Explicit instruction, via daily home practice. Family Literacy Network, once a week.

Components of explicit instruction in literacy, tools from Family Literacy Network. We do this daily at home. Not John’s favorite thing, but he now smiles when reading.

Even with his diagnosis, from the early days, we really tried reading together.

He seldom behaved like he liked to read, but we did it anyway.

Then there was kindergarten with 1-word flash cards.

I thought John could read words.

I wasn’t worried about dyslexia because John knew “b” from a “d”,

“q” from a “p”.

Language processing was a worry.  But specifically dyslexia wasn’t on my radar.

All things considered, I thought he was reading OK.

But, his fine motor function made handwriting a challenge,

and he has always struggled with math.

With his diagnosis of autism,

I had been busy with methylation, nutrition, sensory integration, motivation, social learning, ARDs/IEPs and behaviors.

I wasn’t thinking of academic diagnoses.

That’s a whole new vocabulary.

Academically, I had a false sense of well-being.

He was faking it pretty well, using a lot of little tricks.

Balancing, Interactive Metronome. Bi-Lateral (arms & legs doing different movements) integration.

Soon the words “dyslexia“, “dysgraphia” & “dyscalculia” entered our lives.

And we discovered he couldn’t retell the story.

Now what do we do?

Over the years, we have done a lot of home-based literacy (word-building, phonics) interventions:

• Watch movies with the captions on
• Watch movies of books we have read together
• Read books of movies we have watched together
• Our daily “list” of things to do, which we write together, read together, and mark off
• Play reading games with road signs while driving

There were moments of joy, when I forgot to worry.

Surprisingly, John could read the cursive thank-you-notes he got from his teachers.

But John gets older, the academic components have become more complex, more urgent.

John really couldn’t sound out words.   Couldn’t retell the story.

I had to learn all I could about executive function, word building, working memory, literacy and critical thinking.

(Oh great . . . . . more interventions.)

Therapeutic Listening:  A learning intervention we have been using for years is therapeutic listening.

John would be in the car or on couch listening, processing whatever he was hearing.

Mostly calm, with occasional moments of alarm and avoidance/escape, as predicted by Rosemary.

Standing, Interactive Metronome, at Ability and Beyond OT. Working on all the pieces leading to sensory integration and executive function. John’s reflexes are retained and need help to become integrated and more sophisticated.

He wears the high-quality Sonnheisen HD 500A headphones & microchip player.

No electronics during the twice daily 30-minute sessions.

Calendar Awareness:  Funny thing, we struggle with hours and minutes,

yet he always knows the day of the week and the number day of the month.

I ask him when I need to know what the date is.

And he amazes me on his sometimes-perfect calendar memory of past events.

Executive Function & Whole Child Learning Interventions: 

John has moved from elementary to middle school.

We moved from conventional occupational therapy (OT) in a purely-clinical hospital setting to

Fast ForWord, (Vestibular) Astronaut Training, Interactive Metronome and much more

at occupational therapy via Ability and Beyond, in a quasi-clinical setting

(they have chickens).

All working toward better executive function, sensory integration, vision learning, auditory processing, impulse control and word building.

Explicit Instruction via Family Literacy Network:

We’re making progress in John’s phonetic awareness and word building.

John feels this achievement.

Explicit instruction.

Daily.

Leaving nothing to chance, research-based.

Oftentimes tedious,

Prone, Interactive Metronome, at OT with Ability and Beyond.

but building neural pathways purposefully isn’t easy, or it would already have been done.

Plus, John’s really enjoying their treasure box now.

(For years, treasure boxes have been like ice cream cones—–kid hell for us.)

Recently, he voluntarily indulged in 45+ minutes of highly-motivated reading.

I personally vouch for Dr. Eldo Bergman, M.D. and his team at Family Literacy Network. 

They can also accommodate out-of-town families.

We have also done Vision Therapy for years.

I learned recently of Magno-Cellular and Parvo-Cellular neural pathways (thanks, Dr. Davis), scanning and pursuits.

• More info at COVD.net.
• Check out syntonics:  CollegeofSyntonicOptometry.com

Published research links:

• Understanding the Visual Symptoms of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
• Unilateral Neglect
• Types of Eye Movements and Their Functions

Additional literacy interventions (some we have yet to do) include:

Scientific Spelling at home

• Neuhaus training, and specifically Scientific Spelling
• Graphemes, Phonemes and Phonics (not as complicated at they sound, but you do have to do your homework into word building)
• Orton-Gillingham (the gold standard for best practices)
• LLI (what he gets at public school)
• CogMed (we haven’t started this yet)
• Reading Recovery (originated in New Zealand)
• Reading Doctor computer apps (recommended to us)

I realize this is a lot to digest.

I am building a 2-hour workshop:

“Help! My Kid Hates to Read!  What Can I Do About That?”

Want to join?

The great news:

We are making progress, and John knows it.

I can tell by his face.

Let’s work on this together.

Peace be with us,

Gayle