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    Joined: Feb 2014
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    Dubsyd Offline OP
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    DS6 is highly gifted and skipped year 1 this year.
    DD will be 5 in May. She spoke very early, asks lots of great questions, makes connections between things, and remembers events that happened ages ago, or things we used to have. We have not had her IQ tested yet, but I have been assuming based on her early language and the kids of observations and connections that she makes, that she will test in the gifted range.

    Originally we had her signed up to enter K in the public system this year, but then when we decided to move DS to a private school this year, we decided to move her too. In the public system, the cutoff birthdate is the end of July, the private school was the end of April, but after interviewing DD, they decided to let her enrol. All the school readiness things I had seen talked about the importance of the social and emotional aspects, and that a lot of the academic side would be taught to them. So I was pretty confident that DD was ready although she is young. And I thought it might serve her well in the long run to be a bit younger if she did end up being gifted.

    We had our first parent teacher meeting last night after her first term of school, and she is struggling. The teacher is very good, she said, she is here now, lets do our best to keep her floating, and consider it a bonus year. If at the end of year 1, she has not caught up, she gets a chance to try year 1 again and still be in the correct age bracket. She said DD is a very kind caring member of the classroom, and that she is always willing to give things a go.

    The main focus of the year seems to be on reading and writing. DD is getting through her weekly sight words, but she is having trouble with letter sound correspondence, and she is not ready to move from level 1 readers. She knows the sounds, but not always which letter they go with. This then leaves her struggling with writing.

    She is making friends, and she is enjoying herself overall I think. But I feel sad that I sent her this year, and she is struggling, and behind everyone. She could have stayed home another year and had a much easier time next year. My husband says she is fine, and she is enjoying herself, but I feel bad. I really felt like sending her this year was the right decision.

    Did anyone have a child who struggled with learning to read, but once it clicked for them, it was okay? I really don't want her to spend the next 2 years struggling and then have to repeat a year.


    Last edited by Dubsyd; 03/30/15 03:31 PM. Reason: correcting error
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    aeh Offline
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    Our #2 had a somewhat similar trajectory. With a late birthday, we wanted to start K a few months before the 5th birthday (which was after the cutoff), but due to the school's experience with early entering #1 into grade 1 (excelled academically, but was a hyper, chatty, exhausting little whirling dervish), they made the placement into academic K4. That teacher was the first to note advanced math skills, but delayed reading. We ended up homeschooling the next year, with reading at a first grade--but very labor-intensive--level. It probably took four more years (about age 9) of struggle--very slow and enervating sounding-out, and two years of OG-based homeschooling in spelling--before it suddenly reached some threshold of automaticity, and swung into a steep upward climb.

    This may or may not be reassuring to you, as the data suggests that our situation turned out to be a 2e-ish one, which benefited both from time/repetition and systematic, multisensory, incremental instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.

    The available developmental data on phonological processing, which is a necessary precursor to phonetic reading (including letter sound correspondence as an early skill), indicates that it becomes neurologically accessible during the 4 and 5 year old years, and continues to develop through the early elementary years (hence fluent reading at the end of grade 3). This might happen even for a child advanced in oral language and reasoning, like yours appears to be. So it may be that this is simply within the normal developmental range, and she will catch up (and then probably zoom ahead, based on cognitive language) on her own in another year or two.

    How are her early PP skills, like rhyming, clapping syllables, identifying initial sounds (not letters, just sounds)? Here's a rough timeline of PP skill development:

    http://www.readingrockets.org/article/development-phonological-skills

    OTOH, this may be an early indicator of 2e, where there appears to be a gap between oral language ability and phonological processing (classical word-level reading disability--aka, dyslexia). In which case, I would keep a close eye on her, and consider professional assessment at some point.

    Either way, if there were a problem, I would not expect two years of struggle and then a retention. I would expect either one-to-two years of struggle, and then reading falling into place for her as her PP development catches up with her oral language, or two years of struggle, and then implementing structured reading interventions. Or, maybe it will suddenly make sense in six months, and all this anxiety will be for nothing!

    I think the most important indicator I would use is her own frustration level with regard to reading.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    Is school doing any phonics with your D? My kids were both slow to read in K -- but that was a time when "whole language" was in vogue for learning to read. In both cases we started doing some phonics with them near the end of K outside of school, and both took off reading like rockets around the start of first grade. D2 was reading Lord of the Rings by 2nd grade. Both of my kids had very large vocabularies going into K -- teachers were surprised they were not reading earlier. They did make up for lost time once they got going!

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    Dubsyd,

    Can I first say - I feel your pain. Every time I take a step in supporting DS7, I immediately start wondering if it was a step in the right direction. You are not alone. I would say that with your love and support in the background, I'm confident your girl has a wonderful life ahead.

    Here is our data point. DS is PG and wildly verbal at a very early age. He is a late fall kid, and does not have great "sitting still" skills. So we actually had him enter K a year later than we would have based on what we saw as is ability. He was clearly reading-ready.

    But throughout K, he refused to get on board with phonics instruction and remained stubbornly reading at very early/intro levels. Some of this may have had to do with an awful fit with his K teacher. But the assessment we did also showed he likely had stealth dyslexia.

    We got that assessment in August, days before he started first grade. His first grade teacher is a much better fit. Again - maybe relevant, maybe not.

    In late August and early September, we spent time trying to line up dyslexia therapy. Mid-September, he started reading. Maybe the motivation was a desire to read his beloved Magic the Gathering cards. Maybe not. I really don't know.

    By the end of September he was reading at third grade level and sounding out words like a champ. By February he was reading at fifth grade level and the good folks at Lindamood Bell say they don't think they have any therapy that would fit him. They don't think he needs dyslexia therapy.

    Do I have any idea what is going on with my kid? No I do not. Does my kid's experience extrapolate to your little one? I don't know.

    So maybe this is a useless post. But to answer your question - "Did anyone have a child who struggled with learning to read, but once it clicked for them, it was okay?" Well it appears - yes. But I am still filled with anxiety that I should be doing something for him. I just don't know what.

    Kindest regards to you. This is so hard.

    Sue

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    We're in the process of retesting DS8 to confirm/deny a processing speed related LD so this may or may not be reassuring. He was tested in grade 1 at 6.5 and tested gifted but his writing and reading were behind at the time. Writing is still a challenge so we're retesting but from what I can tell his reading has really taken off. We'll know more in the next couple of weeks once we have his new results but I suspect he's above grade level now (I'm assuming National Geographic which he regularly reads would not be considered grade 3, maybe I'm wrong).

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    I would work on phonics at home, even if they are doing it at school. I think one on one attention is very important, especially for little kids who easily get distracted. 10-15 minutes a day can make a huge difference.

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    Dubsyd Offline OP
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    Thanks. It helps to hear your experiences.

    I think they do some phonics, a sound a week. The teacher says it is quite fast paced though. She has given us some ideas to help with phonics at home, so we will do that. She said a lot of it might be age related, and she is being very supportive. I can tell she genuinely likes DD and wants to see her get her head above water.

    I think I will move up DDs vision assessment just in case. I had made her an appointment at the same time as DS is due for a 6 month checkup for convergence problems. I guess it would be good to rule that out.

    We will also start her with the schools OT to help with her letter formation.


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    I agree with aeh. Your kid can be quite gifted and not be an early reader. This is certainly true of my DD-almost-7. Everyone notices how insanely smart she is (including, perhaps especially, verbally), but she is still following a dead-normal trajectory for learning to read.

    This particular type of asynchrony creates its own type of problem in the early years of schooling. Grade level (if acceleration is allowed at all) is gated by ability to read. That restricts a gifted kid's access to actual content areas, such as science and history and literature.

    I wouldn't pathologize a 5-yr-old who isn't reading yet, but it might nevertheless be worth it to try hot-housing the reading, to keep your kid at a more appropriate grade level overall. (Although, in my case, the hot-housing didn't work. She is learning to read on her own time-table.)

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    One of my twins started reading at 2. The other didn't even really sound out words until he was 5, and in the beginning it was extremely difficult for him. Once he started reading, though, he progressed very,very quickly. But until he was "ready" it was almost impossible for him. He would not have been able to learn to read at age 4, even if we had tried.

    In fact, we started trying to teach him to read around age 5, because he really wanted to learn and could sound out a few words, but soon stopped as it was so frustrating for him. At almost 5.5, the month before K started, he started working his way through the BOB books by himself. We would hear him reading them aloud, sounding out words in his room after we put him to bed. (He preferred to read alone at that stage.) Once he started K, he quickly moved through the reading levels until he hit the "ceiling" level for K in that school in January (which was end of first grade reading level). At home, he was reading non-fiction books that were at a much higher level by then.

    It definitely just "clicked" for him once he was ready.





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    Many echoes to comments above. If your DD does have phonological issues, the sooner you catch it the better (our DD only just got diagnosed with dyslexia at almost 8 - argh!). A recent Stealth Dyslexia thread mentions additional early signs and experiences, and the Shaywitz book has tons of detail of what to look for even in very young children. If you see concerns in these more detailed descriptions, it's worth following up sooner rather than later. Also, note that trouble with letter-sound correspondence can result from auditory processing issues (not just visual ones); might be worth a look at APD as well to see if anything resonates. http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/212667/

    From your post, I get the impression that your DD is generally doing well working at the level of the class and the older children, with just the exception of reading? If she seems to be in the right place with the exception of one skill set, it's worth seeing what you can do to fix that gap and keep her in her overall best-fit placement. And if there is an LD, keeping her back won't help! "More of the same" is as useless for LDs as it is for giftedness.

    But regardless of whether there is a problem or just a developmental lag, you could easily give her a reading boost in the meantime, while you sort out whether professional intervention may be needed. We're using a home-based OG program called All About Reading (yet again, thanks aeh and other advisors here!). It's structured to be used for both beginner readers as well as remediation. This kind of program would be a big help to any novice reader, and essential to any of the 20% who will struggle to read without without explicit instruction in decoding. While our school and various professionals are slooooooowly grinding through their processes, assessments, appointments and arguments, we've just kept chugging along with the All About Reading, and have seen a stunning improvement. It's by no means everything our DD needs, but it's an immediate, cheap and effective starting point that doesn't have to wait on anyone else to get their act together.




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