HS age DC having issues with reading and comprehension

[Anonymous]

Maybe start with an eye exam if it’s been a while, to rule out any issues?

[Anonymous]

Get a reading tutor targeting reading comprehension. Maybe an SLP or Lindamood Bell visualizing and verbalizing

[Anonymous]

I would contact colleges in your area with a reading center that trains reading specialists and does evaluations on youngsters. See if there in someone on staff who could evaluate your teen. Or folks they could refer you to.
U of Maryland at College Park has such a center and I think other schools such as GWU and Marymount in Arlington may be options.

Also, be clear to see if it is reading from books or from the computer which is bothering you child. It may also be the quantity of reading and the kinds of related, possibly higher level
comprehension skills such as analysis, synthesis etc that may need to be learned and practiced with a tutor.

[Anonymous]

You can also have a reading specialist do a reading test. It will be $500 or less and they will be able to give you feedback. My previous tutor did them, although we never had one because we did a neuropsych. Tutor: Dr. Walter Dunson was great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.. How do I find who does these evaluations? Should I start with the pediatrician?

Your pediatrician likely won't know much. The cheapest way to get an evaluation is to ask the school. You'll have to show evidence of him struggling -- easy if his difficulty with reading is impacting his grades, harder (but not impossible) if his grades are good.

The more thorough but also more expensive way is through someplace like Stixrud, which will do a many-hour deep dive into his learning needs and strengths.

I am a tutor. It is true that you are entitled to a full evaluation at school and if you disagree with that you can request an Independent Educational Evaluation which the school is (generally) obliged to pay for.

OP, your description of your DC does sound like it could be dyslexia. Believe it or not, every year or 2 I run across bright kids who somehow have managed to muddle through and get to HS without bad grades. Somehow they have learned to compensate but in HS the work demand and time pressure is such that their compensation mechanisms are overwhelmed.

As a tutor what I see. is - smart kid, maybe seems inattentive, seems exhausted by more than a few paragraphs of text, has difficulty sounding out multi-syllabic words, may skip words or word endings while reading aloud and not notice what they said doesn't make sense, may substitute orthographically different but substantively similar words, can read aloud but cannot state the meaning of what they just said because they are using most of their brain for decoding, not fluent oral readers & sound stilted, slow reader, dislikes reading, sometimes vocabulary isn't commensurate with intelligence, etc. They also tend to have difficulty with learning a foreign language.

These kids generally never picked up the idea of sounding out an entire word. The began a kind of "whole word" approach very young - identifying a few letter/sounds in the word and then guessing a contextually appropriate word. It's a tremendously slow and effortful way to read but can last thru middle school, particularly if the kid is smart and not taking particularly challenging class load or heavy reading load.

Another kind of "reading problem" I see frequently is reading comprehension difficulty with long texts in people with ADHD or a language processing disability. ADHD kids have trouble attending to long texts about non-preferred interests and keeping track of the narrative thread in their head. They also sometimes miss embedded social cues in text.

Kids with expressive language or word-finding difficulty often have difficulty summarizing text in their head so they also lose the overall substantive meaning and structure.

As a tutor, I can tell when a student is struggling but I can't tell if it's ADHD or dyslexia. Definitely get a neuropsych. A good one - with IQ, full range of achievement and language testing, processing speed, recall, working memory, fluency, executive functioning, attention, anxiety and depression testing - should be able to define the issues.

Meanwhile, please get audiobooks and show your kid how to use text to speech to read them worksheets, directions, webpages, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get a reading tutor targeting reading comprehension. Maybe an SLP or Lindamood Bell visualizing and verbalizing

This. Lindamood Bell is expensive, but you can also look into online tutoring through NOW (neuro development of words). The founder of the program is a clinical neuropsychologist (and I think the nephew of Patricia Lindamood). He runs his on reading/behavior centers (Morris Center), but they also offer virtual tutoring.

https://www.nowprograms.com/programs/mental-imagery/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC says they can't focus on reading if it's more than a 5min read. I was thinking this is an attention span issue, but over the past year, DC has been getting very upset over reading text books like for their History class. They said the words are jumbled, and they have to reread the same paragraph several times, and often gets lost reading the paragraph.

It's not just about reading a boring topic. DC said the same thing happens when they read books that they enjoy.

Do I see DC's pediatrician? Or some other specialist for this?

DC does have anxiety but no other SN diagnosis. I've tried finding a therapist for DC, but it seems almost impossible to find one who takes our insurance and will see teens.

Is this a new issue for him or has his reading experience always been like this. The anxiety could be impacting attention.

[Anonymous]

We got a dyslexia diagnosis in HS. Simple sentences were fine so it didn't show up early, complex ones were difficult.

[Anonymous]

Two of my kids have ADHD and learning disabilities (including in reading - decoding, phonetics; written expression; reading comprehension). For one child, we never would have found these issues without a neuropsych, as the child always did extremely well in school and figured out work-arounds. (But, this gets harder in MS and HS.) We also had a hard time recognizing the ADHD because neither was hyperactive or outwardly inattentive. The learning disabilities definitely triggered behavioral issues in one of our kids, and the tests helped explain that to us and the teachers.

I definitely recommend a full neuropsych. It helped us pinpoint a bunch of issues in our kids -- some of which were resolved by therapy (OT, speech, tutoring in phonetics/decoding). It helped me understand what we could do to help our kids (therapy, tutoring) and could not (processing speed). It helped me better advocate for my kids. It helped my marriage -- I didn't have to "fight" for mental health services (behavioral therapy) with my husband.

It can be a long, tough road. But the neruopsych will at least help peel back the onion to help you move forward in the direction(s) needed to help your child.

We used Center for Assessment and Treatment (CAAT) and had a very good experience. About a 6-9 month wait.

[Anonymous]

Additional comment from the 17:20 poster - I tried very hard for 2 years to get my older child assessed by MCPS (at the time in K and 1st grade) and had a terrible experience. Private testing was very expensive but worth it.

Remember you can submit to insurance and write off on taxes. If you need to send your child to private school due to the diagnosis, you can also get a tax break; speak with an accountant about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't expect anything in the way of reading testing from the school. If your kid has made it this far and this is public school- they won't test. It could be dyslexia or it could be the terrible reading curriculum the schools had when your kid was in elementary. There are several studies now showing that a generation of kids struggles with reading because of the Lucy Calkins/whole reading approach that is a total failure. As reading gets more complex, issues come out.

The school system has a child find obligation which legally obligates them to test your kid in all areas of reading if you write a letter expressing that you suspect your kid 1) has a disability like ADHD or dyslexia and 2) it is adversely impacting his education making completing the required reading in APUSH very difficult and he is having difficulty with comprehension and 3) needs special instruction to successfully access AP class, for which he is clearly intellectually qualified. Please also cite the "significant discrepancy" between MAP-M and MAP-R scores as evidence of a potential reading, language or attention disability.

School has 30 days to schedule an initial "screening meeting" at which they decide if it is possible he has an educational disability (fyi, good grades do not screen the student out of an IEP)
School should assess him in "all areas of suspected disability" which means - IQ test, attention assessment via Vanderbuilt or Connors or other similar checklists and full achievement testing on a standardized normed instruments in all areas of language processing, rapid naming and reading comprehension, rate, fluency and decoding accuracy.

Accept nothing less. If the school declines you, make sure that you get everything you turned down on the "prior written notice" section and tell them you disagree with the determination and will "consider your due process options".

[Anonymous]

I'm a tutor and every year a bright kid comes to me for tutoring and after a couple weeks it is clear to me that they are dyslexic. I advise the parents to get the kid assessed. Assessment comes back - dyslexic and often also ADHD Inattentive, although I have had students who were diagnosed only as dyslexic.

Bright dyslexic kids can compensate all the way thru HS without raising any alarm bells at school, whose response has usually been to dismiss the kid as "not smart" or "unmotivated" without further thought.

These kids are usually working incredibly hard to stay afloat, but at a certain point the volume and complexity of reading demands overwhelms their ability to compensate.

See if you can help your kid by using text to speech reading supports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't expect anything in the way of reading testing from the school. If your kid has made it this far and this is public school- they won't test. It could be dyslexia or it could be the terrible reading curriculum the schools had when your kid was in elementary. There are several studies now showing that a generation of kids struggles with reading because of the Lucy Calkins/whole reading approach that is a total failure. As reading gets more complex, issues come out.

The school system has a child find obligation which legally obligates them to test your kid in all areas of reading if you write a letter expressing that you suspect your kid 1) has a disability like ADHD or dyslexia and 2) it is adversely impacting his education making completing the required reading in APUSH very difficult and he is having difficulty with comprehension and 3) needs special instruction to successfully access AP class, for which he is clearly intellectually qualified. Please also cite the "significant discrepancy" between MAP-M and MAP-R scores as evidence of a potential reading, language or attention disability.

School has 30 days to schedule an initial "screening meeting" at which they decide if it is possible he has an educational disability (fyi, good grades do not screen the student out of an IEP)
School should assess him in "all areas of suspected disability" which means - IQ test, attention assessment via Vanderbuilt or Connors or other similar checklists and full achievement testing on a standardized normed instruments in all areas of language processing, rapid naming and reading comprehension, rate, fluency and decoding accuracy.

Accept nothing less. If the school declines you, make sure that you get everything you turned down on the "prior written notice" section and tell them you disagree with the determination and will "consider your due process options".

This is incorrect information. The district has a Child Find obligation to review existing data in all areas of concern and determine if assessments are needed to determine if the child has a disability. Existing data may indicate otherwise. In this case, no assessments will be conducted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely neuropsych. Ask for recommendations here based on where you live and you can figure this out this school year if you start now and can afford the $6-8k for testing.

If you can’t afford that, it will be an extra year of waiting for somewhere that takes insurance. So if there is any way to swing private pay, do that. Most places have interest free payment plans so you don’t have to front the cash.

Yes schedule a neuropsych test everywhere with a a waitlist

Immediately get a reading comp tutor to spend time twice a week with said child. They may figure things out faster and sooner than doctors.

I would still explore a stimulant adhd route. Ability to focus and have stamina to read (and learn) 2+ hours a night is very important.

[Anonymous]

Agree that the school will probably do nothing, unless your child is really bottoming out in ELA. Even though they should evaluate based on your request, you may end up in a lengthy go-round of 30 days to respond to this and that while your kid flounders.

I would absolutely get a neuropsych. You will get a much much fuller picture of what’s happening with your kid. Search this forum for recommendations—there is always a thread going about practices. We had a good experience with Daisy Pascualvaca’s practice.

Pediatricians are generally not much help in this realm.