Problems with Encoding - Learning Difference or speech related?

[Anonymous]

My daughter is 7 years old and in 1st grade. According to the teacher, my daughter is having trouble with encoding (in reading and writing). What this means is that she can write a word if someone else sounds it out. But if she’s sounding it out in her own head, she is having a lot of trouble and isn’t hearing all the sounds/letters.

For example, take the word “animal”. When I sound it out, my daughter writes “animl” but when she sounds it out in her own head, she writes “onomos”

My daughter is currently in speech therapy and has made significant progress but the encoding has not improved. I’m wondering if this is a learning difference? Her teacher and speech pathologist are not sure if it’s purely speech related. I’m not sure where to start to get a diagnosis. I would like to get her the help and support she needs. What should my next steps be? I have a call into her pediatrician but I decided to post here to see if anyone could provide some insight and guidance. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Have you been to an audiologist? Does she snore or b eat he through her mouth?

[Anonymous]

*breathe

[Anonymous]

I would take her for an APD evaluation - auditory processing disorder.

[Anonymous]

Difficulty encoding (a reading skill) is not because of an Speech impairment.

There is a correlation with a speech impairment (particular phonology errors versus articulation errors) and learning disabilities. You should have a conversation with the school SLP about this. Just email and ask for a quick phone call to get some education about this topic, share your concern, get individual details about your child.

-School SLP

[Anonymous]

My kid is somewhat similar - an articulation issue that carried into encoding, coupled (for her) with ADHD. In her case, she already had an IEP for speech and we added the OHI for the adhd. We continued to work with our private speech pathologist, whom she loves and we trust, with a Lindamood Bell program. It worked great for us because our insurance covered the bulk of it - I think our portion was about $25 per session after the deductible was met. She also does OG at school to work on the encoding. For her, it honestly seems to be a combo of reasons, and she has made great progress.

[Anonymous]

How is her reading? How is her ability to verbally break words apart into their phonemes and put them together?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is somewhat similar - an articulation issue that carried into encoding, coupled (for her) with ADHD. In her case, she already had an IEP for speech and we added the OHI for the adhd. We continued to work with our private speech pathologist, whom she loves and we trust, with a Lindamood Bell program. It worked great for us because our insurance covered the bulk of it - I think our portion was about $25 per session after the deductible was met. She also does OG at school to work on the encoding. For her, it honestly seems to be a combo of reasons, and she has made great progress.

NP: Don’t want to derail this conversation. If your SLP is in Virginia, would you mind sharing the information? I can post a dummy email if you prefer. Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

I'd do a hearing test and an APD test but remember may schools don't teach spelling. The sound it out way works for some kids and not all. In the meanwhile, I'd work with her on spelling via workbooks and fun apps. And, consider a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Have her say the word out loud to encode. It takes practice.

[Anonymous]

OP, my DS was like your DC. Has the school specifically done standardized normed achievement testing in decoding and encoding and have they also done rapid naming testing and other oral language tests for dyslexia or are they basing their diagnosis of "trouble encoding" on observation alone.

My DS's school missed entirely the fact that he actually was not decoding. They thought he was reading fine but just having trouble with spelling. When we had him privately tested he was diagnosed with reading disorder, dysgraphia & DCD & MERLD. His decoding was significantly discrepant from IQ. He was smart enough to compensate by reading by whole word recognition and context. The tells were very subtle and his teacher, with 30 kids in a class, had no clue.

DS needed a dyslexia appropriate reading instruction that explicitly taught sound/symbol relationships. He also needed instruction in syllabification and processing speech sounds. He did not test low enough to be positive for APD but in real life he has trouble discriminating sound against background noise.

I believe ADHD inattentive contributed to the reading disorder and other diagnoses.

[Anonymous]

The app “Endless Reader” really helped my daughter with this. It sounds out words and is really cute and engaging.

[Anonymous]

This is OP with an update incase it’s helpful to someone else. My child was diagnosed with adhd - inattentive and APD

[Anonymous]

Sounds like dyslexia

[Anonymous]

Have her say it out loud when sounding it out. She doesn't needs a diagnosis to begin working on phonological skills. Her SLP should be able to help with this.