Remarkably, his confidence is soaring in school, and in many other areas as well: social, sports, and leadership.
After completing his phonemic awareness sessions, Matthew immediately began working on phonics intervention to apply his strong foundation skills to his reading comprehension, writing and spelling. As a parent, I cannot tell you how profoundly grateful I am that we found direction and most importantly progress that is evident and sustainable long after Matthew has completed working with Stacey.
STORY:
Our son is 12 years old and was diagnosed as dyslexic at age 9. From the get-go, he was highly verbal, could think on his feet and when asked questions about what he was learning, or experiencing, he was quick to provide details. As he moved through the early school years we suspected something might be "off" as early as grade 2. We were encouraged to be diligent about our home reading and spelling and the problems would work themselves out. We were diligent for months but we did not see any improvement. Now we knew that indeed something was wrong.
While attention was part of the issue, it did not explain why he read like a robot, skipped, changed and deleted words while reading,. When it came to spelling, he still misspelled simple words that we thought he had mastered in grade one. Having a child with a learning disability is a stressful experience because there is no right direction to turn and there is are plenty of well-meaning programs happy to take your money. Over a 4 year time span, we consulted with a variety of experts and completed several remediation programs each of which offered us hope and benefit in a variety of forms while we were actively attending them. For us, the downside was that following the intensive, one on one concentrated effort, the benefits of the program slowly slipped away. Within 6 months we were back to stressing everyday about whether or not we were doing enough to support him.
The questions I couldn't get the answers to: Are doing all of what is required? Why are we not seeing lasting benefits? Why did it all make sense during the remediation program and then once that was over, nothing stuck for our child? Finally someone refereed to our son as a "non-responder" , a term meaning that despite our dedication to each of the remediation programs, it was likely that Matthew would always struggle.
I knew that phonological awareness was important to the reading process; I had read over and over that it was the most important determinant of reading success. The programs we participated in also acknowledged its importance. I know now that the problem was NOT that Mathew was a non-responder, the problem was that no program had ever ensured that he had mastered the foundational phonological skills necessary, before moving on to the next step of their program. Without that mastery of phonemic awareness (the ability to perceive, count, order, and sequence sounds (phonemes) and syllables), Matthew could not learn to read, write and spell efficiently.
Before we started with Stacey conducted a thorough review of Matthew's Psycho-educational Assessment and IPP. We then went to an independent administrator to take the standardized test Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test (LAC-3). The LAC-3 results determine if a person has the ability to perceive, count, order, and sequence sounds (phonemes) and syllables. You cannot prepare for this test, and you cannot teach in a manner to prepare a child to be successful on this test. The results indicated that Matthew did not have this crucial foundation. I was disappointed that and this had not previously been identified by many highly regarded programs that we participated in.
Phonological awareness and auditory perception has changed the game for Matthew! It wasn't an easy task, at first Stacey had to convince Matthew to let go of everything he had memorized (because words and sounds on their own didn't make sense to him). She also had to gain his trust. After all, every other program had left Matthew feeling like a failure. Matthew has not only passed the LAC-3 test, but the independent administrator stated his results were tremendous (and they were J, the 89th percentile is typical of adults. We know the hard work is not over for Matthew, this is not a "cure" or a magic bullet. He is now the owner of phonemic awareness skills. He will no longer be cumulatively falling farther and farther behind. It will be a challenge for him to catch up to those students who have been refining and practicing these skills since elementary school. He is improving steadily.