F year round except for a few weeks off. I think I am just ready for a break.

This is why my daughter took dance for many years with a very wonderful and patient teacher. And both my kids took theater for a while.

That said, sometimes it works better to get the precise therapy that you child needs. I send my daughter to an educational therapist for 8 years and I am very glad I did.

My teenager will be taking writing classes this summer. He is not thrilled, but he needs the practice and there really isn't time during the school year to add on one more thing. He will also get lots of just hang out at home and go away to camp time as well.

Our son is dyslexic and dysgraphic also and a DYS. He always scores in the 99% on all tests so I get how it is uncomfortable to do remediation. We have done outside speech/vision and some tutoring. I always explain it like this. He really cannot read and although it may not be a problem until college when he sees words he does not know, it is not fair to him that he never learns to read or that we set him up for such failure when we can do something now. His dyslexia tutor totally gets this as does his speech therapist.

His school does personalize his goals and education plan. According to my friends with public school attending kids, my son's kindergarten math and reading work is second grade material at their kids' schools.

He gets small group or individual instruction and a weekly set of assignments based on where he has demonstrated to be working in each subject.

They accelerate as they see the need with little reference to grade levels. They skipped a big chunk if first grade reading material after we started doing TBT at home. It is great and the parents are very much a part of the team in deciding what the goals should be. There are no report cards in the traditional sense and a kids' grade at school is only a reference to their year in school not the work they are doing. My interest in the grade level equivalents are not so they can put him in a different classroom.

I am interested in what work would be appropriate for a child with his cognitive ability as a measure for where he is headed with remediation and whether he could access it now with an accomodation.

aeh, can you cite the research that supports 1-2 days per week efficacy for OG?

KJP, I wouldn't talk about achievment levels with the tutors, but instead to address those phonological skills that he must learn, and by nature of his dyslexia, he's unlikely to learn through standard educational practice. Because of his cognitive abilities, he's going to move through those skills faster than most kids starting at this age, but he still needs to develop these skills. His dyslexia means that he will need to be taught those skills instead of absorbing them through exposure to text as many students do.

Sounds like you have gotten great advice from all, but the one thing I would add is that my biggest regret is not doing Lindamood-Bell in Kindergarten/first grade when it was first recommended b/c he was "ok" and still ahead 1 1/2 grades. We waited until mid-2nd grade when he had stagnated his learning and hadn't moved a reading level in over a year. The beginning of 2nd grade was a complete mess with his frustration, anger etc. b/c he couldn't "get it" and was acutely aware that the beginning of 1st grade he was in the "highest group" and now he was close to the bottom. The intensive program made a world of difference for him (he even admits that it was worth the time) and now he is focused, reading, learning etc. etc. I have nothing but good things to say about the program. As a working mom too, the one thing I would make sure you do is have both you and whoever helps him with homework him after school go to the weekly meetings and the end of the year. Continuation of the program is as important as the intensive remediation and if its a seasonal clinic, you will have to do it at home (its not that hard, you just need to learn the key words to use with him). I hope its as successful for you and your DS. Good Luck!!

It's pre-publication work from a poster presentation at the last national school psych convention. Both authors are from UMN, and the first author is affiliated with this reading research group at UMN:

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/reading/

I certainly wouldn't recommend that 2x/wk be the standard protocol based on one research study, but I think it is enough data to say that 2x/wk over the summer is likely to be sufficient for maintaining a student's progress over those two months.

Thanks, aeh! I will look forward for it to be published. Indeed, knowing that 2x week over the summer can help a lot of people that pick up the slack out of pocket over the summer.

KJP, you seem confident in your path, but if you find yourself doubting it, there is a significant literature that these therapies not just teach the skills, but also change the functioning of the brain as a result, something that is retained once therapy is concluded. My DD's school psych forwarded me a long list of citations backing this up. I'm happy to share if you are interested in reading more. (I'm a original literature person - I find the books written for parents/teachers frustrating reads.)

I think I have worked out a way to get testing, tutoring and school all coordinated.

DS's teachers are going to spend some time at the seasonal Lindamood Bell center with DS and their tutors this summer. After his session, he will do some exit testing and they will develop a plan for continuing at school.

Then in the fall, the year round regional Lindamood Bell center has agreed to come out to DS's school for a follow up with his teachers and to see how DS is doing.

So I think this approach will cut out the "go to school all day and then work with mom at night" thing we've had going on for a very long time. He'll be getting this stuff done at school.

You have gotten some great responses! Frame it as "working to potential" and leave it at that.

DD11 is a A/B student that reads at 12+grade despite dyslexia. She is working with a private OG/Lindamood tutor because the child cannot spell to save her life. She has no phonemic awareness. And, she really doesn't read as a typical child does. She is a whole word reader with a photographic memory. Give her an unfamiliar word and she guesses. We have not experienced any negative responses from her school about the extra tutoring (that we pay for!). We want her to lessen her frustration and allow her to shine like we know she can. Her dysgraphia and ADHD all have accomodations, too. This is her dyslexia accommodation IMHO.

DS5 is hitting every requirement for grade primary. But, we have him seeing an OT for suspected dysgraphia and an SLP. He will start with the same OG/Lindamood tutor next year. We aren't even waiting for the diagnosis that we know he will get. I don't give a flying hairy care for what anyone thinks about how we support our kids at home. I am so disappointed in the lack of school support that I figure they have lost their right to an opinion when it comes to my kids. If they are going to leave me to figure it out on my own, than they can sit down and shut up about what we choose to do!!

DS is finishing up his eighty hours at Lindamood Bell this week. He has completely surpassed the goals set the first week of instruction.

For example, the first week the director said they hoped he'd get through four hundred sight words and that would be a great place to be for a starting first grader. That was quickly amended to 800 then 1000.

He seems to be jumping a grade level each week. He said today he read a fifth grade book there and "rocked it"

His spelling has improved too. He is posting signs all over the place in Minecraft.
I can just pick random words and he can spell them correctly.

He is reading for pleasure all the time now. In the last week, he's gone through the Frog and Toad collection, Curious George collection and tons of non-fiction.

He met up with some friends at the library and read them some ghost stories. It was so cute to see the kids on the couch in the kids' section huddled together sharing books.

While at the library he read an advertisement for a Minecraft group for older kids. He inquired about the age limit, advocated for an exception and was denied. The awesome part was that he didn't freak out!

He also read about the summer reading program and signed himself up for that. The conversation between him and the librarian was hilarious. She said he had to read fifteen minutes each day. He said, "Fifteen minutes! I do twenty minutes of Toe by Toe at school, then I read books with my teacher, then I go to Lindamood Bell and read for four hours! And I am still not done for the day because then I read before bed!"

I have put some more challenging material on hold at the library that I think he'll like. We have a roadtrip coming up and car reading doesn't seem to bother him.

I am really proud of his hard work and progress and it is so nice to see him enjoying reading so much.

"Kate's Mum" - this should be framed!