Izzy eyes

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Originally uploaded by elliemom.

After Calvin, Izzy has been my slowest kid to learn how to read. Jr. Analyst that I am I thought perhaps it was because Izzy had had such a traumatic birth. Perhaps even a slight bit of oxygen deprivation affected the centers of the brain that learned to read. That would explain why both Calvin and Izzy would be my slow readers.

But in addition to that, Izzy knocked out her top front four teeth when she was almost four years old. (I always thought it was ironic that after four sons, it would be the little girl that knocked out a tooth! Knocking out four at once was unbelievable.) That meant that Izzy had to learn to talk all over again. It’s hard to imagine how much we need those front teeth to make sounds until they are missing, but it is very difficult to make the f, v, s, sh and some others that are escaping me. Izzy improvised. Instead of saying Food, she would say Pood. We knew what she meant.

The problem was that once her big teeth did grow back in, it was hard for her to start making the sounds correctly because she had trained herself not to. For some reason the K and g sounds were also difficult for her. I don’t know if that has something to do with how the tongue has to be trained, but I know that Izzy says “Dirl” instead of “Girl”. She can say “Girl” but she has to be coached, however, it’s good to know that the ability to make those sounds is there.

Surprisingly despite Izzy’s problems, she didn’t come across as having a reading problem at first. We did pretty well through the first 30 or so lessons in 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to read. Izzy wanted to read a real book though, so when we got to about lesson 50 we jumped over to the Pathway Readers. That actually went pretty well too. I had some concerns though. Izzy could not remember the number or letter names or sounds. You could show her the symbol for 7 or 8 and she would guess at what that number was called. It was very puzzling.

After her reading exam with our reading specialist last year, Izzy stopped making progress in her reading. I took her right back to the beginning of the Pathway Primer and started over again. By our visit this year, Izzy was essentially right where she was the year before.

Our specialist then suggested that we start using her version of Writing without Tears and that I retrain her on all of the sounds of the alphabet starting with c, a, d, g, s, j and then moving on to l, k, f, t etc. She had to write these letters in the air, on the chalk board and finally on simple paper with out a lot of lines because if she is having vision problems the extra lines could help to confuse her.

We also went down to a special children’s optometrist near Columbus for a complete eye examination. Izzy has excellent vision 20/20 for distance and 20/25 for near. Her visual perception was interesting. The doctor gave her two tests. On one test she scored as a 9 year old, but on the other only as a 6 year old! This was very unusual. Since she was borderline for needing a prescription the doctor went ahead and gave her one thinking that just that little bit of help and support would push her reading. She also has exercises to do with the geo board in making shapes and copying the shapes I show her. Additionally, she is supposed to do a lot of mazes and word searches. I have seen improvement already and she loves doing the work.

So today we pick up her eye glasses. We have already started reading from the Dick and Jane book which she loves. (I didn’t want her to sit through the Pathway Primer for a third time!)

My next step is to find a good speech therapist hopefully without getting involved with the public school.