6 year old might have reading issues?

[Anonymous]

I’m not sure if there’s anything happening. I want to get that out of the way immediately.

That being said, this is where we are:

- DD is in a K-8 private school she loves and that we are really happy with. She will be 7 in October.

- She took the WPPSI as part of admissions in Fall 2021 and scored 135 overall (99th percentile) with no dips in abilities.

- Her math is very strong. As in, she enjoys doing multiplication and can do division in her head. Her spatial reasoning was off the charts in her WPPSI.

- She is extremely creative and seems have a really good memory. She memorized the entire soundtrack to a musical she loves and can sing all the songs, with a surprising number of tonal nuances.

- She is in speech therapy for articulation issues, and the SLP tells us she will likely need that for at least a couple more years.

- She is also in reading intervention. Her reading specialist—who is Orton-Gillingam certified—told us today that she has not yet mastered Kindergarten sight words and she isn’t decoding CVC words as fluently as she should be.

She reads to us every day. We read to her constantly.

She is scheduled for a neuropsych eval this fall.

Again, I’m not sure if there’s anything happening. I’m just trying to process everything. I’m not even sure if I have a question.

[Anonymous]

I would ask for a call with the reading specialist and talk more in depth. The consistent WPPSI scores are interesting in this context.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would ask for a call with the reading specialist and talk more in depth. The consistent WPPSI scores are interesting in this context.

Thanks, I’ll definitely do that.

That’s what’s been so perplexing for us. Her reading situation doesn’t seem to fit, given the WPPSI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would ask for a call with the reading specialist and talk more in depth. The consistent WPPSI scores are interesting in this context.

Thanks, I’ll definitely do that.

That’s what’s been so perplexing for us. Her reading situation doesn’t seem to fit, given the WPPSI.

Lots of people with dyslexia are very smart and the WPPSI doesn't require reading. While of course I don't know if your child is dyslexic, I don't see anything here that is inconsistent with that.

[Anonymous]

My kid is dyslexic and also super smart…it’s not uncommon. I would have her screened for dyslexia. When she reads with you, what type of mistakes happen?

[Anonymous]

I would work with her every day and if you can afford it more tutoring. The main things are what you re doing - tutoring, working with her and the evaluation.

[Anonymous]

The WPPSI scores being good and her high math performance means she's unlikely to have a problem like, say, poor working memory. I would investigate a language-based learning disability.

How is her speech?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The WPPSI scores being good and her high math performance means she's unlikely to have a problem like, say, poor working memory. I would investigate a language-based learning disability.

How is her speech?

She’s always had an advanced vocabulary, which makes this even more difficult to figure out for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would ask for a call with the reading specialist and talk more in depth. The consistent WPPSI scores are interesting in this context.

Yes - also if it is true OG, there should not be much focus on sight words. The focus should be on decoding skills.

[Anonymous]

My dyslexic kid has vocabulary that is off the charts.
She took the WPPSI at age 4 - when there were no reading/writing expectations.

Next time she reads to you - pick an unfamiliar book and see how it goes. Is she skipping words, guessing words that have the same 1st letter or can be triggered by the pictures?

[Anonymous]

If she is not reading CVC words fluently, what is she reading to you?

[Anonymous]

I would ask the speech therapist to really check if it's truly just an articulation issue.

How does she do with numbers and doing math with pictures of physical objects?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If she is not reading CVC words fluently, what is she reading to you?

She can sound them out. Her reading specialist said she would like DD to be able to read them more “automatically” (aka without having to decode them sound by sound). She’s reading Starfall books at levels D and E.

She needs prompting for the first sound for words like “this” and “what,” but she can sound out the CVC words. She also knows a good number of the sight words in the books, although sometimes she reads “it” as “at.” When I ask her to look at it again, she gets it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would ask the speech therapist to really check if it's truly just an articulation issue.

How does she do with numbers and doing math with pictures of physical objects?

Her math skills are extremely strong. She can do basic multiplication and division in her head. She can do single digit addition and subtraction without pictures of objects. I can just ask her “what’s 10-8?” She’ll immediately say 2.

[Anonymous]

Something's not adding up, if her WPPSI scores are that high and consistent yet she doesn't have the K sight words, at a school you're happy with and with reading intervention. Definitely do the neuropsych-- I think that's the next step for sure. And have a sit-down with the reading interventionist to talk about what might be going on, in light of the WPPSI.

You saying she does math in her head is an interesting clue. Can she do math on paper? Does she understand that the image of a number means a certain number of objects?

Can she write her name or other common words?