Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional "Reading [silently] makes my voice tired"???

Hello there,

If I may offer our story about the only thing that has worked for DS7.5

When reading "Chapter books" and Potter, school books, around 3rd grade level + etc. - we hit this wall in Kindergarten and bitter-sweetly, had it not been for his vision issues it would not have been on our radar at all.

We 99% suspect that DS has Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia with mannerisms that strongly support Developmental Expressive Language Disorder. Still waiting for some official stuff.(Personally we feel that all these should be a part of one Umbrella as I hear this from so many moms, it's almost common.)

ALL THESE THINGS seem to also present with VISION issues - our son has anisometropic amblyopia and lately becoming astigmatic as well.

The weird thing about this amblyopia is that your child can pass basic vision tests and this won't be noticed! The only symptom we noticed, in hindsight, was rubbing his eye frequently.DS did not know he had vision issues either, until he saw the difference (We have therapy, etc.)

What has helped and made him happy:

Audible books where he does NOT visually read at all. He literally cried when we said he did not have to read books! He was so grateful to finish the next 2 Potter books as quickly as he wanted. He is so eager to please and too proud to admit he had any problems. Fortunately, it does manifest as anxiety, etc, which is what finally clued as in.

His brain was compensating so cleverly, that it was hard to notice and I'm his teacher!

He has always loved "reading" and learning - he loves the touch laptop where he can expand fonts and pictures as needed. Chunking, white or colored font, dark/white background, the list of things that can affect reading goes on.

Other:

Dim computer screen.
Glasses, glasses, glasses - should have as many features for non-glare, polarization, correct prescription, correct PD measurement, correct position on face, do glasses hurt? slide down, pushed up and down? need a strap? need wipes?

Without insurance, we spend about 6-700 USD for son's glasses with all these (necessary) "extras". Am able to reduce to about 300 with direct to lab orders on internet. Be careful as quality is really critical for your DS vision - find the exact name of the coatings, etc. you need and shop those. You can search rxframesnlenses (no endorsement implied) as prices for some coatings (brand name) were direct from lab.

Ultimately, happiness REALLY WAS just about providing him material that was less taxing on his vision system. This has liberated our whole family.

When he does read, we use the Dyslexia font on the large setting - the letters are about 1/4 inch high or bigger is better. It spreads books out over a longer period, so adjust for time.

We stopped him from reading any books that he had to struggle to read the font - spacing, bunching, page size, colors, so many variables. We tell him not to waste more than a minute - if it's too tiring we find another version/media.

His opthalmologist insisted we NOT stress his vision and leave him to think about what he was reading and let him just absorb it without effort. CONTRARY TO opinion of some OT's saying we had to work harder, read longer.

He barely had any mental energy left to even absorb the material after a while. May not notice for short periods, but very taxing day-in/out. (not talking about eye exercises which we do)

We signed up for our library card and audio book option has been simply the best thing for him.

Online learning ala carte has been the only way we manage this as we cannot skip material integral to a lesson.

Not implying this is all applicable to your son, but hoping something might prove useful.

We are grateful we learned all this early enough to keep him happy still about learning. He was so happy when he realized that "learning" did not automatically equal pain, discomfort, stress, shame, guilt, etc.

Good luck to you and yours!

Lucky

I'll admit usually am an absolutist about this as well. But I really couldn't be for DS and Harry Potter. He is a second child it would have been difficult to stop him from seeing the movies before he read the books. The movies were still coming out and the whole family was going when he was still a bit young to read them himself.

As to Harry Potter book 5 keep in mind it's the most tedious of the books and one of the longest. It could really use a lot of editing IMO. Harry is an angry, frustrated 15 year old and it's a hard book to get through. I myself originally gave up half way through that book and only got back into shortly before all the hoopla for book 6 came out.

There are a ton of other wonderful books out there for kids this in the 8-12 range. We had big success with checking Newbery Winners. Looking at the list I just noticed that one of the this past year's runner up's for this years Newbery El Deafo is a graphic novel.

As for reading with him the first chapters. This is something I see teachers do even in high school. Some teacher will have the class read outloud the first chapter or two and discuss them before assigning the rest of the book to read alone. Particularly with challenging material like Shakespeare.

I think it might be worth taking a pause here and realizing that the "problem" here is that a 9yo who consumes reading material like mad is not getting enough fiction. Is it really a problem? And if he's reading nonfiction at a high lexile level, should we really worry that he sets it aside for a bout of Geronimo Stilton?

GeorgeC's description of his reading process is similar to mine, though I suspect it's happening at a speed much faster than the spoken word, these days (I've looked at the process for speed-reading, and honestly, I don't understand why anyone would do that to themselves). And I'm definitely not an undiagnosed dyslexic. I do find reading to be quite comfortable, and I perform the same reading process whether it's non-fiction or fiction.

Dialing back the calendar, though, I was probably 9 or 10 when I started reading fiction in earnest. Before that I was avidly consuming non-fiction, and when I exhausted what the school library had to offer on that, I turned to comics and joke books.

What separates a fiction novel from all these other sorts of reading material in the discussion so far is this: page after endless page of dense text, occasionally broken up by a chapter header. These other media are like short sprints across the playground; kids do these all day long without even thinking about it. Then you hand them a novel, and they see Mt Kilimanjaro. It's an endurance read where they've trained for sprinting, and each step seems to get them no closer to the top.

And so the solution is... endurance training. This is basically what the industry does by providing early novels which are thinner, have larger text, include illustrations, and use more frequent chapter breaks. I recall my DD10 constantly updating me on her progress with more adult-like novels when she first started reading them on her own, whether it was announcing what chapter she was on, or showing me the thickness of the book relative to the placement of her bookmark. She needed that reinforcement to let her know she was making progress, and confirm that she could reach the finish line. And as she did so, I remembered being in that exact same position.

Because if you're climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, at camp and tired at the end of a long day's hike, you want to know, am I ever going to get to the top? So you look down below to see how far you've come, and you look up above to see if the end is in sight, and that gives you the motivation to start up again tomorrow.

So, while he may be cognitively ready to tackle the entire Harry Potter series, it might be better to give him Captain Underpants today and let him work up to it.

George C he does, indeed, play the piano and it amazes non-aural learner me how readily he can translate music he's heard into music he plays. No carrots in the world, however, will get him to practice a piece he's done with! I asked him if the start of a book was more tiring than later on and if he was building a visual in his head while he read and he was unable (or unwilling) to answer. I expect he's tired of reading questions.

2xLucky I wondered about vision issues and had some extra testing done, albeit with our optometrist, not a specialist. I'm not familiar with amblyopia (I'm going to look it up). DS does rub his eyes frequently, but mainly in spring when he suffers from hayfever. His tracking is fine and I've been watching for the convergence tells I've read about on the forum. I'll get him to experiment with font size on my kindle to see which works best for him. It will be interesting to see that result. I frequently share your thought about the umbrella, btw.

bluemagic, I told DS we're breaking out the HP#5 DVD tonight and he was over the moon. I should have remembered what a slog I found that volume. And I have El Deafo on hold, thanks for the tip.

Dude, thanks for the reality check. I was pretty relaxed about his preference for non-fiction and gave him permission to not read the final school-assigned novel last year, it was so bad, but the tired voice explanation really threw me. We've had so many issues flagged of late that I'm quick to worry. His last school year was a spectacular disaster and it is hard to tease out what issues arise from that and what might be issues we missed while working on the school situation.

DS also exhausted the school's library non-fiction offerings, repeating many of them, before turning to Calvin and Hobbes. I am going to go in search of new short and middle distance offerings, since I think he's memorized everything we already have in those categories.