Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment gifted non-reader?

Two of my kids were not really reading in K.

In the first case, dd (now 8) is both a visual learner and also had visual processing issues - eye tracking/eye teaming - that were fixed with six months of vision therapy during first grade. However, I just found out the other day that she's reading right at grade level now (3rd) and honestly I'm a little disappointed. We did IQ testing during K, so I have a rough idea of her potential, though I might like to re-test. I'm not sure if it's a case of her not really trying harder stuff, or whether her talents simply lay elsewhere (she's a grade level ahead in math according to a recent MAPS test, whatever that is. But still, even in that area I believe she's capable of more).

In the other case, my ds (now in first grade) has had some special needs issues - had an IEP for speech and fine motor. At the start of K he didn't really know the sounds of all the letters. Now he's more than a grade level ahead in reading - though his teacher recently noted that he does not perform well re: comprehension when the test is timed, in which case he tests at a level close to the end of first grade. He can read timed, or he can have good comprehension, but not both. He too is a VERY visual learner. He's definitely more gifted than his sister. He has not yet had IQ testing yet.

Other than something like a vision check (perhaps with a behavioral optometrist to check how the eyes work together, in addition to a regular vision check, see www.covd.org ), I think mom2boys is right, sometimes you just have to be patient!

Does your DD seem to be a visual-spatial learner? Does she seem to have vision issues when it comes to reading? Is she a perfectionist who might not want to read until she can do it perfectly?

Of course I can't tell you about your own child, but I can tell you that we regularly call one another on GT denial moments around here. Most of us on the forum have them from time to time with younger kids, mostly because they have those "duh" moments. (Well named, BTW! LOL!).

Even the most highly gifted kids will have "duh" moments because they are still kids. I wouldn't let that dissuade you from believing that something more is going on with your DD.

With that said, I am very sympathetic to what you're going through because we are still muddling through what's going on with our DS5. Until less than a year ago, when he suddenly started doing math problems in his head, I wasn't really buying that he was GT at all. But he had this sudden, radical shift in interest and ability--really, REALLY sudden and radical! And apparently that's pretty common, especially in visual-spatial kids, which I suspect he might be. When they "get it," they TOTALLY get it, and in a big way. There's nothing gradual about their development.

He did the same thing with writing when he was 3.5, I think it was. He just decided he was going to learn how to write. He literally said out loud, "I'm going to learn how to write." And within 36 hours, he was writing as well as his 6.5yo brother!

So sudden, huge leaps do happen sometimes. It's pretty freaky when you're not used to that--as I am not!--but they exist.

I'm still not sure how GT our DS5 is, but I have come to accept that he does seem to be GT at some level. We're testing this school year.

So, yeah, new territory I completely understand!

Just don't be surprised when someone accuses you of GT denial. I feel it may be coming for you...

My daughter did not really like to read until recently (6th grade). She read mostly non-fiction before that. She always accelerated at a strange pace. I would see nothing, then she would jump way ahead.

Then, she did get over her sensitivity issue of not reading anything scary (a very broad category for her).

She met Harry Potter and Twilight and became a bookworm.

oops I posted to the wrong thread...sorry!


I wouldn't worry. My older dd8 started reading spontaneously before Kindergarten but it took my younger dd6 a little longer. She is also extremely verbal. She was speaking in complex sentences by 15 months, using humor, large vocab correctly etc. She has always been in love with books but reading just did not click for her until the summer after kindergarten. Now in first grade she is a very competent reader and well above grade level. Interestingly older dd8 who was the early reader barely spoke a work until she was two :-) Go figure...

Does anyone else have experience with late readers? [/quote]

Hi,

I wouldn't call 5 or even 6 or 7 a late reader necessarily. Your child might simply be average in the ability (or interest) in decoding print, and that may look out of sync with the rest of their abilities, but be entirely normal.

I'm thinking of my two brothers, both very gifted, one was doing some reading at 3 and the other showed little inclination and did not read before school instruction (which at the time began in 1st grade). That second brother was tested as a 4 year old at Stanford (I believe the Binet LM) and apparently received the highest score they'd ever seen in a 4 year old (and the LM was not new at the time). The other got a lower but still very high score. My parents were surprised because it was the early reader who also did lots of other energetically precocious things. As they grew up it became apparent that the tests were accurate, its the non-early-reading one that has more phenomenal abilities. He also has awkward printing and can barely do cursive writing to this day, can't draw more than a crude stick figure, and not for lack of practice as of course all through school everyone was working on his weak areas. It's a bit surprising he didn't read early because symbols (ie math/computing) ended up being his main strength.

My best guess on why for my brother didn't learn earlier was that he had an internally driven sense of what was important and what wasn't, didn't always include other people's, or standard, objectives. Expressed by passive disinterest rather than active resistance, made him seem a bit dull sometimes.

Polly

Polly - very interesting post - thanks!

For what it is worth, we could not tell if our DS8 was reading in K or not. We thought maybe he could when he seemed to know everything listed on his Pokemon cards, but were never sure if he was reading or if he had just memorized what they said from our reading them. He refused to read books out loud to us.

At the beginning of 1st grade we still were not sure of his reading skills. I was actually worried at that point, but then one day I asked/forced him to read a page of a Mr. Putter and Tabby book and he read it almost perfectly, with expression. He was tested for the gifted program at the end of first grade - he had the highest scores they have seen in a while. He was reading at least on a third grade level by the end of the year, probably higher.

Now in second grade, we still have to fight to get him to read. He would listen to books all day long if I read to him, but does not like to read by himself (except for Calvin and Hobbes.)

This is a very interesting post to have stumbled upon. My 2nd child, dd6 tests in the EG/PG range. She was accelerated to 2nd grade this year in a GT school so they are doing 3rd grade work. School moved her up based only on IQ scores and probably didn't expect that she was only reading about a year above her actual grade level.

So she's much lower than most of the kids in her GT 2nd grade class. We are so concerned we placed her in an extensive 3x a week very $$ Orton Gillingham reading program. She's been doing this for about a month now.

I've been so stressed about why she can't see to take off in reading. Having read Dr. Ruf, I really thought there was no way she could be a 4/5 child since her reading is so low. I've been researching LD's etc and thought that she must be dsylexic or something.

Your posts have calmed me quite a bit, thanks!

I am interested in any research/links on early non gifted readers. I know a familiy that (because of cultural expectations) spend a ton of time "teaching" there children at home even before Kindergarten and then making sure they are always ahead of the regular school curriculum. These chldren did start reading before school and pretty well. They don't seem to show other classic "gifted" charateristics and school acclerates them eary on because of their early acheivement. Just wondering how common this is and where I could learn more on this subject.

Thanks for your reassurances on this thread.

R

I wonder about this too! So many kids in our kindergarten class had a jump start on reading, either from their parents working with them at home or being in an all day Montessori program that really pushed early reading. It seemed a number of these kids didn't really advance in reading skills after starting kindergarten. By the end of kindergarten, and certainly first grade it was pretty clear who had leveled out and who the gifted readers were.

I really think it's incredibly hard to stereotype (and I'm saying this of as a parent of a late reading HG+ child, of course! It's a complex equation of GTness vs. exposure vs. interest vs. a particular child's learning profile vs. a variety of other factors I'm sure I'm missing!

It is hard to stereotype the kids, they are all so different.

I agree about this early reading that many times seems to level off. The family I know of had their oldest child accelerated from K to 1st. Then in second grade the Cogat testing didn't even show that it was high enough to put the child in the enrichment pull out but yet they had been grade skipped the year before????

I am particuarly sensitive to this issue because we had tried to have my HG son accelerated and his IQ score was fine. His achievement tests (especially writing) were low so this same school wouldn't move him ahead.... We just spent more time in preschool years following his interests rahter than "prep'ing" him for school before it even started.
Thankfully, we are in a FT GT school now and it doesn't matter.

What's frustrating is our orginal school seems to value early achievement (even though it was so parent led)more than anything. Had my son stayed in that school and tuned out because of boredom at the slow pace they probably would have never realized what he was capable of.