I remember getting so frustrated because he would read lists of words like 'dog, log, cog' correctly and then, just when I thought he was getting the hang of it, he would come to 'bog' and say 'because' or 'beautiful' or some other word that started with a B that wasn't even remotely related sound-wise or even the same number of syllables. He didn't seem to be able to translate the sounds from one word to another.
This is exactly the kind of thing my son would do. It was baffling. You should know that that sounds very much like stealth dyslexia.
Also interesting that he has been trying to robotics. When you read up on the Eides material, you will see that they identify strengths that go along with dyslexia as well. These include spatial reasoning, out-of-the-box thinking, and an ability to see the big picture and make startling connections. Dyslexic kids are more likely to be the ones who are in love with things like Legos, robotics, or who are known for being highly creative.
I'll tell you when more of my stories in a bit more detail. Because testing and remediating dyslexia are both very expensive, I intentionally began with lower-level responses to the problem I perceived to see if we couldn't solve it in a less expensive way first. So I found a very experienced reading tutor who used a variety of methods to help struggling readers. I told her I thought that he might have stopped dyslexia. She had never heard of it. I told her it was how dyslexia presented in gifted kids. She made a face, and clearly thought I was "that" parent. Her little assessment concluded that, no surprise, his comprehension was better than his decoding. She also suggested that he might have ADHD, because he had made An irrelevant comment that one point during the testing. In fact, he had made a connection about some of the reading, and was telling her about something that was very much related to what he had read. We had her work with him once a week over the next couple of months. At the end of it, she told me she didn't think she could help them anymore. She looked at me and said that she was no diagnostician, but that there definitely was "something." Even though she was the long time reading tutor at the local private school, she hadn't run across someone like my son.
