My son Aiden is 5 and is a smart kid. He started reading spontaneously when he was still 2. From the beginning in pre school he hated phonics with a passion! His teacher thought that he had a photographic memory and was memorising the pages and using the pictures as a trigger for the words.
Fast forward a few years and his reading is now at early chapter book phase - Fly Guy etc.
My concern is that he himself gets frustrated over his inability to figure out words on his own, he asks and he recalls the word always after that. BUT with words that start the same and end differently he always always struggles. So the, then, them, that, those etc - he always reads "the". when he writes numbers and letters he writes not only the main ones backwards and muddled (d, b, p, q) but others too - 3, 5, 7, 9, e, g, n, a. Even if he is copying a sentence from my careful writing, he will get things backwards, and then say that it's exactly the same - it looks the same to him.
I think that he has taught himself the shape of the words he is reading and remembers that - more like an image than a word made of letters. And I think that it's the reason why he has this barrier to his writing and reading. If I look at his writing now, its worse than when he was 3 in both style, formation, neatness, size - everything. His reading is reluctant at times, but he will sit for 30 minutes trying so hard to decode a book he really really wants to read (ie Harry Potter) and then throw it down in anguish and not want to hear about it again for weeks. IF he chooses a short book, we are asked to read it to hi 2 or 3 times and then he can read it easily and fluently to us.
Now his younger brother who also started reading and writing spontaneously at 2 is really making fast progress in reading and writing. At his current rate of self-done progress he will surpass both Aiden's reading and writing abilities before the end of this year.
I don't think it's just an age thing - he has been reading and writing for close on 3 years now, and surely all the regular glitches like this would have cleared up in that time.
I cannot find a professional who will listen to me as he is "so young still". I have no one else to ask, so am asking here... is there an issue here? How do I go about testing for it or helping him out here?
Is it dyslexia? could it be a sight thing like convergence or something? is it something else? please, any ideas will help here as I am almost certain there is something blocking him here...
