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    Pirion #225470 11/26/15 05:57 AM
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    Originally Posted by Pirion
    I remember getting so frustrated because he would read lists of words like 'dog, log, cog' correctly and then, just when I thought he was getting the hang of it, he would come to 'bog' and say 'because' or 'beautiful' or some other word that started with a B that wasn't even remotely related sound-wise or even the same number of syllables. He didn't seem to be able to translate the sounds from one word to another.

    This is exactly the kind of thing my son would do. It was baffling. You should know that that sounds very much like stealth dyslexia.

    Also interesting that he has been trying to robotics. When you read up on the Eides material, you will see that they identify strengths that go along with dyslexia as well. These include spatial reasoning, out-of-the-box thinking, and an ability to see the big picture and make startling connections. Dyslexic kids are more likely to be the ones who are in love with things like Legos, robotics, or who are known for being highly creative.

    I'll tell you when more of my stories in a bit more detail. Because testing and remediating dyslexia are both very expensive, I intentionally began with lower-level responses to the problem I perceived to see if we couldn't solve it in a less expensive way first. So I found a very experienced reading tutor who used a variety of methods to help struggling readers. I told her I thought that he might have stopped dyslexia. She had never heard of it. I told her it was how dyslexia presented in gifted kids. She made a face, and clearly thought I was "that" parent. Her little assessment concluded that, no surprise, his comprehension was better than his decoding. She also suggested that he might have ADHD, because he had made An irrelevant comment that one point during the testing. In fact, he had made a connection about some of the reading, and was telling her about something that was very much related to what he had read. We had her work with him once a week over the next couple of months. At the end of it, she told me she didn't think she could help them anymore. She looked at me and said that she was no diagnostician, but that there definitely was "something." Even though she was the long time reading tutor at the local private school, she hadn't run across someone like my son.

    Pirion #225471 11/26/15 07:56 AM
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    Originally Posted by Pirion
    I actually hadn't had his hearing checked, for some reason it didn't occur to me. But I will do that too - he's never shown any obvious signs of hearing loss but I know that it can sometimes be hard to pick and it won't do any harm to have it checked.

    Before finding an audiologist, it might be helpful to take a look at some info about auditory processing and see if anything looks familiar to your situation (for example: http://www.caddac.ca/cms/page.php?166). Most audiologists only check the physical aspects of hearing. A few rare ones test auditory processing, which is how the brain translates the sounds it hears - so you can have excellent physical hearing but still be receiving a garbled signal. Auditory processing disorders are quite common, and can have dyslexia-looking impacts on phonological understanding (it's hard to make sound-letter relationships if there is interference with the sound). If, for example, your DS hears you but often seems to misunderstand what he is told, or has unusual difficulty understanding in noisier places, it might be worthwhile tracking down a audiologist who can look at processing and not just regular hearing issues.

    Pirion #225472 11/26/15 09:17 AM
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    There are lists of nonsense words you can access online and you can try having him read them to see if he has any obvious difficulties. I gave them to kids in kindergarten or first grade when I worked as a reading tutor, and there were benchmarks that the kids were supposed to meet when reading these lists timed. The ones who couldn't do it got reading interventions. After 1st grade, the schools didn't do this anymore, they had the kids read "passages" and timed their reading fluency. I taught a 3rd grader who was clearly very intelligent but just skated by right below grade level. Not enough to trigger anyone to do an educational eval but when I listened to her read aloud I could tell she had some definite processing issues. She kept skipping words and could read some complicated words but got hung up on very simple words. I timed her reading a passage every week in terms of words read in a time period (1 minute, I think) and she was up and down on her graph wildly, sometimes she sounded fairly fluent and other times her reading was very choppy and slow. So she seemed to vary even from day to day depending on her emotional status that day or other factors. One day I even got out the K/1st grade nonsense word fluency list and had her read it and she could barely do it. Meanwhile no one in the school seemed all that concerned about her because all they saw were the numbers which indicated she was close to grade level. They never/rarely actually listened to her read. So I was unable to get anyone to evaluate her.
    If the school will not take your concerns seriously then I would get your independent psych to do some achievement testing for reading and see what you can find out.
    Here's one page that I found after a quick search of nonsense words but you may be able to find an actual Aimsweb assessment.
    http://www.maryvaleufsd.org/webpages/kfrauenhofer/teacherresources.cfm?subpage=10227

    Pirion #225474 11/26/15 09:39 AM
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    Wow, blackcat, that sounds exactly like my DD.

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