Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Confused and need direction

DH and I have begun to tutor our niece, 10, who is failing the 4th grade. I'm not sure if she has an LD, if she's ND or GT, so I was wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction to a good resource.

Here is some quick background info on our situation. Any insights would be appreciated.

DN has had a troubled childhood -- broken home, ignorant parents who don't care much, a mean stepmother who has accused DN of molesting her kids (totally unfounded and ridiculous), etc. The poor thing has had a pretty rough time of things in her short 10 years and I'm sure that has had a big impact on her school performance.

She was diagnosed with eye tracking problems last year and went to therapy to have it corrected. I'm not sure if it is completely resolved or if she is supposed to keep up on eye exercises.

According to her school, she is at a 2nd-grade reading level and is failing math. Art, music and gym are good.

We began tutoring her 2 weeks ago, twice a week. Everyone seems to think DN has an LD, but I'm not familiar with LD's to really know. I know she doesn't have ADHD because she can focus on a topic.

DH taught her how to add fractions and do long division, which made her feel really proud (I don't think she gets much encouragement at home). I worked on her spelling, reading and writing. She does read slowly and tries to go too fast, which makes her jumble the worlds up, but overall I didn't feel like she did a bad job. We answered some reading comprehension questions and her recall of the story was great -- she remembered more than me!

Her writing isn't great. She gets confused with B's and D's, and often capitalizes them in her words inappropriately -- I think she does this because then she doesn't have to think if she needs to write a lower case "b" or "d." She knows it's wrong when she looks back at it. I'm trying to think of a way to help her with this.

I don't know if these things sound like an LD or just a lack of confidence. Her eye tracking problems weren't diagnosed until last year, so she has struggled with reading since kindergarten and her parents didn't care enough to help her. (I don't mean to sound so negative about her parents, but if you met these people, you'd understand.) DH and I have finally stepped in to help her. We pick her up from school and have her experience a solid family life here at our home for a few hours... I think it benefits her to sit down to a meal with a family, follow family rules and see how a mom and dad can function together as a team. DH also provides a good male role model for her. DN plays wonderfully with my DD's and is truly a sweet girl.

I pray we can work through this with her. Any advice, insight or resources would be wonderful. Thank you for sticking with me through this long post!

I think it is wonderful that you are trying to make a difference in her life, and I think that any love you throw her way will make a huge difference in her confidence and in her academics!

It sounds to me primarily as if she is just needing some individual attention. If she has trouble following along with something at school, I think it will make a world of difference to have you to help her with it until she does understand. I would bet that a great many of the kids who do well in school do so because they have someone at home that they can ask for help. It's tough to be on your own, essentially, when you are just 10 years old.

To me, it doesn't sound like she has any particular LD. If she is still having eye issues, she should still work on some of the therapy exercises she was given. Some questions to ask her would be if the letters or words move around on the page when she reads or if she has difficulty copying from the board to her paper. If she finished vision therapy she may know of some of the exercises they gave her, or you could contact her vision therapist for some things she can do at home. I'm sure they would be willing to help you out since they really encourage you to continue with the exercises after therapy is complete.

I personally wouldn't be overly concerned at this point about her mixing up her upper and lowercase b's and d's. Since she notices them, just have her go back over her work when she is done and make the corrections. At this point I would emphasize the process of getting her thoughts down on paper with as much detail as possible. You want her to feel good about writing so that she will be willing to share her thoughts. She can fix the details at the end.

As far as reading too fast and making mistakes, I would bet that she's trying to keep up with her classmates. To me, this means that she does want to do well, which is such an important thing. At home, I would maybe go back toward the basics and have her read aloud to you, maybe even using her finger to point for a time. Tell her that speed is not important (say, maybe, that you're going to read for 20 minutes exactly, no matter how far along that means she gets) and that you want her to focus on reading each and every word correctly. After a time with your attention, I would bet, she will improve her speed and accuracy. Clearly, from what you say, comprehension isn't much of an issue. Still, after she's done reading, I'd enrich the experience by having conversations with her about what she's read.

I volunteer at my kids' school and last year one of the things I did was to help kids who were falling behind. Some of the kids understood the material but just hadn't done their homework, and some really had no clue what they were doing. But truly, the thing that I think made the biggest difference for these kids was having an adult who spent one-on-one time with them. They really craved it. Seriously, how great is it just to have one person who wants to help you and talk with you and spend time with you?!

You are doing a great thing! It may get hard at times, but you can do it. Good luck!

Hi HoosierMommy,


I know a couple adopted two kids from very awful circumstances - so awful that one parent went to jail for 10 years. The two kids were both assumed to be LD by everyone. The little girl has actually turned out to be GT. The boy still has issues, but much of that it turns out is due to heredity that runs in the male line of his fathers side and will fix itself when he gets older - AND he has severe eye issues just recently diagnosed. I watched the kids blossom under the couple's care and the little girl just took off. It is a journey and you just have to get on the road.

Many times reading issues can cause problems in math. The child I watch after school is having this problem. She can do the math, but has problems comprehending the directions and word problems. I encouraged her mother to ask the school to have the the tests and directions read to her. Her F came up to a C+ and is still climbing. May be something to look into.

As for her vision issues. I suggest you look to see if there are some vision excersices that she should be doing.

How is her comprehension when she is reading alone?

Here is what was suggested to us to help our after schooler, with reading.
~ Review basic phonics and sightwords every day.
~ The assumption is that the more fluent she is with sight words and phonics the more resources she has available to to comprehend the materials she is reading.
~ We also use below level reading workbooks to help build her confidence and ensure mastery of the basics, which she loves.

I wish you luck and encouragement.

Thank you so much for your input and direction!! It has helped me tremendously.

DN does not go to a wonderful school. Her teacher appears to be clueless or apathetic, I'm not sure which. Her math homework is all over the place -- anything from basic addition to writing out an algebraic equation. And she's only given 3 to 4 math problems for homework, all story problems (which doesn't help since her reading isn't the best). There is no repitition with math fundamentals. I also found out her homework is not even graded! I'm not sure how the teacher is supposed to know if a student is having problems BEFORE the test.

My favorite thing the school does is that they pull her out of math to do reading with a special teacher. Yeah, they pull her out of math, which she is failing, to do reading. I know that teachers do a lot of hard work and I commend them for their efforts, but her school sounds like a circus to me. We're trying to think of a way she could go to a school in our school district, which is one of the best districts in the state academically.

I just hope we can help her gain her confidence in school and in life. She's getting close to adolescence and I'd like for her to have a better footing on life before she gets to that stage.

mnmom23, if you met this girl, your heart would melt. She told me she liked our house better than hers and wanted to stay a long time. She has asked repeatedly to stay overnight, which we're trying to work out for some weekend when she can stay over WITHOUT having to do school work. My heart truly goes out to her.

Some of the things you mentioned could be consistent with dyslexia. Has the school done any NCLB testing like DIBELs to see if she is at grade level for phonemic awareness and nonsense words? These can be indicators of dyslexia but they are not dispositive. My DD8 is twice exceptional (highly gifted and dyslexic) Everything I have read indicates that flipping "b" and "d" is developmentally appropriate up to about 2nd grade but by grade 4 this can be a red flag. "Jumbling words up" can also be a sign of dyslexia. While it may not seem intuitive, comprehension is not a great marker especially for gifted dyslexics. You may want to check out the International Dyslexia Association website or the Eides article on stealth dyslexia: http://www.interdys.org/FAQ.htm http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10435.aspx
Good luck

HoosierMommy,

<<<<Hugs>>>> to you and your DH. Many of the children that I have fostered over the years have been in exactly the same situation as your DN. For the most part, they suffer from a complete lack of caring when it comes to academics. Given encouragement and knowing someone is actually watching and caring tends to turn it around. The MOST important thing for you and your DH is to make it clear to your DN that you believe she can do this. Kids that know someone else has faith in them makes them begin to believe in themselves. With that comes confidence and from there it gets easier.

One thing that has worked really well for us is having the kids read aloud to younger children in the house. Little ones aren't judgemental of a mispronounced word or the speed of delivery. It has helped us tremendously in building confidence in tentative readers.

As far as having her moved to your district... Can you register under your address? In NM, with a school system that is hit and miss from school to school, people do it all the time, just a thought.

Keep us posted! You can do this!!!