Press | Sonday Reading Center

press

Minneapolis Star Tribune / Lifestyle: April 19, 2006
Kay Miller

WORD PROCESSING

No one knows how many American children have dyslexia, which affects how the brain links written language and sound, but one out of every five children has some sort of reading disability. Here's the story of one boy's struggle.

Don't worry, Max Martens' teacher kept assuring his mother, Bianca Zick of Minneapolis. It's just a matter of time before things click and Max starts reading easily. But nothing "clicked."

By November of third grade, Max, who scored in the "highly superior" range on IQ tests, was struggling to read past a first-grade level. His spelling was abysmal. Every day Zick sat him down and made him read for 10 minutes. Just that much left him exhausted.

"Not knowing what the problem was caused a lot of tension and conflict," said Zick, who took Max to Children's Hospitals and Clinics in St. Paul for an assessment in late 2004.

Max had a classic case of dyslexia, pediatric neuropsychologist Bonnie Carlson-Green told Zick and her husband, Andy Martens. Dyslexia is most commonly discovered when children are 8 and in third grade, when reading lags become noticeable. That was true for Max.

No one knows precisely how many American children suffer from dyslexia. But one out of every five children in the United States has some sort of reading disability; 2 million American children receive special education services for reading problems. Dyslexia is much more than flipping letters or numerals. It's a processing disorder affecting parts of the brain where written language is linked to sound. Not only do dyslexic kids have trouble breaking down a word like pat into its component sounds puh-a-t, but they don't grasp that each sound is represented by letter symbols, said Janet Oliver, an educational specialist at Children's.

They also have trouble blending sounds into words. Multiply those difficulties as they try to read entire sentences, paragraphs or pages. "They're working so hard focusing on figuring out each word that they have no idea what they just read," Oliver said.

Dyslexia is best treated when it is spotted early, ideally by kindergarten or first grade but certainly by age 8, when the brain is still plastic. Early, intensive tutoring actually can change neural pathways until a dyslexic brain resembles that of a skilled reader, she said.

Max had many of the early warning signs of dyslexia: As a little kid he had frequent ear infections. He didn't talk until age 2. He had trouble articulating some words and couldn't sound out most others. Although his parents read to Max from infancy, he never picked up a book without prodding. It was comforting for Max to learn the diagnosis, his mother said.
"We're very open about it: 'This is why reading is difficult for you. We know how hard you're trying.' "

Carlson-Green recommended that Max receive extensive tutoring using the 80-year-old Orton-Gillingham method, a systematic, phonetic, multi-sensory, highly repetitive approach. Zick signed him up at the Sonday Learning Center in Edina. It was like he was starting school all over, Zick said.

"It's never too late," said Karen Sonday, owner of the Sonday center, where she tutors.

Touch and motor memory are powerful tools for helping learners associate letters with sounds. One of Oliver's favorite exercises in tutoring dyslexic kids at Children's is to spread chocolate pudding on a dinner plate and tell them, "With your index finger make the 'pa' sound." After correctly drawing a "p" in the pudding, students get to lick their finger.

Three months after Max started therapy he did something at 9 that he'd never done before: He read a road sign from the car.
"My heart just stopped and I felt like crying with joy," Zick said. "At that moment I knew something was starting to happen."

Tricks for reading independence

In his twice-a-week tutoring sessions, Max, now 10, focuses on the very tasks he finds most draining. But he never complains.

that's because in a single year he's gained two grades in reading. His new skills are giving him the freedom to Google increasingly sophisticated topics and read directions for the gadgets he loves putting together.

Plus, his tutor Rina Lang, 29, is a hip, high-energy teacher who makes him feel successful. Max and Angela Charley, 9, who is also in fourth grade, face Lang at a child-sized table. Over the past year she has drilled them on explicit rules of written language that most of us absorb without ever having to think about it.

"Are you ready to rock?" Lang asks. She divides the hour into five-minute segments, starting with sound flash cards.
Max gets the card for "ck." In an early tutoring session he learned beginning and ending sounds as he and Lang tossed a ball back and forth. Now he sounds it out correctly.

"When do you use it?" Lang asks. "Usually after a short vowel," Max responds. Constant repetition of such rules eventually will make their use automatic. For now, however, it is arduous work.

Like many children with dyslexia, Max has trouble distinguishing between b's and d's. Lang taught him to form a visual image of a poster bed by holding his thumbs up and putting his fists together. The shape of his hands reminds him which direction the letter faces.

Other tricks help him decode words and check his spelling. Starting with a closed fist, he "finger spells," popping up his thumb for the first syllable of a word, index finger for the second, middle finger for the third.

Lang gives Max a textured rubber mat the size of a mouse pad to finger-trace words that are hard for him to write accurately with pen and paper. When he stumbles in dissecting a word, Lang talks him through it, uncovering syllable by syllable with her thumb: "in-di-vid-u-al."

The hour goes fast. But by the session's end, Max is rubbing his face with fatigue.

Preserving the creative child

It's 7 p.m. before Zick gets Max and his sister Zoe, 11, home, feeding them with Chinese take-out bought on the way. Providing all the support a child with dyslexia needs has required commitment from Max's whole family. Tutoring costs $45 an hour. Zoe patiently waits through the sessions and offers her brother reading help at home when he gets frustrated.

"It's super hard" to do book reports alone, Max said. Complex, cogent ideas are all there in his head, Zick said. For one recent report, Max and his parents alternately read a chapter book aloud. Then he dictated his report to Zick, who typed it. After editing it, Max created a huge, colorful jigsaw puzzle to illustrate his ideas.

Those are just some of the accommodations that Zick arranged at Max's new school, FAIR (Fine Arts Interdisciplinary Resource) in Crystal. Max gets extra time to take tests. Sometimes test questions are read to him. He's mentally fried after tutoring sessions, so he gets extra time on homework those days.

Max is a creative kid who spends hours devising mazes, catapults, rope ladders, bird houses and clever inventions spread throughout his home. "The hot glue gun is his best friend," Zick said. She is determined to preserve Max's passion for discovery.

Even with his remarkable reading gains this year, however, she worries as required readings get progressively harder.

"Dyslexia doesn't just go away," she said. "The hope is that they get those building blocks to move ahead through more advanced reading. But it isn't the kind of thing that I can think, 'In two more years he can do anything he wants independently.' "