Overcoming Learning Challenges in Children
So, what do you do when nothing is working, and your child is not learning to read or learning in general? You keep trying. Let me tell you what happened with both of my children.
First, I am going to tell you about my son. My son as a toddler loved to look at books. He loved to be read to. He loved to learn. I thought it was going to be easy to teach him. After all I had a BS degree in Elementary Education with a minor in reading education. What could go wrong? Just before he was to start kindergarten, I took him to the eye doctor to ensure that there were not any problems with his sight. I wanted things to go smoothly. He got a great report. He had 20/20 vision. So, we start. At first everything seems to be going well. He quickly learned the first 5 stories. He even “read” those stories to his dad. I was so happy. Then the next story came. He could not read it even after studying it for a week. We did phonics drills and sight word drills. I tried ever curriculum that I was able to get. Nothing worked. In addition, his handwriting was horrible. 9’s were being written as p’s. 5’s were being written upside down and backwards at the same time. (I didn’t know that was even possible.) A few years passed. I asked for help at his doctor’s appointment. He was referred to the pediatric learning development center. They tested him. By this time, he was supposed to be in 3rd grade. I was in tears. After the testing was over, the doctor was very nice. She reassured me that I had done nothing wrong. She informed me that his vocabulary was that of a 5th grader. They put him in OT for muscle weakness in his hands. That helped a little with his writing. They put him in speak therapy for his reading. They tested him to see if he knew the letter sounds. He knew every one of them. So, they started doing sight word drills. A year later he still could not read. His writing was neater, but letters and numbers were still written backwards and/or upside down. During this time, his eyes developed a twitch. They thought that he might have a serve form of Tourette syndrome. They then informed me there was nothing else that they could do. I asked was there anywhere else that could help. One person thought about an eye specialist. I made the appointment. We went to the appointment. They did many tests. It was determined that he did not have a serve form of Tourette Syndrome. He did have dyslexia, and he had a problem with the nerves that were supposed to send the information to the brain for processing. He needed intense eye therapy. During this time, I was to stop trying to teach him how to read and instead help him with his eye therapy homework. This homework included some reading. The therapy took about 1 year. After this I went back to trying to teach him to read with great success. By the end of 6th grade, he was able to slowly read on the 8th grade level.
Now I am going to tell you about my daughter. She is 3 1/2 years younger than my son. She started having problems around the age of 3 months. She cried almost none stop. She cried every time. By the time she was 2 she was being tested for Autism. She was not learning to crawl, walk, or talk. At the age of 3 1/2 she was put into physical therapy and speech therapy. The physical therapy worked, but the speech therapy failed. The doctor strongly suggested that we learn sign language. My dad strongly suggested that we leave her along and just encourage her to babble. Because of a series of family issues, we missed too many speech therapy sessions and during this time her speech therapist quit, we had to stop going to speech therapy. Around the age of 5 she beings to talk more. I start being able to understand her better. Her speech is still not great, but it is something. At the age of 6 she is talking well enough that the eye doctor agrees to test her vision. It is determined that she only has 50% sight in her left eye. Her right eye is 20/20. Her ability to track is almost nonexistent. (You have to track in order to read.) She gets glasses and I get instructions on ways to help her develop her ability to track. The doctor doesn’t believe that eye therapy will help at this time because of her limited verbal skills. (Please see my post about eye hand coordination.) I an idea to try teaching her phonics as a way of helping her learn to speak. Her speaking improves a lot. (At the time of me writing this, she is 11 years old.) She has just started back to speech therapy. Her new therapists believes that she will be able to speak clearly in the near future. Her speech therapist has just finished testing her. She knows all of her letter sounds. There is a problem with the muscle coordination and muscle strength. She was also tested in her reading comprehension. She is supposed to be in 5th grade, but her reading is at the beginning of the 7th grade.
When nothing seems to be working, keep trying. Be determined. Keep searching for answers. Click here for vision help.
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