Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Child Fights Remediation

DD9 is exceptionally gifted (gf-gc >160) with dysgraphia and perhaps some stealth dyslexia though it was not diagnosed during evaluation and she reads at the benchmark. Her school has generously given her three 40-minute private Wilson Reading intervention sessions every six days and two private OT sessions without a 504 or IEP. She cooperated with the OT who is young and fun, but won’t cooperate writing with her classroom teacher who she doesn’t like. She is also somewhat oppositional and non-compliant with the reading teacher. The reading teacher called me today concerned saying my daughter was angry for the first time and she was really worried about her.

The theory is that my daughter has worked to conceal these deficits from everyone through compensating and is sort of traumatized by the spotlight shining on them. This attitude (anxiety, or whatever you want to call it) is impeding the progress. My daughter has always been incredibly compliant and cooperative. She’s been a very easy child. This year has been a struggle as I worry I’m seeing some unraveling though overall she’s happy at home.

Does anyone have any thoughts? At this point, I’m even considering homeschooling her as I’m worried about her well-being. But I’m concerned that will reinforce this avoidance and non-compliance.

There is something to the idea that she is fighting remediation because it highlights weaknesses that she has worked hard to hide. Some time ago, I had a severely dyslexic student who managed to hide the reading disability until very late in high school. When Wilson was offered, the team had to work quite hard to convince the student to accept support, and finally was successful only because of the student's close relationship to a teacher viewed as a mentor, who was able to find a personally-relevant purpose.

In your case, your daughter is much brighter, but also much younger, than the student I had, which means she likely has both more awareness of the discrepancies between her own expectations and performance, and fewer emotional strategies for managing them. She may perceive accepting remediation as admitting to being intrinsically flawed in some way, rather than as simply filling in a skill or instructional oversight. She may also be resisting having to re-learn some of her approach to decoding. Stealth dyslexics, after all, can read, just through a highly inefficient pathway. But re-learning a pathway that will be more efficient and less burdensome in the long run still feels like going backward, and perhaps a bit babyish.

Not everyone learns the same way, and it so happens that the way we teach reading to most students only works really well for about two thirds of them. Wilson works well for nearly all of the other third, but unfortunately, not all of those students are identified, or in schools where they have the resources to give them the correct type of reading/spelling instruction for them. She happens to be in that third, and to have been identified, and to be in a school with teachers who have been taught how to teach her correctly. This is an opportunity which she may choose to embrace.

And if it does happen that you end up homeschooling her, two excellent OG-based (like Wilson) programs designed for homeschooling are All About Reading/Spelling, and Logic of English. Many of us have used AAR/AAS to good effect, making modifications to fast track (but not skip) through many lessons based on the rate of learning of our individual children. LoE was originally designed for older dyslexics, which may have value in a PG learner who is already a functional reader (although you will need to select the right combination of materials). Both programs can be used in small, frequent doses, rather than relying on lengthier sessions. (e.g., 20 minutes daily).

You are amazing! Your posts always leave me with a new approach! I wonder if it would be helpful to reframe the help as filling in an instructional gap. Perhaps, she would take it less personally.

I’m really at my end. I’ve never been so stressed out. My husband and I are both highly educated, have access to the best professionals, and are willing to pay. Despite this, we are limited by my daughter’s willingness to participate.

With DD, it mattered a lot to her that I explained that she was perfectly capable of learning, as long as she was taught the way she needed to learn. Previously, this had not happened. So we were re-learning how to read, starting over and doing it properly, the way she needed to be taught. It seemed to help her a lot to understand that the failure had been in the teaching, not her. Especially, as aeh notes, when it can feel a bit demeaning to be going back to "c-a-t", essential as it is.

Two random thoughts, in case either are useful.... One, I found that by the time we got to remediation (grade 3), her anxiety around reading and the hiding/ compensating she was doing were very high. We used AAR, and I tried to eliminate as much as possible all reading and writing outside of the AAR materials, so that she was never trying to read anything she had not yet been taught how to read. That had HUGE impact on her anxiety: I only gave her material she could be successful with. If your DD is still trying to manage all her regular classwork, is it possible that remediation may have actually rendered her extra sensitive to the disparity in what she can handle vs what she is being asked to do? And maybe she feels even worse because now she's getting all this extra help that no one else needs and yet somehow she is "still too stupid to be doing her schoolwork"?

Unfortunately, it's hard to underestimate the level of toxic self-labelling and anxiety these kids build up (which, offside, is why I am such a fan of explicitly replacing those self-imposed incorrect labels with factual and support-orienting labels like "dyslexia"). Getting through the anxiety and the defence the child has built to protect themselves can be the hardest part.

And second, on a totally unrelated note, I have found some older kids really respond to the cool Shaywitz MRIs pictures that actually show the changes in neural pathways used to read before and after remediation. You can actually see the functional, but cobbled together and inefficient approach dyslexics will typically use to read, and then how post-remediation the much more concentrated and efficient pathways they can now use to read. While DD and I were doing her remediation, there were days I swear I could see those new neural pathways connecting and building, it was that amazing. (Sorry, I can't seem to find the specific pictures that showed the before/ after best - can anyone help? Maybe they were in the Shaywitz book?)

+1 with Platypus and aeh.

We had this challenge with writing for my DS, with him resisting strongly and performing at a very basic level. What worked was to slowly build the skill at the pace he was able to manage - in this case, through the appeal of cursive. Early sessions were painful for everyone involved, but daily practice of at least 10 minutes was required.

I positioned the practice as learning a skill that many people need to be taught. We sat down together every day, and he was rewarded for effort if he completed 10 minutes of work (e.g. a TV show, playing hockey together, etc.) The goal eventually grew to 15 minutes per day, but no more. I would sit side-by-side with him and do the work at his pace alongside him, demonstrating the skill and coaching through frustration as he hit roadblocks. When he engaged in negative self-talk, we took a pause and re-framed the beliefs. Now, if he makes an error, instead of saying, "I'm so bad at writing. I'll never be good at this", he'll say something like, "That didn't turn out how I wanted it to. Let me try again." (Actually, his writing is now gorgeous and fluent- an unexpected strength - which makes the experience feel less painful on the other side.)

These are life skills - not everyone comes pre-loaded with the same software, and we sometimes have to hack the solution. I know we're talking about different specific challenges, but the behavioural and emotional consequences to the children feel similar. Hope this helps, and good luck!