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This is one of these dumb "I don't understand development because my other child is odd" questions. (DD is an exceptional speller and always has been.)

DS7's verbal IQ is 150 and he reads hundreds of pages a week, way above grade level. His written work is pretty good, but maybe a year above grade. Handwriting looks messy to me, but his teacher says it's good. Personally, I'd say it's average for grade.

Here's the thing. He is a fantastic verbal speller. If we play "spelling bee," he can correctly spell words far above grade level, like "functionality" and "irresponsible" (I made those up, but similar). Written work is much less accurate. In particular, he leaves letters out or gets them out of order in weird ways. In the past week I've seen "enouhg," "questoin," and "fried" for "friend." It is probably one word per paragraph, and sometimes a very easy word (not "cat," but could be "shoudl" for "should"). He always gets 100% on his spelling tests, but they are super easy. He also does correctly spell harder words right pretty often, so it's weirdly inconsistent.

DD would never have done anything like this (if she misspells, it is something like "defanitely" or "embarass") so I have no idea if this is a) typical and b) typical for a child with these very advanced verbal skills. He is certainly not dyslexic, but given the excellent verbal spelling, is something happening between brain and paper, or is this just normal for a child still developing writing skills?

Hmmmm. I sometimes do that when I am writing quickly. (and I used to be an excellent speller, with strengths in verbal IQ). I am thinking normal. But my brain is deteriorating and I also keep having to look up when to use affect/effect so I am prob. not the best resource.

Could it be stealth dyslexia, apparently it is different from typical dyslexia? http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10435.aspx

I thought of that, but it's hard to credit. He was reading the Narnia series at age 4. He does still sometimes show some small errors reading aloud ("a" for "the") but he also reads about 190 wpm aloud, according to school.

He does have a few quirky things as far as motor and muscle tone. He's what you might call a fumble-fingers...clutzy with small items, drops and breaks things, messy at the table. Fatigues easily. Drawing is okay, but I would call it somewhat laborious.

As I understand it kids with stealth dyslexia are usually strong readers (even above grade readers) and comprehend what they read with no issues, but have issues related to writing and/or spelling.


How about his vision?

Yes.

DD8 is in vision therapy. Many of the exercises they are assigning her would help with the discrepancy between verbal and written spelling: hunt for things on a page, improve finger dexterity and motor planning, string beads in sequence. Even the tracking exercises would make sense: maybe when he reads it back, he is not *seeing* the letters in the order they are written because he is not tracking smoothly. This would correlate with extremely good reading in some ways, if he is compensating very well so that he understands the word correctly whether it's spelled correctly or not. DD's overall coordination has improved since she started VT, though she sometimes still falls out of chairs for no reason.

Knowing what I know now, I'd get a developmental vision assessment.

In addition to vision, I would consider the dysgraphia/DCD/NVLD category. The discrepancy between his oral spelling and his written spelling suggests that it is the insertion of the physical or visual-spatial process of writing that is the problem, and not dyslexia, stealth or otherwise. He is also very young, and may still be working on attaining automaticity in handwriting (developmentally, not necessarily as a delay), which can introduce undue cognitive load, resulting in inconsistent or incorrect written spelling, especially in connected text (versus in isolation, on a spelling test). Either way, I would keep an eye on this, and consider an OT consult or eval as a starting point.

DS8 has DCD and most likely dysgraphia (although it has never been formally diagnosed). His handwriting is a mess, he forgets spaces between words, he forgets punctuation, capital letters, and he misspells words (or makes careless errors) with words that should be easy. He seems to do a lot better spelling orally. I think his brain is working a lot faster than his hands can keep up, or he is putting so much effort into controlling the pencil that he forgets things like capitals, spaces, etc. Does your DS have a mature tripod grasp on the pencil? Does he look awkward when he writes?

aeh, this is just what I think, too. I really can't see dyslexia in him because he is so excellent at reading (in particular, he can do things like sound out weird scientific names faster than I can), but I feel like there may be some kind of "skip" happening physically or perhaps visually, I guess. Or it could be just developmental? It's weird, though, to see him spell those words wrong.

I should have mentioned that he is sporty. Large motor is good. Doesn't seem very DCD in that sense. It's like, specifically hand and finger stuff that seems poor. We're still struggling to get him to use his fork consistently. But, really, handwriting is not awful. Just average, maybe slightly below. To me it looks meh because his sister wrote like a Palmer manuscript book, but when I compare to other kids, he's okay.

Visual-spatial deficits, I don't know. He's awesome at chess, which seems visual-spatial. He's knocking back 3rd grade math just fine.

DD8 is great at visual-spatial. She nearly beats me at Blokus and plays with visual math for fun. Constantly. But it's all big-picture whole-page stuff - not linear sequences. She thinks in pictures and 'videos' - when bored, she makes up TV programs and plays them in her head. She seems to track time sequences, and spatial relationships, but not visual sequences.

She eats with her hands when she can get away with it (ie whenever we aren't watching; I think she eats spaghetti with her fingers at school lunchtimes). Apparently this is connected to vision, because eye movement is essentially a fine motor skill. Improving fine motor with fingers also helps improve the control of the eyes.

DD's scores on a bunch of the visual scales were zero or not measurable, and she was below 20th %ile on the rest. Academically, she was keeping up with the class and excelling in some ways. The one clue we had, if we had paid attention, was that she resisted all attempts to give her fine-line markers and kept using the broad-line preschool ones instead. I think they were easier to see.

Keep in mind, I'm not diagnosing your DS; just pointing out that visual skills affect a lot more than vision, so they may be worth screening for even when vision itself doesn't seem to be troubled. Our local developmental optometrist offers a free half-hour screening before a full evaluation. That seems worthwhile. Any dysgraphia in my household has yet to be unambiguously identified or treated, so I can't comment on that.

How often is there a genetic component to dyspraxia/dysgraphia? I was talking to my mother about this last night, and she said that my brother was diagnosed with dysgraphia. He is a number of years older than me, so I did not know this. It must have been quite severe and/or the school must really have been on top of things! This would have been in the late 70s and early 80s!

ultra, I don't know the statistical probability, but do know that dysgraphia, like dyslexia, can have a genetic component. One branch of my family's family tree is littered with relatives who either have a dyslexia or dysgraphia diagnosis, including my very dysgraphic ds.

Best wishes,

polarbear

At 7 it seems most likely that when concentrating on letter formation he loses the picture he has of the word.