Hi N
I have a 7.5 DS who was a 32 week preemie. His problem is in writing not reading, was a very early reader. The most obvious way to see if remediation is necessary is to compare to age-mates not intellectual peers. DS in pre-k was behind his age peers in writing. He hated anything that worked his hands - like playdoh - but he didn't seem delayed because of his intellect. Once he hit kindergarten in a gifted school, it was more dramatic, the differences in writing ability. And more importantly the difference between what he could do verbally but not on paper. The weirdest was spelling - he can spell a word incorrectly writing it but if you ask him to spell it aloud he spells it correctly. There is some disconnect between the thinking and the writing - most of it is physical, some is rushing, and some is his wiring. And it is also clear now, that he has slight delays in most physical things. So we do swimming and gymnastics in order to build up core strength and arm strength. He has an IEP in school and gets OT for writing - they work on Handwriting w/o Tears and all sorts of strength related stuff. Everything is slowly getter better. Master of None told me 2 years ago that by third grade, a lot of the balance type things get better - like needing to sit in a W or have a foot on the floor while sitting - and we are already seeing those gradual improvements.
His writing issues do not appear to be dyslexic related or its that he has already compensated for it - his letter and number reversals still pop up occasionally - when tired or stressed but rarely. He still writes rather largely and his letter formation is rarely the same. He is more dysgraphic but not exactly. His main issue is that when writing to get out ideas, will lose spaces between words so everything runs together. What is helping is graph paper - its teaching him to write the letters the same size by putting in a box and leave a box as space between the words. And you can make graph paper to the size necessary.
Your indication of his reading level suggests he is not behind but not when you factor in his scores. Although lots of kids have high VCI and take awhile to read comfortably.
YMMV, but in my experience the difficulty was all mental - in terms of remediating it. DS was SOOO resistant to everything in K because he was so embarrassed and so frustrated that things were so much harder for him. He did not understand that all the learning he had been doing had been work because it was fun for him - and that physical things require repetition. But during 1st he had a great teacher and OT who really worked together and with the changed attitude came huge gains of effort. He finally sees that other people have issues and that this is his. Now, we have buy in, we do work over the summer, and he now understands that the work is paying off and things are better - not great - but better. DS especially hated that he could not draw the complicated things in his head- so we are working on drawing - like with Ed Emberley's books.
DeHe
