ADHD, Dyslexia, Language Processing Disorder, Anxiety, Emotional Outbursts, Speech Deficiencies, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Complex Neurological Issues, Yep, meet Hyrum.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Susan Barton and Hyrum


I guess you could say Susan Barton is the reason I started this blog.

Susan Baton is the founder and creator of The Barton Reading and Spelling System which is a Orton and Gillingham influenced, simultaneously multisensory, explicit and systematic phonics program. She is also the founder of Bright Solutions for Dyslexia.

One day, I decided to finally call Ms Barton because Hyrum was still sounding out every single letter of every single word instead of smoothly blending. (He still does this 95% of the time.)

When I told her that Hyrum took a whole school year to get through book two, she said "Wait, hold on, there is something more going on here. This is not just dyslexia." She then said that I needed to put him through diagnostic testing for a complex child that had a combination of conditions. This should include a speech language evaluation.

This sent me down a hole for the next 24 hours. When I called her back the next day, I had talked to just about every psychologist in Calgary, and I talked to private schools, pediatricians, my family doctor, hospitals, and about anyone I could think of.

Susan Barton, however, did not pat me on the head and say "wow, I can tell you've been researching this and trying to find out all you can," Instead she shot down everything I had found out and insisted that a full evaluation by a paediatric neuropsychologist that would give me a prioritized action plan was the only course of action that was sain and reasonable.

I was quite miffed with her to be honest. I felt defensive.

In the end, I'm apparently on the waiting list for a few different options (more on this later.) but I can see her point that this is not just about dyslexia. I have four reasons why:


1-Hyrum's grammar has always been lacking. Barton has sight words that Hyrum needs to memorize, but he doesn't even use some of the sight words because of his grammar. For example, Hyrum says "He doos that" instead of "He does that" and he's supposed to memorize the sight word "does." Same with the word "have." But on the other hand, maybe going over these words every day is helping him learn his grammar......not sure.

2-His vocabulary is not very big. Barton has "nonsense words" to make sure students are able to "decode" words, but with Hyrum almost EVERY word has to be "decoded" because he doesn't recognise many of them. Words like "swift," "brisk," and "slim" are unknown to him, or at least they used to be. When he would read "plump," he would say, "what does plump mean?" and then try reading it as "...plung? plum?" So on the upside, he's expanding his vocabulary, even if it's slowing down his reading process.

3-His reading comprehension is struggling. He can't remember the first of the sentence by the time he's gotten to the end of the sentence. How is he supposed to feel like any of the reading is worth it?

4. (and this isn't really a problem now; he's overcome it) He used to have difficulty in his phonemic awareness when it came to blending consonants. For example "tramp" was "chramp." "Drift" was "trift."

Yes, this is why reading has been going super duper slow lately. I'm wondering of All About Reading would change up things enough to give him more drive and help any of his deficiencies.  I'll look into it.

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