I have a couple questions and will try to be as concise as possible.
Dd11 has quite a few things in common with dh and both have ADHD inattentive type diagnoses. She has done better in some regards in a very structured middle school environment that her older HG+ sister would have hated b/c it has huge amounts of drill of mechanics. B/c detail and mechanics are weaknesses of dd11's, it is forcing some improvement in that area, though.
Some of dd's issues clearly seem ADD related, but some I'm not so sure on. So, I guess that my questions are:
1) what does one do to help with dyslexic symptoms in a child who is quite possibly HG+ especially when the traditional problems don't exist (phonics difficulties, reversals, etc.)?
2) what does this sound like if not ADD/does this sound like possible dyslexia (see below)?
Dd strongly dislikes reading, reads very slowly, and says that it gives her headaches. She loses her place on the page, misspells the same word multiple different ways on one page (although her spelling is still good -- at or above grade level whenever it's been tested on things like the WIAT), and frequently misread easy words when she was younger substituting "from" instead of "for" or skipping words (especially easy/short words) up until maybe 3rd grade.
On the WISC-IV, which she took at 7 and again at 8, she is HG or even PG (99.9+ the first time) with a lot of scatter (scores from 8-19 with very high VCI both times -- 99.7th the first and 99th the second with a breakdown that was 19, 17, 12 if I recall correctly). WMI and PSI are always much lower than PRI and VCI primarily due to massive amounts of mistakes not actual speed issues in the instance of PSI.
She performs above grade level in all areas including reading comprehension and was always advanced on tests like DIBELS which test phenome awareness/sounding out nonsense words. On the GORT (oral reading test) @ 8, she was in the 4th quartile for everything (comprehension included) except reading speed, which was in the 1st quartile.
Interventions for ADD help with some of her issues like lack of attention to detail, transferring the wrong answer to the answer line, calculation errors, overlooking entire pages on tests, etc. She chews gum to concentrate, drinks some caffeinated beverages like tea and a little coffee, the structure of her school and study techniques we've implemented, and some dietary supplements.
She is in accelerated classes and is very young for grade (started early having not made the cut-off by two weeks; we got around it by starting in a different district) and she is getting all As right now.
What continues to concern me is that she dislikes reading so much, would never choose to read for pleasure, and finds it so hard. Her reading speed also strikes me as something that will present her problems later on b/c the reading load is only going to become heavier as she moves into high school and I hate to have her options for AP classes be limited by her inability to read quickly. As it is, she's been working her way reluctantly through the same book (which she says is good) for months.
How does one treat dyslexia if that's what it is? The few methods I've seen, like making words out of clay so the person can recognize them in text (from the book the Gift of Dyslexia), don't seem to be cut out for her issues.
