Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Should this be concerning?

My daughter is 4 years old and gifted, in a pre-k gifted school. She has long been writing (from about 2 years old). She asks me to spell words and then she writes them. But now she is learning how to spell the words, so I tell her to write "cat" and she write its. But then when I ask her to read the word she says she doesn't know what word it is. I'm not sure how she could know how to write it but not read it.

I should also mention that when she started to write she wrote everything in mirror form. At first the pediatrician said it was a developmental thing. Then the Occupational Therapist said she wanted me to start to correct her, so I did. Now she writes words correctly, but she still prefers the words mirrored in reverse. Like she writes a sentence correctly, and then writes it in her mirror way, and she tells me "this is the way I like it"

So I am starting to wonder if she could be seeing the letters reversed or something and that is why she can write the word but not read it? Would you be concerned? And if so, who could help with this kind of situation?

It may be too early to know if it's something to be concerned about, but I'd keep my eye on it. FWIW, one of our friends' dd started writing early (3 years old or so, and wrote nothing but mirror image for several years until she was in first grade and was having to write the "right" way for school. It was never actually an issue for her - she happens to be gifted and has done well in school, and can still write mirror-image when she feels like it.

My dds both have had trouble reading simple words that they were able to spell/write. For my older dd, the issue was purely vision - she had double vision and wasn't always able to focus the letters. With her, it was a really random thing when reading - she'd be reading through a page of a child's book and would read all the complicated words a-ok but stumble on a word she should know well, like "far" or "and" etc. Her teacher wanted us to drill the Dolch site words with her constantly but she seemed to know all of them when we did flash cards with her yet she'd stumble when reading and eventually was not progressing with her reading. It wasn't until 2nd grade when she complained to us out loud over and over again that she couldn't read her new teacher's handwriting on the board that we finally took her through testing and the vision issue was discovered.

My youngest dd had almost the exactly same thing going on - she started writing words early, but when she read out loud she would stumble over short, easy words - but it wasn't consistent (neither was older dd's). In her case, it was a teeny bit vision but mostly due to a challenge with being able to associate symbols with sounds - a true challenge that she is still struggling with in spite of a lot of remediation.

I wish we'd realized what was going on with each dd when they were younger, but really I'm not sure that we would have been able to fully understand what was up until they'd actually been in school for those first 1-2 years.

Is the mirror writing the reason she was seeing an OT, or was there something else going on that prompted an OT referral? There might be a clue there re whether the inability to sometimes read the words she can write means anything.

Best wishes,

polarbear