I think that is what DD did, too-- and then kind of
forcing the issue with the ONE thing that she didn't yet have-- actually blending-with-decoding-out-loud-- was the key. That was ALL that she needed to be explicitly "taught."
She learned to "read" in less than two weeks. But I have no idea how different things would have been if we hadn't pushed just that little bit. And make no mistake-- her personality was such that she howled a bit about it being "harrrrrrd" for the first couple of fifteen minute sessions with the phonemically-controlled readers. But once she figured out that we weren't budging, and that the easiest route forward was just just buckle down and do what we asked... well. Like I said-- this took two weeks. And when I say "two weeks" what I mean by that is that we had the first set of what were effectively a lot like BOB books (but snarkier, and in full color-- the first one was "Bug in a Rug" or some such thing), and we insisted that she work with a parent for about fifteen minutes every couple of days or so. Once she demonstrated that she COULD decode using what she already knew (which was... um... pretty much all of the phoneme stuff that is taught in K-2), we let her be.
Within a month, she was reading basic chapter books like Cam Jansen.
Within six months, she was sneaking Harry Potter into her room at night with a flashlight.
Honestly, this was a matter of ME trusting what my gut was telling me, and I wish that I'd done it
years sooner. She was missing that ONE piece. Just the one-- because when you think about how kids learn language, they SEE the process all around them, and can hear how it works. But reading? Well, adults don't spend any time demonstrating decoding skills orally, if that makes sense.
Once she had that key in her hands, the entire WORLD opened up in front of her. It was amazing-- and it was the first time that I
truly understood just how different she actually is from NT.
