Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Teacher mentioned dyslexia today, opinions wanted!

My son is finishing up first grade this year. He is in the midst of testing into the GT program (his CoGAT scores qualified him for further testing which will be happening in the next few months). His teacher for this year is the lead teacher for his grade who has 20 years of teaching experience and seems to work with him in detail on things so I trust her judgement that something is unusual. A few times this year she has told me that she's surprised at the difference between my son's reading abilities and his spelling abilities. He's currently reading at maybe a 4th grade level but his spelling is still pretty rough (ie, sqware for square, taey for they, lots of phonetic spelling and skipping letters sometimes). It's not so much that he's a bad speller for his grade level, more that he's a bad speller for his reading level. She said she'd considered putting him forward for further assessment but said she knows they wouldn't recommend doing anything for him since he's reading so well. She basically that she's not worried about him in a 'life achievement' sort of sense but that dyslexia might be a thing that comes up in the future.

Other possibly pertinent information: My son also had a LOT of trouble with handwriting last year and this year. During kindergarten and at the beginning of this year, he was still 'drawing' his letters instead of having a good internalized idea of how to write each letter correctly. He's made lots of progress and looks a lot better but definitely doesn't have 'good' handwriting yet. The other aspect of things is that he wasn't an early reader although he's doing great now. He entered kindergarten knowing his letters, letter sounds and a couple of sight words but put it all together last year. He also has had 3 sets of ear tubes in his life - the last set was during kindergarten half way through the year. His math skills are strong and he's aced all his assessments so far although he still writes some numbers backwards.

I see two possibilities for him - one is that he's got some sort of 'stealth dyslexia' working but he's able to compensate for it in his reading. The second is that since he's had so much trouble with handwriting and hasn't really been reading for very long he just hasn't put the spelling part of things together yet and it'll naturally click in the next year or two. Has anyone else seen a similar pattern in their own children? Is it common for spelling skills to lag significantly behind reading skills or do these things usually develop together? Any tips for helping my son along with this skill?

I can attest that spelling is far more difficult than reading. In fact, the program we use as remediation with DD completely separates the two, recognizing that reading need not be bogged down to the pace of spelling (DD finished All About Reading several years ago. I think we'll be working on All About Spelling forever....). Eventually, you can learn and apply all the rules of reading in English. Most of spelling, however, is just memorizing. (For instance, you can learn to recognize/ read the many ways to spell the sound "oh", but it's usually random whether it's spelled mote or moat.)

With respect to your DS, here are the possibilities that come to mind:

1) His spelling is perfectly normal, just not keeping up with his highly-accelerated reading

2) His spelling is developing normally, just more slowly/ with more difficulty than some

3) He is dyslexic

4) He is dysgraphic - as spaghetti flags, definitely worth looking into given what you are seeing

5) He has auditory processing weaknesses related to the ear tubes, which can cause dyslexia-looking problems connecting sounds (which the brain isn't processing quite properly/ consistently) to symbols

Given those possibilities, you might want to look into testing for phonological weaknesses, handwriting automaticity, and auditory processing (not a normal hearing test, requires an audiologist who specializes in this). Note that any of 3, 4 or 5 could be present in combination, which makes things harder to tease apart. Acting sooner is way better than waiting, so it's worth paying attention to your and his teacher's gut feelings.

Some things you can consider at home with respect to (1-3): is his spelling consistently phonetic, or is the order of sounds often a bit scrambled? Does he spell the same word differently at different times? Does he read aloud happily, or with resistance? Reading aloud, does he skip small words, prefixes/ suffixes, people's names; substitute words with plausible alternatives that start with the same letter; or not recognize a word he read earlier when the context changes? Can he read a list of individual words as easily as a story? How about nonsense syllables? I would note that it's amazing how well a kid that age can fake reading, using a mix of memorizing word shapes, context, pictures, etc., so it's important to look into the underlying skills when stripped of all those helpful hints.

For (4): Does his spelling seem better when he types? For (5), does he often seem to mishear things people say to him? Is it worse in a crowded environment? Does he consistently spell certain sounds in odd ways, like he is hearing them differently? (here's a good APD intro: https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/central-auditory.html)

Something to think about: a good phonological-based reading program like All About Reading can be really helpful for all kids, not just those with dyslexia. About 40% of people actually need to be taught sound-symbol correspondence in a more explicit and systematic way than schools usually do, in order to become good readers. So regardless of whether it's a lag, a slight weakness, APD or full-blown dyslexia, you may find it helpful to use an explicit approach to teaching reading and spelling. One thing I really like about AAR is that it builds in the ability to do as much repetition as needed, but is easy to move on when you don't. The worst that can happen is he blows through the program at light speed, and you shorten the frustrating period in which his writing can't keep up with his ideas.

Wow, thank you platypus and spaghetti, so much helpful stuff to think about.

To answer some of your questions: I would say it's mostly phonetic although sometimes the phonemes are a bit mixed up (f instead of th or something like that, especially at the ends of words). Spelling is consistent within a document but not always day to day. He reads out loud mostly happily, although he definitely prefers for me to read to him and likes for me to reread things to him even if he's read them before. I feel like in general he's more fluent on more difficult texts, surprisingly. Part of that's because when he's reading easy books he tends to use silly voices and stuff like that. He definitely misses a lot of small words and 'fills in' things that he thinks makes sense rather than reading what's on the page sometimes. That's my most common 'correction' when I'm reading with him. It's usually small words that he knows like 'for' and 'from' that don't really change the meaning of the sentence. I haven't had him read a list of nonsense words or anything like that so I'll have to check on that. He definitely can sound out long words but does tend to make some big jumps sometime and just guess.

For 4 & 5, he doesn't know the keyboard well enough to type and definitely misspells things that way as well, although he has very little experience with it yet. For 5 (mishearing), that aspect of things has improved a ton since he got his eartubes last year. I'll need to pay attention to that over the next couple of weeks though. He is currently in speech therapy at his school for pronunciation issues ('r' and 'l' and 'sh' and 'th').

The dysgraphia angle is a definite possibility, since writing is by far his largest difficulty in school. I'll look into the reading and spelling programs you've been using as well. Thank you so much for all of your input and thoughts, it's very appreciated!

On the dysgraphia front: As others have said regarding handwriting, it could be dysgraphia, or it could just be an indication that more practice is needed. My DS6 has been weak in handwriting due to a lack of interest in arts and crafts as a younger boy, and had a similar pattern. As it turns out, neither his kindergarten teacher nor his current teacher was requiring him to do ANY practice handwriting in class!

I've since intervened and had him practice letter formation and writing regularly. We originally sat down with lined journals each and practiced writing letters and words for 10 or 15 minutes a day to master the basics. DS is progressing through the "Handwriting Without Tears" books, and his handwriting is now quite good. Three months ago, I was considering dysgraphia as a possibility, but I've since ruled it out. In your DS' case, if the issue resolves with limited writing instruction, it's not dysgraphia.

On the spelling front, I will put in a shameless plug for "All About Spelling" (the OG spelling program linked to the reading program Platypus mentioned). My DS doesn't have any 2E diagnosis to date, but with some family history of dyslexia on the paternal side, I figured an OG spelling program was a good idea, regardless. If your child is dyslexic, it can be a helpful remedy; else, it's still an excellent spelling program for neurotypical children!

I think it's excellent that your DS' teacher is so attuned to his abilities that she's considering a less understood possibility and bringing it to your attention now. What a great ally to have in your child's education.

Aquinas, thanks so much for your input. I think I'll try to get AAS for our summer work for sure.

My son works on handwriting at school quite a bit. They went through handwriting without tears both last year and this year and he's still getting handwriting worksheets (not sure if the whole class does these or just a few kids). Last summer I spent a while working with him on handwriting. So it's definitely not an easy thing for him. However, he definitely wasn't into crafts or drawing before he started school, and still isn't into it. He writes a little bit around the house but it's mostly making flags for play dough roads or labeling pieces of tape on his hot wheel tracks. He definitely has made some major improvements this year but it's clearly not as easy for him as reading or other school skills.

I do agree that my son is lucky to have this teacher. His whole school is quite nice actually. Lots of sweet supportive teachers with good information, etc.

My son is very similar. He has been diagnosed with small muscle weakness that plays into his writing difficulties. It seems like he is spending *so* much of his cognitive effort to even form letters that he has nothing left to worry about spelling, punctuation, etc. We're still trying to find solutions as well.

I don't want to belabour the dyslexia possibility, but I will throw out there that counterintuitively, reading better when the text is harder is quite common among dyslexics (especially gifted ones). The more complex the text, the richer all those context cues are that help them guess their way through it. Dyslexics commonly skip over all the little words and excess syllables (which all tend to look the same) and instead jump from one "meaty" noun or verb to the next. The bigger those words, the easier they are to tell apart. (I was pretty shocked on page 1 of AAR, when DD made multiple errors on a list of three-letter words.... she kept guessing - as she always did - but here, finally, it showed.)

I'll also throw in a plug to think about trying AAR first, and not just the spelling program. In our own experience, because reading is far more rules-base than spelling, and has a finite number of rules, it was much easier to learn and made far more sense than spelling. Several people on the forum here have used only AAS successfully, but I confess the thought makes me shudder. I'm really glad we did AAR first.

The other possibility is that his working memory may be average but he has better language based skills. So once his reading became automatic he was fine but spelling is taking a bit longer. As long as he is not behind (and it really does not sound like he is), I would give it another year working diligently on those skills. Deficits do not always show up in bright younger children. The standards to have average achievement scores on standardized tests are relatively low and often weaknesses at his age really do work themselves out. Unless the problems are extreme I would be hesitant to evaluate a younger child.

Cnm, it feels to me like this is part of what's happening with my son as well. He still has to concentrate so much on the writing portion that he's not thinking about spelling at all. He still tells me sometimes that he forgets which way the p and q or b and d are supposed to be pointing.

Platypus, ah, that's interesting. We usually read these easy books for 5 minutes at bedtime and he's clearly bored and tired so it's hard for me to tell how many of the mistakes are 'real' and how many are because he's being silly. We also end up repeating the same stories a lot because he doesn't switch guided reading books often so he's much more engaged with his new harder material. When I tell him to slow down and read every word on the page he tends to get them. I'm gonna go get the AAR and AAS books today if they're in our local store.

Sallymom, thanks for the input. Yeah, he seems a bit young to evaluate but then again I'd hate to leave him struggling with something that will cause him problems down the line. His reading skills developed a whole lot in a short period of time and maybe the writing/spelling is just going to proceed at a more normal rate for a while.

Understood. Personally, from what you've written, I'd explore the dysgraphia hypothesis further. In my DS' situation, it was a question of lack of exposure and practice stifling output, not physical capacity to execute the task.

Good advice from the Platypus in the trenches. Please take her advice before mine, as she's battled both sides of the equation capably with her own family.

PM me if you'd like the AAR level 1 and 2 books. I have copies of the readers (with some progress stickers) that I could provide. Depending on our relative locations and shipping rates, that might save you some money.

Here are some things we're working on with my DS8 that may or may not apply to your boy...

-Hand strengthening exercises using Thera-Putty, tweezers, push/pull exercises, etc.

-Oral spelling, so he can build the spelling knowledge without the need for writing. This is still a considerable challenge for him. We're not sure whether it's just because we've neglected it so long while trying to iron out the handwriting or because of a larger processing issue. The school is supposed to do full IQ testing before his next IEP meeting so we can look at working memory, processing, etc.

-Consistency in correcting his letter formation, spacing, capitalization, and punctuation in his written work, which will expand to include spelling as he's ready.

-Keyboarding skills. We have had moderate success with TTRS (https://www.ttrsonline.com/), which is a typing program for dyslexic students that is based off of OG methods.

-Speech-to-text, so he can get his ideas out and focus on just subject matter, organization, and conventions.

-And a bunch of HWT.

Several members of his IEP team have decided that there's no hope for him to ever really write legibly, and are really pushing just the Speech-to-Text kinda stuff. I'm not ready to give up that fight yet though--he's only 8. So we keep practicing.

I don't have a lot to add, as many PPs have covered my usual points. =)

But I will say that I had a very similar experience with my #2 in prekindergarten (the one year that we used a b&m school), with a very experienced and perceptive teacher, who noted that, though math was well ahead, pre-reading skills were suspect. Fast forward a couple of years, and it became apparent that there were clear dysgraphic (and mild dyslexic) features present. AAR was not out at the time, but we had very good results with AAS (all seven levels). Now at the secondary level, we use speech-to-text, wordprocessing, or oral elaboration for any response longer than a single sentence. #2 can write a thank you note, sign a document, or complete a form, which are all that I think one actually needs in adult life, as far as handwriting goes. (With much agony, and very little mechanical accuracy, we can also produce a paragraph--but it's just not worth it, given the available assistive technology.) We did just enough cursive work (we used the Zaner-Bloser system) so that #2 could read other people's handwriting, and then let it go.

I think I dropped handwriting work qua handwriting at about age 9 or 10. I would suggest that starting early on typing will have excellent long-term benefits, as many dysgraphics are slow to attain fluency in typing, for similar automaticity reasons. Start now, and it will be second nature by the time he hits middle school (or even earlier). www.typing.com is a good and free resource.

aquinas that is so sweet of you to offer that! I'll check and see if they're available locally and then message you. Thank you though. You are very kind.

CNM, thanks for the info. Wow, some good ideas. Do you have your son correct his homework if it's incorrect? I've just been leaving it because it's the end of the day and he tends to be a little melty at that time, but maybe I should push him to make corrections. I hope the full IQ testing gives good information for your son.

aeh, thanks so much for all the information. Typing was not remotely on my radar but sounds like it should be.

Happy to.

FWIW, we went through something similar with my DD when she was in first grade (she's now 16). We found that after a full day at school and struggling through her spelling/writing assignments, she just didn't have anymore to give. Depending upon the assignment, we sometimes went back and corrected things over the weekend. As she got older, we would have her make more corrections but even then, we tended to focus on one thing at a time, i.e. if we were working on capitalization, then we did't focus on spelling for that exercise.

If you feel that your kid is "melty", then it's probably not the right time to push anything. You're just setting yourself up for battles that will drain both you and your kid.

His teacher rarely gives homework beyond reading. For classwork, she tries to remind him at the start and check in with him several times during the assignment to make sure he's leaving spaces between words, using punctuation, and to give him feedback about capitalization. When he is writing something at home, I try to sit with him and catch his mistakes as they happen, so it's not a huge overwhelming "do it all again" kind of thing when he thinks he's done. I'm sure you could do that with spelling and letter reversals if those are the main issues your boy is having. It does take a lot of time though.

Someone on his IEP team suggested making him a checklist of the things he struggles with the most and have him self evaluate after every assignment. I think we may try that next year after we've built the skills a little more (hopefully).

If you have a child who enjoys charts and graphs, you can also help them chart their improvement on focus correction areas. Pick something that happens relatively frequently, and is easy to score as correct or incorrect (such as remembering to capitalize the first letter of every sentence, or use end punctuation at the end of every sentence, or use a finger or pencil tip space between each word), and then help him rate his percent accuracy on some regular interval (depending on how involved you want the process to be, and how often this kind of product is generated), such as daily, twice weekly, or weekly. The assignment can continue to be graded or ungraded as usual, based on whatever rubric the teacher is using, but you can also monitor progress on a specific mechanical skill. Take data for a few days first, to see what his baseline is, and then either set a realistic goal for growth over a specific time period (such as when IEP goals and objectives are written), or just monitor to see how it improves when this skill is consistently top of mind for a month or two. The intervention is not to correct the work, but simply to take data on it, and change the level of self-awareness.

If percents are too complicated for a less math-skilled child, you can also arbitrarily always take data only on the first five sentences, or the first ten words, or something similar, and use an absolute accuracy count for your chart.

When you reach a consistently high degree of accuracy (say, better than 80%, or better than 4 out of 5), over multiple consecutive measurement intervals, you can bump up to another focus area, and start the process over again.

With respect to correcting homework, I think here it does matter a lot whether the problem is actually LD-based. It can be really, really hard to judge, but I try to think in terms of what the child could reasonably be supposed to do, and what they have been explicitly taught to do.

I tend to bring two considerations to this. First, if the child couldn't reasonably be expected to spell without an O-G based spelling program, I don't correct any spelling that involves words forms that have not yet been explicitly taught. Besides feeling like punishment, the reality is the child probably isn't going to learn anything from your corrections anyways if they are not within the context of a structured program and rules the child has already been explicitly and systematically taught. (My DD is highly motivated to spell my name correctly. She's seen it written correctly a million times. She still spells it differently every time.)

Second, what is the purpose of the assignment? Is writing the end, or a means to the end? In the latter case, I think it's important to be way more hands-off than the former. LDs are a lack of automaticity. That means the child needs to expend enormous brainpower on basic mechanics of spelling, letter formation, location of letters in space, etc. While they are doing this, there's not much brain left for anything else. So in every assignment, I kind of have to consider: where do I want the majority of her brain resources spent - on the mechanics, or thinking about the content? Because unlike the other kids, she has to pick one. So it's good to have stuff that's all about practicing the mechanics - and the rest of the time, ignore them.

Incentivizing can be very helpful for most kids (not mine, alas, but most). The challenge is to make sure it doesn't inadvertently turn into a punishment - for something the child can't control, or for lacking a skill that has not yet been taught. You also don't want to incentivize the child into thinking only the mechanics matter, and convince them to put no resources into thinking, creating, and analyzing.

My DD is now 11. When she does something for presentation - a poster or a birthday card - she will still check spelling with me on virtually every word, because it matters to her to get it right. But the work then becomes almost entirely about spelling, and content is subordinated. But she's a poet, and when her muse takes her, she runs to her whiteboard (where there's no spell check to distract her), and whips up the most extraordinary, beautiful poems. Barely decipherable poems. When she's done, she recites them to me (because there's no way I could read them) and I type them up for posterity. If she was thinking about spelling or word spacing or anything else, those poems wouldn't exist and my world would be a lot less amazing.

I am a little late in the mix, and I didn't read all the answers, but as the parent of a gifted dyslexic...its weird. Since we homeschool we are in a different situation, and there is no one to "keep up" with or compare with. I have not pushed spelling until now, my daughter is 11 and wants to be a better speller. I know 11 is old, but I have seen how quickly she learns when she knows she is ready and when the desire comes from her. She was almost 10 before she read well. She went from a 2nd grade reading level to a 7th grade reading level in one year or less and is now able to read just about anything and reads all the time. I see the look on people's face when I talk about her dyslexia...since she eats up 2-4 novels a week. Kids with dyslexia are supposed to be bad readers. About a year ago we began letting her use voice to text for writing, and she now writes novelettes and posts them to wattpad. She is a very strong writer and this adaptation has really let her flourish and get to the next level. And her love for writing has inspired her to learn to spell, and she is working with "sequential spelling" which is a zillion time better (for people with dyslexia) than the phonics way of learning spelling. We started at a very low level though, like 2nd grade. She is going 2-4 "daily lessons" each day. Not sure where I am going with this, but just letting you know, this is what 2e dyslexic/gifted looks like. We looked into dysgraphia due to the difference in writing/reading, but that wasn't the issue. I find it amazing the way the gifted dyslexic mind works. I am still not sure exactly how she learned to read so well.

Hello all. I'm sorry I dropped out of the conversation so abruptly. I had hip arthroscopy a few weeks ago and it knocked me on my heinie for a lot longer than I expected. As way of an update, my son qualified for the gifted program in his district (solidly, he had several 99th percentile scores and nothing lower than a 94th percentile on the Cogat and IOWA). However, when I was looking at his istation results (this is a computerized reading program that the kids test on each month) and he has huge discrepancies between vocabulary, comprehension, etc and spelling, phonemic awareness and other things like that. His spelling in particular was in the 23rd percentile while vocabulary and comprehension are in the 99th. I sent a screenshot to a friend who is a reading specialist in an elementary school and she said it is indeed looking similar to dyslexia. She also mentioned that in most kids that she works with, dyslexia and attention issues tend to co-occur. There are only 2 weeks left in the school year so I don't think we'll be able to do any testing through the school district until next year. His teacher is going to meet with me sometime before the end of the school year and so we'll see what she suggests as well.

I appreciate so much everyone taking the time to reply and give information about your own experiences. I'll update as we actually take action and give information about what helps him. Right now the plan is to work over the summer on handwriting and spelling, probably with input from my friend. I'm still hemming and hawing about whether to try to do it myself (maybe using the curriculum people have suggested) or hire someone (some teachers from his school tutor over the summer, there are specialized handwriting tutoring centers, etc).

Just chimmimg in to add... Parents of dysgraphics should place typing under management needs in the child's IEP. It is somewhat harder to get iPads and MacBooks approved as AT if the typing is slower that the already slow handwriting.

Emma, this is a really good point. I've definitely updated my 'learn to type' timing for sure. His hands just seem so little for it!

Is an iPad an option? Until the writing got substantive in grade 4, my DD much preferred having an iPad, and used a lot of word prediction.

His little hands may surprise you! I started my kids on typing at about 6 or 7, and they've done pretty well with it--the dysgraphic one included. Typing Instructor for Kids has some fun games on it, as does typing.com.

Alternatively, try an iPad with an Anker keyboard/cover.

He does have his own iPad although he uses it for horrible free car driving games. I've been wanting to switch to a more educational 'mode' anyways. From what I can tell, he can keep up with the handwriting right now, although I don't know how much it expands in second grade. Getting him a typing program to practice with can't hurt anything at all though!

His teacher is meeting with me on Thursday (yay) and hopefully she'll have some suggestions/input about what to do with him over the summer. Any questions that you suggest I ask her? This meeting is not to request an evaluation or anything official but more for getting advice for how to help him over the summer and maybe what to expect next school year.

I was already thinking that I would ask her about what his strengths and weaknesses are in class, whether he seems frustrated, if he's writing more slowly than the other kids (he's mentioned things to me about this), how his word decoding seems, and whether I should attempt to help him with writing/spelling at home vs hiring a tutor.

Here's the Anker keyboard. My DSs use them and they are fairly durable.

Just as an update, I met with my son's teacher last week but didn't get a ton of good information. They're painting the school over the summer and this particular teacher is retiring so I think she's super distracted by end of the year preparations. She's basically so wowed by his good reading skills that she wasn't focusing on much else and isn't too worried about him. I did find out that a) he's not frustrated or working significantly more slowly than other kids in his class and b) he probably hasn't gotten much (any) direct phonics instruction because they usually give that during individual reading groups and he's reading at a high level. I've also had him read a few lists of nonsense words and things like that - he can decode one syllable nonsense words quite readily but struggles if they're a little unusual or multisyllabic.

Based on everything, I went and bought All About Spelling levels 1 & 2 and I'll work through those with him over summer, as well as some handwriting and typing work. And I'll be sure to let his 2nd grade teacher know what's been going on next year. If he's still having trouble I can put him forward for dyslexia testing next year. My friend who's a reading specialist is also going to do some light screening for him this summer and give me her opinion as well.

So basically nothing is resolved but I have a plan for the summer! Thanks again to everyone who gave input and resource ideas.