Hi from Canada,
Our five year old boy has been diagnosed with Aspergers. He also had a full Psych/ Ed evaluation which came to the conclusion that he was also seriously learning disabled. Our son is in SK, in a regular classroom with a full time E.A. Griffen’s expressive language skills are good, and his vocabulary is excellent. Receptive Language skills were signifigantly below average, which fits the Aspergers profile but he made signifigant inprovment over the past six months. Griff’s full scale I.Q tested out just over 100. The main problem is Griffen’s inability to grasp any letter or number concepts. The only letters he can recognize are G and S, and he knows the number 1. No matter how hard we work with hithis wonderful little boy he does not get it. We purchased the Davis Kindergarten program for preventing LD which was a complete waste of time and money. We have tried periods of direct instruction but he can’t retain information. When you hold up 1 or two fingers Griff can tell you how many if you hold up three he has to count, and even if you go over it two minute later he can’t remember.
We took Griff to a Developmental Optometrist who told us Griff definitely had visual issues byut could not really test further because he truly did not have any letter or number knowledge. We tried to book Auditory processing locally but they say based on his issues the results would not be reliable because he is cognitively too young. So what to do….?
How do you teach a young child like this who has Aspergers and severe LD? I know lots of children with ASD of varied severity yet they has all been able to learn to read. I also know several children with Down’s who have I.Q’s lower than Griff and they also have learned to read.
We have tried Reading Reflex but that is much to advanced for him. We are thinking about Audiblox but are worried he might not be able to do that either although they say it can be done by preschoolers. The problem with most of the highly recommended programs for Kindergarten is that most of them assume some knowledge and understanding of letters. We need a program that goes to the very beginning. I would love to hear what anyone has to say, I have spent the better part of the day scanning all of the posts, and am amazed at the wealth of knowledge you all possess.
Re: Serious concerns for 5 year old boy.
Griff’s mom,
Just because he is 5, it does not mean he is ready to learn to read. It sounds like he has some underlying skills missing, and you may need to wait to work on the reading. I think it might be a good idea to get Audiblox or Turbo Tutor and work on those awhile. From there you will be able to see if the auditory or visual area is causing problems. In addition, you can get Earobics 1 for auditory skills, but a couple of the exercises work on letter sounds, so he may have trouble since he does not yet have sound symbol correspndence. With this program, you must sit with him and teach him to do the exercises. There is a little horn that you can click on to repeat the item as many times as he needs. Play on the guest mode the first few days so you can train him how to do them. You may have to do it with him for an extended period of time to teach him the tasks. If his devleopmental level is below age 4 (and by that I think they mean auditory skills or receptive language), he may not be ready for it. It does work on auditory memory and it sounds like that may be a problem for him.
One thing I will warn you about, I am not sure that the Audiblox reading method is advisable, so please skip that part.
If I were you, I’d find someone who can administer the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. It gives 3 composite scores: phonemic awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming. These are key underlying components in reading. It has subtests for 5-6 year olds that will not involve letter or number naming.
Janis
Re: Serious concerns for 5 year old boy.
I’d start with what Janis recommended. I also know of an eighteen year with high functioning autism (more involved than AS), he is also dyslexic. He had great difficulty learning to read and still can’t really spell. However, he spent 2 years at a school for dyslexics where he did learn to read.
If he doesn’t have a real good grasp of sounds by the end of Janis’ recommendations you might look into LiPS. I’m not sure how well that would go with AS but theoretically it should work well. (I wouldn’t do the intensive program though). I would find someone who would tutor him privately or take the training yourself (all though it’s not a walk in the partk).
—des
Hi. I’m in Montreal. Are you in Ontario? Where?
I connot promise for sure that my methods will work; I know they have worked with a severely language-disabled boy, and these multisensory gradual and direct approaches are generally what is effective with many LD’s, but Asperger’s and LD is out of my experience.
However, these methods are inexpensive and worth a try; all you can lose is a few weeks of trying out the first lesson.
To avoid posting and reposting these same long long outlines, I offer to send them to anyone on request. Am a little behind but hope to get things done this week. Just email me at [email protected]
The particular outlines you need are the ones I title 1.5 and 1.6. “Getting started.”