Help with almost 5 yr old....

[cmoma]

Hey Mamas...

I have some questions about my DD. She will be 5 in March.  She is showing signs of possibly having some sort of learning disability..a few things to note...

her speech: she seems to drop off the prefixes of many words.. computer is just puter, she also mixes things up vitamins is bitamins and basket is basik  (the a is pronounced like basket) 

she knows most of her letters but when she sings the abc song she never gets is quite right..she gets jumbled in the middle.

She can't get the letters sounds...she does know a few

She can't rhyme..doesn't understand the idea...

When we sit down to read together (Dick and Jane for instance...two things happen 1. after just a short time of her trying to read she gets REALLY tired and gets a headache...and 2. she will read a word on one page a few times then on the next page or following page she can't read the word again...

the getting tired and headaches happen any time we sit for longer than a few minutes of doing any sort of learning..math or reading or learning the letter sounds...as if her brain hurts? 

Now I should tell you that none of this is pressured on her. She is the one who wants to learn, she asks to learn to read, learn her numbers or do a workbook. When she is tired or has a headache or has lost interest short attention span! we stop and move on..

So what do you all think?  My thinking is that she could just not be ready? however she so badly wants to learn that I'm trying to come up with ways to teach her, encourage her to learn her letter sounds and the like without actually teaching her kwim because I don't want her desire to learn to be smooshed because she is having trouble...I don't want to force it but I want to recognize that she very well need to be taught in a different way or she may have a learning disability....

I hope this made sense..it's hard to get it on paper erm...computer screen :)

Dyslexia btw is coming to mind when I see what shes got going on..but again she is still young?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!!

thanks

[Lisa1970]

She sounds fine. My neighbor is Braynette instead of Raynette as per my 6 yr old. My oldest, who is 16 now, did not know his alphabet passed C when he started kinder at 5y9m. By 4th grade, he was reading way way ahead of grade level and placed in to the highly gifted program for reading. (our schools back then had a gifted program and then a higher up gifted program and he was in the higher one).

[kittie313]

Well it could be that she's just not ready since she is almost 5yo, but then it could be more as well.  If you think something more is up, you may want to pursue evaluation.  But it may just be typical not ready for the next step developmental stuff.

As far as dyslexia goes, if she were to say Hannah Montana would it come out something like "Hammah Nontama" instead?  Is she one of those kids that is such a klutz she can trip and fall down while standing still in an empty room?  Does she have major issues with directional discrimination (left/right or over/under, in/out, stuff like that)?  Does she also have a serious talent in something like art or music (my 7yo can play piano and learns new pieces by simply watching my hands play a song a few times, one small piece at a time) or tell fantastic stories?  There are other things that point to dyslexia than just the famous having trouble with reading, and many of the signs of dyslexia could also be a visual tracking problem.  When was the last time her eyes were checked, and was it by a developmental optometrist?  Here, this may help with what I'm talking about with the visual tracking stuff.

http://covd.org/Home/AboutVisionLearning/tabid/102/Default.aspx

There is also a listing of providers that you can search to find one in your area at that site.

[hipumpkins]

I'll bet she wants to learn but is just frustrated.  From your descritption she sounds fine and normal but you would know better if something else seemed off.

Anyway, as for reading maybe let her just look at the pics and tell the story to you instead of trying to figure out the words.  Math as a real life thing is great but to see it on paper is trickier so maybe just let her use math sheets as puzzles (Myt son likes math in that way)  just as there is no uissue with dot to dot there is no issue with a worksheet, do it have fun , color it if you want to. 

My son started wanting to learn read at 5 b/c his sisiter was reading all the time.  WE used a program but he became frustrated so we returned it to the library and I said we would try again in a few months.  Soon he was asking to take the book out again to learn to read...we tried again and now he can read easy reader style books including Dick and Jane. 

So try , take a break, come back to it.  IF she wants to do it she'll get it when her brain is ready. 

[etsdtm99]

my dd will be 5 in march too & except for the talking (my DD is very articulate for her age according to the pedi) she does all the same things.. she has evendone the head ache thing, can read a word on one page but not the next, wants to learn but cant concentrate .. i think its normal for the age.. im just backing off on reading & trying to teach her letters & letter sounds in daily life kind of like i taught her colors etc.

[bandgeek]

She sounds almost identical to my DS at that age (heck he still does some of that stuff now and he'll be 6 in two days!).  I would give her some more time before worrying, personally.  Maybe get her vision checked because of the headaches.

This in particular stood out to me:

"she will read a word on one page a few times then on the next page or following page she can't read the word again..."

We've dealt with this a LOT.  DS started doing ok with phonics somewhere around 5 1/2 but could NOT grasp the concept of "sight words" nor could he remember a word from one page to the next.  After a while he caught onto a few sight words (I, a, and the), but it was months before he could remember any more than those.  Now at almost 6 it's finally sinking in.  He's picked up 23 sight words so far, in the span of a few weeks.  He STILL has trouble remembering a word from one page to the next.  We checked out an early reader from the library about dinosaurs.  "Dinosaurs" was the only word in the whole book (which only had 35 words total anyway) that was not an easy, beginner word.  We discussed it before even opening the book.  Sounding out the "dino" part, why "aur" makes the "or" sound, ect.  He STILL could not remember it from one page to the next!  By the end of the book (7 pages?) he finally got it.  I don't know if he'll remember it next week though.  I think it's fairly normal.  Even though he struggles with these things, he's coming along well.  He tends to get grasp these concepts in spurts.  He'll go weeks with no noticeable improvement and then one day he'll just "get it". 

[cmoma]

thanks everyone..I appreciate the responses.

I am going to just keep an eye on her and see what happens,

I'm thinking more on the lines that she is just not quite ready to understand it and she learns very differently than what the typical curriculum, workbooks/sheets teach.

So I'll try a few different ways and see what happens.

thanks again!

[kittie313]

If you are interested in trying an approach that is totally different, there is a book that may be of interest to you (I bought it myself, but you could check your library instead).  I've suggested this to several people since I got it and read it myself because of how much it helped me to understand exactly how my 7yo dd learns (and she is exactly like your description of your almost 5yo).

http://www.amazon.com/Right-Brained-Children-Left-Brained-World-Unlocking/dp/0684847930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295579415&sr=8-1

[onyxravnos]

The 'headache' part bothers me, it could just be her way of saying "I've had enough" or it could signal vision problems. Have you had her checked to see if she needs glasses?

[Brisen]

Glasses were the first thing I thought of, too.  We found out that our dd needed glasses for astigmatisms around the time that she turned 6, and her vision was really poor.  Her reading skills picked up quickly once her eyes adjusted.   

[cmoma]

Her eyes were checked last year at her 4 yr check up and were fine...But she'll go in a few months for her 5 yr check up and so i'll make sure they check them again...

[kittie313]

There is a lot more to vision than just 20/20 is the thing.  If her eyes aren't correctly focusing together on things, then it doesn't matter how perfect her vision is on the letter charts.  I know this from personal experience.  With glasses, my vision is 20/15 but the prescription also includes correction to bring my left eye back to proper place so that I don't see double.  The standard checks that a pediatrician does at the yearly well-check doesn't look for those things in vision, they just look at the clarity of vision.  My dh works in an optical lab, has for 16 years now, and you wouldn't believe some of the things that a good eye doctor takes into account when checking vision.  Visual tracking problems are within the nerves themselves, and can be really hard to diagnose if the person isn't specially trained in this stuff.  A pediatrician, physician, and even some eye doctors just aren't trained to test and diagnose those issues.  In fact, if I remember correctly, the AAP recommends that you take a child to an eye doctor at ages 1yo, 3yo, and 5yo and then yearly after that (or sooner if there are vision problems in your family).

So your child can have perfect 20/20 vision and still not see correctly, but it can be overlooked and often misdiagnosed as a learning disability such as dyslexia.  And visual problems are much easier and less expensive to rule out than learning challenges like dyslexia, even without insurance (our girls' coverage didn't cover our 7yo's visual testing, and they won't cover her LD testing either since the local ps is "supposed" to do that kind of testing but I don't trust them to know what they are doing so we're saving to pay out of pocket for her dyslexia testing)

[aja-belly]

i would make a note to mention these things to your ped at her check up. it would be good to rule out any hearing or vision problems. or see if your ped ctches any "red flags".  none of it sounds concerning to me though.