12yo who can read fluently but struggles with comprehension and cannot read for longer periods

[Anonymous]

I'm really worried about the amount of reading required for 7th grade work. My son is a very slow reader and reads below grade level due to poor comprehension. I don't think it's dyslexia because he is fluent and never struggled with phonics and is a decent speller. He gets 2 30-minute reading tutoring sessions weekly via Zoom with a reading teacher who works in FCPS, but I am not seeing the needle move at all. some people mention seeing a developmental optometrist for vision training...but I'm not sure if there's an issue there. He gets his eyes checked annually at the ped's office and even got a checkup at a pediatric ophthalmologist as a little kid and passed all those. Anyone had a similar kid who made strides with some form of tutoring or training? Any advice appreciated!

[Anonymous]

I’d get him tested and more tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Does your child have a 504 or IEP?
Have you received any evaluations through the school?

[Anonymous]

He was tested. He has a very slow processing speed and borderline for inattentive ADHD. We have a 504 plan and accommodations in school. He had been on meds during the school year, but we never saw any improvement on them (tried 3 different ones), and we are taking a break over the summer. His attention with the tutor is totally fine. His neuropsych was almost 3 years ago. She did full neuropsych plus educational testing. He scored on grade level for math but below grade level for language arts. We did do speech therapy for a while to work on reading comprehension, but we did not see it making much of an impact plus it was very costly so we just stuck with tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He was tested. He has a very slow processing speed and borderline for inattentive ADHD. We have a 504 plan and accommodations in school. He had been on meds during the school year, but we never saw any improvement on them (tried 3 different ones), and we are taking a break over the summer. His attention with the tutor is totally fine. His neuropsych was almost 3 years ago. She did full neuropsych plus educational testing. He scored on grade level for math but below grade level for language arts. We did do speech therapy for a while to work on reading comprehension, but we did not see it making much of an impact plus it was very costly so we just stuck with tutoring.

We didn’t see any improvement with older DD until we kept her on meds a full year, including the summer. It helped us work out the timing of doses and meals.

[Anonymous]

Try this, call them if you need help finding the right level and with ordering materials. You can learn to do it at home but you need to do it daily.

https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/program/corrective-reading/MKTSP-URA04M0.html

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your insights, previous posters! He has been on meds for over a year, but we are taking a break this summer to also allow some growth and weight gain. His weight & height percentiles had gone down at his last check up, and he's small for age. Both DH & I are above average height.
Thanks for the link. I will call the company and work on this. However, decoding has never been an issue, but I see they have books focusing on comprehension too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your insights, previous posters! He has been on meds for over a year, but we are taking a break this summer to also allow some growth and weight gain. His weight & height percentiles had gone down at his last check up, and he's small for age. Both DH & I are above average height.
Thanks for the link. I will call the company and work on this. However, decoding has never been an issue, but I see they have books focusing on comprehension too.

It’s a 2 part program. Decoding and comprehension, I would test for both though. Links for placement tests are online, just takes a few minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your insights, previous posters! He has been on meds for over a year, but we are taking a break this summer to also allow some growth and weight gain. His weight & height percentiles had gone down at his last check up, and he's small for age. Both DH & I are above average height.
Thanks for the link. I will call the company and work on this. However, decoding has never been an issue, but I see they have books focusing on comprehension too.

It’s a 2 part program. Decoding and comprehension, I would test for both though. Links for placement tests are online, just takes a few minutes.

Here’s the placement test links

https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/program/corrective-reading/MKTSP-URA04M0.html#resources

[Anonymous]

One of the things my traditional learned and dyslexic kid do is listen to a book 1st to get the gist and read it 2nd for annotating.
This strategy works for slow readers as they can quickly get the base (my kids listen to books at more than 2X speed).

Can you ask for accommodation of getting materials ahead of time so your child can listen to it before class?

[Anonymous]

I am surprised he didn’t meet the criteria for a specific reading disorder. Dyslexia is not the only one.

[Anonymous]

I think you need to get to the bottom of why he struggles to comprehend before you invest more time and money.

Does he comprehend audiobooks? Can he tell you what happened, character motivation, plot, etc? Can he listen for extended sessions? If so, and yet he can’t do that with reading with his eyes, it is likely that he has to put so much energy into reading that he loses the ability to also comprehend.

Okay, again, why? It is possible that he knows how to decode well, but that he has never reached the next level of mastery, which is called orthographic mapping. At this point your brain still looks at every letter but automatically recognizes it without decoding. It takes a fraction of the time and energy as decoding. For dyslexics it takes about 200 more repetitions of seeing a word for it to become orthographically mapped than it does for typical readers. And if reading is slow and laborious you read less, so you get less repositions, so you are less likely to reach orthographic mapping. It a viscous cycle.

I’m sure there are other portential causes, but thought I’d mention this one. The treatment would be the same as for a dyslexic person, and you’d want an experienced CALT to remediate.

[Anonymous]

You need speech therapy. Its very hard to work on this. How is his IQ?

[Anonymous]

Thank you PPs. What is CALT?

His IQ was in the average range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you need to get to the bottom of why he struggles to comprehend before you invest more time and money.

Does he comprehend audiobooks? Can he tell you what happened, character motivation, plot, etc? Can he listen for extended sessions? If so, and yet he can’t do that with reading with his eyes, it is likely that he has to put so much energy into reading that he loses the ability to also comprehend.

Okay, again, why? It is possible that he knows how to decode well, but that he has never reached the next level of mastery, which is called orthographic mapping. At this point your brain still looks at every letter but automatically recognizes it without decoding. It takes a fraction of the time and energy as decoding. For dyslexics it takes about 200 more repetitions of seeing a word for it to become orthographically mapped than it does for typical readers. And if reading is slow and laborious you read less, so you get less repositions, so you are less likely to reach orthographic mapping. It a viscous cycle.

I’m sure there are other portential causes, but thought I’d mention this one. The treatment would be the same as for a dyslexic person, and you’d want an experienced CALT to remediate.

This describes my kid, who is autistic, ADHD, and has a SLD in reading and written expression. She became an avid reader once we dropped the expectations for eye reading and allowed her to use audiobooks exclusively. She still has trouble with higher order comprehension questions because of the autism, but enabling her to read for pleasure really helped her attitude toward English class and let her access grade level content in other subjects.