Displaced, I am replying on my phone so please excuse any bizarre auto-corrects
I was curious about why you were after schooling reading and writing so I glanced back through your previous posts. From what you've previously written it sounds like ds had a tough year in kindy and was considered to be struggling according to his teacher, you've had him evaluated privately but no LD was found, there is dyslexia in your family, and there's a possibility that teacher fit this past year was an issue.
This is a good summary. I thought it would be overkill to include it again. To recap: testing results were negative for all learning disabilities, including dyslexia and dysgraphia. However, right before testing he made a big reading "jump" in ability/phonics. His results were low for reading and on "old" scales would have given him dyslexia, but according to the new requirements he is excluded. Because of his age, it was strongly suggested that if he did not improve relatively with his peers/age, he should get retested as the disabilities can be difficult to appreciate so young. Personally I feel the dyslexia may not be present anymore as his reading is so much improved. I feel it is due to teaching him phonics at home vs the school method of teaching. He could probably sound out most easy phonics rules words if they were pretty short (6-7 letters or so) and I feel much better about his reading.
To focus on his reading during school I neglected his handwriting because they said he could fail if his reading did not improve, whereas they don't care for passing purposes what the writing looks like. So we didn't practice much until summertime. And school practice is largely unsupervised from what I can gather, so most if not all of his handwriting practice over the last 2-3 years has been by unsupervised practice. As in, no immediate feedback.
Do you feel he has extreme emotional challenges to any types of challenge or to this work in particular? If he reacts this way in general to challenges or things he doesn't want to do I would try to work through it, but if his reactions are magnified with respect to reading and writing work I would think through and possibly rethink the approach. His reactions *might* be his almost 6 year old way of telling you that the work is *truly* difficult for him.
It's hard for me to be objective, but he does act this way somewhat to anything that is a challenge for him, even if it's fun. He had a meltdown at boy scouts playing marbles because he wasn't winning (but he was having fun until he understood he was losing). And I never emphasize winning as a goal (I don't think). It is worse for things that are difficult. There is some tendency to whine/complain if he feels he will be able to stop working as a result. When our schedule is not reliable I get more of it I think.
There might be a bit of a disconnect between what you are telling your ds here and what you are having him do - from his perspective. You're essentially trying to let him know he doesn't have to be a high-achiever at handwriting right now and skills take time to develop, but you're also having him practice for what can seem like a huge amount of time to a child his age. jmo, but I think that it's easier to motivate young children to work on this type of skill when they have a clear reason why they need to learn it.
Thanks for this perspective. I will consider how I can be more clear in my goals for him as well as the issue of perfection. Part of my trouble is handwriting is very subjective IMO. Is this T better than that T? Who cares really as long as it's legible? But I am trying to emphasize legibility and going through the right process, and with time the neatness will follow, as long as he isn't rushing. Did he start the letter in the right place? Did the letter reach the bottom line? Did the letters close?
If this is causing issues at this point in time I would back off for now and maybe for a week or so focus on having ds write a row of letters and circle the two he thinks look best. Praise him for those good-looking letters and quietly observe which letters he is not forming correctly. With HWOT you will go over the correct formation at the start of the pages where you copy a letter for practice. Try to notice what's up with not using the correct formation - is he just trying to get through quickly, is it due to not understanding, does he seem to not be able to control where he starts, is it consistently incorrect or randomly incorrect?
Thanks for this suggestion.
If it *is* dysgraphia it's important to understand that an eval by a PT isn't necessarily going to reveal it. Handwriting would specifically have to be part of the eval - many dysgraphic children, including my severely dysgraphic ds, have good fine motor skills for certain types of fine motor tasks. The disconnect with dysgraphia is in the inability of the brain to learn the automaticity of forming letters. The reason behind the dysgraphia could be fine-motor impacted of it could be due to visual-motor integration. The clues that showed our ds was dysgraphic were in observing his writing process, comparing his handwriting samples to peers in early elementary (which is tricky - dysgraphia isn't the same thing as sloppy or early-developing handwriting), and discrepancy on ability subtest scores as well as widely varying achievement test scores. Additional testing from his neuropsych helped verify it was dysgraphia and delineated the type.
Thanks for this perspective. I am certainly not excluding further testing. I think one of the bad things about having him tested already was he was so young and finding problems is so difficult at a young age. The ed psych recommended repeat testing in a year if school work didn't show improvement with ability, or difficulties continued. I don't think I'll wait a year, however.
You might find it helpful to have your ds to through a thorough reading eval by a specialist. I only mention this because you are seeing resistance and because there is a family history of dyslexia. Reading requires a wide range of skills all coming together and it can be extremely difficult to tease out a reading challenge. Two of my kids struggled with early reading - for one it was simply a vision issue (eyes not working together, issues were resolved with vision therapy and her reading took off), for the other it was a challenge associating symbols and sound which has required very specific and intensive reading tutoring.
Do you have a recommendation of a type of specialist? Both the PT and ed psych did dyslexia "testing". Most of one whole day of testing by the ed psych was dedicated to it.
It was mentioned already but worth mentioning again - our teachers have always stressed the importance of parents reading out loud TO their children, no matter what age/grade. I would put that as my first priority at this point, and try to make it fun, books that your ds is interested in. When you are having him practice reading with you, try making it light and simple. Start with him reading a sentence or two and you reading the next few sentences and over time work up to alternating pages. Don't stress out when he misses a word or can't decode a word, just let him know what it is. Try to just observe over time what type of roadblocks he hits - is it a certain type of word, does he have challenges with big words or does he get tripped up randomly with small words you would expect him to already know? Does he read more consistently when he is starting a session than later on when he might be tired? Etc.
Yes, I read aloud to him often, as does my husband. Probably an hour or so per day with books of his choice from library books or what he asks for. I usually have him sound out words he doesn't know to practice, but maybe I should just read those words to him as you recommend. They can be short words he resists but the pattern is words he doesn't know the meaning of.
To be honest, I would seriously consider dropping the sessions for the rest of the summer. It sounds like they are producing far too ugh stress for both of you with only minimal gain. You really don't know at this point how first grade will go. He may star out behind but then catch up easily in school if he doesn't have any deeper challenges with reading and writing. If he does have challenges, working without understanding them is most likely not going to help significantly. Instead focus on observing but not pushing - hope that makes sense.
I primarily am working with him to remediate the handwriting and keep the reading up to speed. He barely passed reading and got unsatisfactory in writing. My selfish goal is to get him on level with his peers so that I don't have to spend the school year doing remediation but just regular school work.
