Linda Mood Bell center Fairfax for student with no diagnosed LD

[Anonymous]

Any experience with this center? I see they do a 2-3 hour diagnostic and then go from there. How much did the diagnostic cost you, and tutor rate? I am trying to find someone who can help a 3rd grader with reading comprehension. Reads well above grade level by all teacher accounts, and reads all the time at home, but is missing reading comprehension. Cs and Ds on quizzes and national testing at the 88 percentile.

[Anonymous]

Lindamood Bell is very expensive. Not familiar with how good they are with reading comprehension, but a friend who used them for severe dyslexia credits them with having a child who can read.

[Anonymous]

Can your child narrate the plot of her favorite movies back to you? If so, it’s just laziness when it comes to reading (assuming she is good at decoding the actual words, as you say she is).

She needs to practice this with you. Have her read aloud to you, then have her answer questions about what she’s read — in complete sentences. Once she can do this orally, you can work on getting her thoughts on paper.

[Anonymous]

What makes you think reading comprehension is a problem, if teacher reports reading above grade level? Once beyond kindergarten, reading assessments usually include comprehension.

[Anonymous]

I’ve worked at a Lindamood Bell center, and I’ve also worked in special education within schools.

Lindamood Bell is most appropriate for students who have mild or moderate dyslexia. Their LIPS and Seeing Stars programs address deficits in hearing letter sounds and matching sounds to their corresponding letters or letter combinations. It’s an expensive program, but all reading remediation is. The standard for any Orton-Gillingham-based, multisensory intervention is 3 hrs per week. Tutors usually get paid $75-$150/hr., and tutoring usually takes 2 school years to catch a child up to grade level. (Lindamood Bell will sign you up in 8-16 week increments, however.) The LMB rate ends up being somewhere between $125 and $150 an hour, though the person working with your child gets paid a dollar or two above minimum wage. LMB sells their services in multi-week packages that are often around $12k. Never use their services over the summer; that’s when they hire a fresh batch of inexperienced clinicians, sign up a bunch of new clients, and over extend their supervisors.

Lindamood Bell does also have a reading comprehension program called Visualizing and Verbalizing. It teaches students to form mental pictures of what they read. However, many people do not have any capability to picture things in their minds. Some other group of people can only form hazy mental imagery with a lack of detail.

If your child decodes (sounds out words) well but doesn’t comprehend, there are usually two underlying factors: lack of attention and low vocabulary. When I say “lack of attention,” I don’t mean that clinically diagnosable ADHD is always a factor, but it *can* be. In fact many children who struggle to comprehend year after year end up with ADHD diagnoses in middle school. Work on what it looks like to attend to detail. Read together, pausing often for discussions. Teach underlining, finding the main idea, and summarizing skills when reading non-fiction. Visualizing scenes is fine too, but it may not be a strategy that works for everyone. With regard to vocabulary, reading more and discussing unfamiliar words with adults is one way to start remediating that. Trained teachers and tutors also have some other research-based strategies for helping develop greater vocabulary.