Teaching reading to a child with ASD / ADHD.

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Hello people,

What methods would you recommend to teach my 6-yr-old with moderate / severe ASD and ADHD to read ? He currently has ZERO interest in books and is pre-verbal. It's hard to tell where his receptive language is, and if he has any speech processing issues, so I want to err on the side of caution with assuming how much he understands / processes speech. We just started working on his sight word skills (we had to abandon teaching him letter recognition skills as individual alphabets were too abstract for him).

He goes to school for a few hours a week - mostly to give him and me a break from each other. The teacher does not seem inclined to work on any pre-academic skills with him and told me yesterday (during parent - teacher conference) that he does not seem to be "processing any language".

He has a diagnosis of apraxia, which means that I don't want to force speech on him. I think it is best to teach him to read and write so that he has a means of learning and communicating via the written language.

Please help. Is there any particular method that will help a child with his profile to learn to read ? I would especially appreciate hearing from members here who are minimally or partially verbal (or were minimally or partially verbal as a child) on what helped them to use the written language even if speech and speaking were difficult for them to process / execute.

Thanks in advance for your advise / feedback / suggestions.

I'm sure you've tried cue cards combining words and pictures. That's what taught me how to read before I spoke.

Does he like using the computer? Maybe combine words with some sort of game. Make everything into a game at this point. If it seems like work, he won't be interested.

Sort of like putting the aspirin into a tasty fruit drink.

Is that the Armenian alphabet at the bottom of your screen name?

I have Aspergers, and I always scored low on vocabulary in school. I now have 2 kids also on the spectrum (5 and 7) that I homeschool. My oldest used to rock and not talk. My youngest taught himself to read before he could talk. He later lost the ability to read when he learned to talk....we saw that with my daughter too. She had fantastic spatial skills (very early puzzle worker), but as she learned to talk there were puzzles she used to could do that she could no longer do anymore. Each child on the spectrum is different, but these are the things I learned from working with my kids. 1) We don't always do things in the same time/order that other kids do. 2) Find the child's "natural" language and start there.... My daughter learned to talk using sign language. My son learned to talk using reading because that was his strength. So....if he is really visual, try teaching him to sign "I want __" for any time he wants something or just use a picture system to communicate. My daughter used to draw me pictures of what she wanted for breakfast because she couldn't recall the words! 3) Focus on his receptive language. What does he understand? You don't have to be able to talk to get that across! There are other ways (drawing, building, etc). Reading came before receptive lanuage for my son, and while he did learn to talk because he could read, he could not really understand it until his receptive skills improved. Once his receptive skills improved, he lost the ability to read. I have heard of this happening to other kids on the spectrum as well. 4) Try to understand how your child learns/sees things. My daughter is a "top down" learner (like me)....we do not learn sequentially at all (you can see why this might be a problem with reading....teach all the letters and then words). We ended up using a program called Project Read. They introduce only a few letters and teach you the rules for those letters and how you can use those letters to make words. Then they slowly add more and more letters until you are reading independently. 5) Make sure someone has done some labwork on your child. Both of my kids had underlying allergies/immune issues that they couldn't tell us about and their pediatrician missed! Once we figured this out, it made a HUGE difference in their ability to speak/learn. I have talked to many parents about this since and many of their kids also had underlying immune issues. If we aren't average psychologically, we may not be average medically, and very often doctors like to blame ALL of our symptoms on the Autism instead of making sure there isn't anything else going on in there! It is at least work checking!! (speaking of which you might check and make sure his eyes see the way they are supposed to)

I think that is it (will probably think of something else later though....) The only other thing I can suggest is to check out www.amblesideonline.org It is a homeschool curriculum with a Forum (the LD/Special Needs group that you can ask to join is fantastic). The curriculum is free and looks overwhelmingly hard for a child on the spectrum, but there are quite a few Autism moms that use it for their kids (some of which started out quite severe). It has been wonderful for my kids! We have been working on Year 0 for years and are only just now ready for Year 1, but my daughter has already wwaaaayyyyyyy outstripped where I was at her age in vocabulary and listening comprehension!! !! She is taking longer to learn to read and a few other things, but it is amazing to see all the things she can do now that I never imagined I would be able to teach her!! ! And she ENJOYS school and feels GOOD about herself!! !! ! I hated school and always felt like I was stupid because everyone around me seemed to get things so easily....I didn't understand that I learned differently and that the way I learned was cool!! !

Draw him to books and reading through his interests. It's thanks to my interest in space and sciences that I became good in reading.

I did not really learn to start reading until I was about 9. I learn best through the Kinesthetic method. Meaning I have to master things on my own. It is like I was taught the basics, but had to do it my own way to get it. I was read to a lot which helped me get more of an interest in it. I also have apraxia of speech, so being able to communicate by writing is great. I was completely nonverbal until age 8 and am still mainly nonverbal.

The whole thing was a long process of different methods and time. At 6 I was pretty unteachable. But stuff I was taught did stick in my mind and gave me building blocks to develop. So yeah as good as I am at writing and reading now, it took a long time for me to get there. Am still very slow at reading and writing though.

Picture books or maybe pop-up books.

I have AS and ADHD and I still love those kinds of books to this day.

Try not to overwhelm him with too many words and get books where the writing is kind of prominent as well.

Also, I love books where the story rhymes a little bit so it's lyrical. He might enjoy what the words sound like and feel like when he reads them.

Just an idea...