Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional gifted child with possible dyslexia

Looking for information from people who have experience with dyslexia in gifted children. My son is 9 years old. He's a very active, outgoing, easy going, sports oriented child. He does well in school (A's) and really excels in math. We recently had a full ED psych eval
Completed due to some concerns about inattention/distractability (ADHD). We have been through all of this before with my 12 year old daughter. We weren't surprised when the testing revealed likely ADHD and a high IQ, we were surprised that the psychologist saw signs consistent with dyslexia. My son doesn't love to read, but he has never had a problem reading and reads very well. She was concerned because while his math scores and cognitive abilities are high, his reading Scores (while
Still in the average range) are approximately 2 standard deviations below where "they should be".
Of course I understand that any issues he has will become harder for him to manage or compensate for as he gets older, and perhaps I just don't know enough about dyslexia, but I find it hard to swallow that I need to go into action mode and start very expensive therapy and tutoring for a child in the highest reading group in his class. I'm just not sure what my plan of action should be...any advice? Thank you!

This is not all that unusual. May I ask which reading scores were concerns, and what they were? That might tell us a little about the nature of the reading discrepancy. ADHD can also affect reading, even in the absence of dyslexia.

As to therapy and tutoring for a child in the highest reading group: the question is not how well he is doing compared to other children, but how well he is doing compared to himself, and whether there are factors amenable to remediation that may be interfering with the full expression and development of his gifts (which includes, for example, how an aversion to reading affects access to high-level vocabulary, writing models, information, inferential thinking, and professions that he might be otherwise interested in, that require high volumes of reading). He is also only 9. At this age, any downstream impacts from reading deficiencies are probably being masked by his other abilities (especially in oral language). I have seen many, many dyslexic students for whom performance in the language areas of cognitive assessments has fallen gradually over the years, because their access to reading vocabulary at their cognitive level is restricted by subtle or blatant reading deficits. More importantly, most children are aware (or become aware) that reading-related tasks "should" come more easily to them than they do, which creates and perpetuates a negative self-concept with regard to their learning ability and motivation. You may not see the effects of not remediating until several years have passed.

As the parent of a child with dyslexia, I'll first echo aeh's excellent advice and add that I'd recommend seeing a reading specialist for an evaluation, even if you are convinced you don't want to put time/$ into tutoring at this point. A reading specialist will likely dig deeper with testing into specific skill-sets which will give you more information about your child's specific challenge.

My next piece of advice - you will not regret having your child work at reading *now* rather than later, no matter whether you are able to access services through the school or have to send him to private reading tutors. I would also recommend getting him access to audiobooks if you can, so that he can be listening to higher level vocabulary than he is reading. Even with extensive (and successful) tutoring, my dd does not like to read - probably never will - and I really can see the difference that makes in her vocabulary development vs my other children.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you so much for your response. That makes a lot of sense. As far as the testing results, I have a huge packet of results that I am trying to make sense of...

Incidentally, the reason we did the testing (ADHD) concerns, showed little support for major executive function deficits (though plenty of teacher report of inattentiveness, fidgeting, etc.)

the testing was very thorough...

beery buktenica developmental test of visual-motor integration (scores were low - 7th percentile.

behavior ratings
comp test of phonlogical processing
conners scales
vanderbilt adhd rating scale
Wisc-V
Woodcock Johnson IV Tests of Achievement

The red flags on an initial Dyslexia checklist (endorsed items) were as follows...
Curiosity
A Strong Imagination
The ability to fingure things out
Eager embrace of new ideas
Getting the gist of things
A good understanding of new concepts
Difficulty remembering isolated pieces of verbal information
Slow progress in aquiring reading skills
A lack of enjoyment of reading and not engaging in reading for pleasure
Difficulty with spelling including poop representation of unfamiliar words
Above average skills of conceptualization, reasoning, imagination and abstraction
Ability to get the big picture
Higher performance in areas not dependent on reading.

On the IQ test, highest areas were Verbal Comprehension Composite index, Visual Spatial Composite, Fluid REasoning (strongest area) , Norverbal Index.
Statistical Weaknesses were found in Working Memory, Processing Speed, and Cognitive Proficiency Index.

Everything on the Woodcock Johnson was Average-Superior with Sentence Writing fluency being the lowest score (90's), but also significant (in comparison to cognitive abilities) were his lower oral reading, word reading, and nonword reading scores.

The Phonological abilities testing showed phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming were lower than expected given superior IQ.

The testing day was approximately 8 hours long and most of the reading/dyslexia specific testing was towards the end of the day as it didn't crop up as a concern until later in the day.

We have started OT to address the fine motor/handwriting/motor planning issues that seem to be present.

I realize that I just threw a lot of information out there, but if you have any insight, I would really appreciate it -- I'm a little overwhelmed! I know it doesn't like mean anything, as they are not specialists in Dyslexia, but I shared this information with my son's Reading teacher and GT Teacher. They were both surprised, stating that in fluency checks, he always performs at 95-100% accuracy. They did both state that they think he is capable of more than he is doing and that the sustained effort involved in writing is difficult for him. They both stated that they do not find it unusual that a 9 year old boy would be gifted/strong in one area and not necessarily another. Just a few more pieces to the puzzle!
I always thought he was my easy and uncomplicated child!!

Thank you! I'm definitely not convinced that I don't want to put time or money into a tutor, if that is what is needed, we will definitely do that. I was a little blindsided by the dyslexia (probable) dx, and have no experience with it. I have lists of resources but many are either schools or Psychologists that do Dyslexia testing (similar to what we had) or they are Certified Orton Gillingham Tutors - is that a good place to start? I'm not sure where exactly to find the right type of Reading Specialist. Thanks!

His profile does actually fit a subtly dyslexic, and not so subtly dysgraphic, one. His weaknesses on the Beery VMI feed right into the relative weaknesses on the WISC-V PSI and the WJIV sentence writing fluency test, as well as the CTOPP rapid naming, which is one of the three key aspects of PP associated with dyslexia (so both fine motor and retrieval efficiency concerns). His relative weakness on the WISC WMI aligns with the CTOPP phonological memory, and is another of the three aspects of PP most associated with dyslexia/dysgraphia. CTOPP phonological awareness is the third of the dyslexia/dysgraphia triumvirate, and is borne out by the relative weaknesses in word-level decoding and reading fluency on the WJ (sentence reading fluency, letter/word ID, word attack).

It's actually kind of a classic dyslexic profile, just with everything much higher, so that the relative weaknesses are near or in the average range. (Except for fine motor.)

For remediation, OG would be the default place to go.

And as far as how his teachers view him, well, they are looking at his performance on 3rd or 4th, maybe 5th grade-level reading. He "should" be reading higher-level material, based on his cognition. The appropriate comparison is between his oral language and his reading/written language. That is, the difference between his speaking/listening vocabulary and his reading vocabulary, or his speaking vocabulary and his writing vocabulary. And he may be reading very fluently for a nine or ten year-old, but that's a far cry from adult-level fluency on adult-level reading material.

Thank you so much for the time and kindness you have shown in providing me with all of this amazing information. It's incredibly helpful and helping things sink in a bit. The psychologist handed us a thick packet, zoomed through the results in about 10'minutes and sent us on our merry way to try to make sense of it all. I understand now that I have some serious research to do.
A different psychologist that I spoke to (not the one who did our eval) said that we need to find a dyslexia specialist/tutor and ask them for 1. What they can do for a 3rd grader with small gaps 2. How long tutoring would be recommended. (Is this something that typically goes on and on for years?)
Do you know of any helpful materials/programs/apps that we can get going for him in the meantime? Before kids, I was an English teacher (and hold a MA in English & education) I realize it is much different, but I would like to help him at home as much as possible in addition to finding a good tutor!

You are very welcome. It is certainly a lot to absorb. I usually spend at least 20-30 minutes just on the minimum interpretive summary necessary to get through an IEP meeting (I'd gladly take more, but since the whole meeting is usually scheduled to run an hour, my colleagues frown on that!), and most private psychs schedule an hour for reviewing the eval report, so I can imagine that 10 minutes did not allow for much to sink in.

My usual home OG program recs are All About Reading (or All About Spelling, which attacks dyslexia from the encoding side, rather than the decoding side) (www.allaboutlearningpress.com), and Logic of English (www.logicofenglish.com). Also, OG-flavored online programs Lexia (now Rosetta Stone Reading www.rosettastone.com/homeschool/reading) and online/book/blended program Reading Horizons (athome.readinghorizons.com/store/elevate/overview). You can also buy Barton to do at home, though it's a bit pricier than the other options. If you have a definitive diagnosis on your eval report, some areas of the USA have free OG tutoring available through the Scottish Rite (http://www.childrensdyslexiacenters.org/), including some avenue for receiving free training as an OG tutor yourself (which, BTW, is a nice way to make a few bucks on the side, while using your training as an educator, and helping children succeed).

ETA: Oh, and if you choose one of the teacher/parent-directed home programs (vs online), I would suggest starting at the first lesson, and not skipping any, even though he will probably zoom through many of them, but just cutting down on practice tasks when it's obvious he already has mastery of them. The reason not to skip anything is that you don't know exactly where his holes are, so you really want to teach every phonemic awareness skill and reading principle until it's clear he can teach it back to you. The online programs will adapt, and are supposed to find the holes automatically. (Though you may have to watch out for clever children outflanking the adaptive learning software. Ask me how I know this. )

aeh,

I'm just wondering - is the comparison between oral language and reading/written language relevant even when they are just learning to read?

Our DS6 is learning to read very slowly and it strikes me as very odd given that he has an exceptional vocabulary/oral language, loves to play with words (he started playing with rhymes when he was 3) and seems to catch on very quickly when it comes to just about everything else. Also, he LOVES books and LOVES to learn but HATES to read. I should mention that he is reading at level or even slightly above, but it still seems slow considering everything else.

We haven't had him tested yet so we don't even know if he's gifted, but I suspect that he's probably 2E.

RRD,

Yes, but not as strongly so. I would be more concerned with the rate of progress, and the way he reads, than with the oral/reading vocabulary difference. He learned rhyme fairly early, which is one of the early phonological processing skills, but may not have acquired the more sophisticated ones, such as phoneme isolation, deletion, substitution, or reversal. Can he segment sounds? (e.g., the word "stop" as s-t-o-p, or "crunch" as k-r-u-n-ch). Testing of phonological processing would probably be more relevant than reading vocabulary, at this point, as the expectations for 6 year olds are quite low, which means that deficits might not show up on testing. The most common PP deficits are also quite responsive to remediation, so another approach would be to start remediating for them anyway, without waiting for formal 2e data. Especially where he already hates to read.