Reading, autism especially visual, general learning

My daughter has sensory processsing disorder due to a benign brain tumor disorder.  She is nearly 10 but developmentally (in most areas) about 3yo.  Her main sensory issue is auditory and we have a sensory therapist, though they are not common in most areas.  We have done two rounds of AIT (auditory integration therapy) that were expensive, exhausting, and 100% worth it all.  For her, it mostly improved her behavior issues and helped her to organize her thoughts for a task.  You are starting at a much higher functioning level so sensory therapy might be an amazing way to help.  You could google sensory therapists in your area, ask your doctor, local public school spec ed dept., or local autism support group if they know of anyone.  My strongest advice would be to keep asking people, keep googling, keep trying to connect with people.  Call the nearest large children’s hospital, even if they are far away.  When things were at there worst here I made 100 phone calls a day, anyone who had anything to do with kids, education, health.  Once the connections were made I could look into whether they were right for us.  I know it is exhausting to call and make appointments and pay people, but most of the time consultations are free and you are no worse off then when you started and maybe closer to help.  If she has a medical diagnosis of autism, there should be support groups, medical clinics, and plenty of parents who could suggest therapist.  If sensory issues are at play, there is help, but it is a tricky field (as you know) so keep asking everyone you can.

My youngest (12 yo) is on the autism spectrum and has some sensory processing and language developmental issues too. She just started reading a few months ago, December 2009. We worked on short-A three-letter words for two years, but phonics continues to be her weak area. Once she was ready, she took off based mainly on sight words.

I use many of the principles that Charlotte Mason described in how she taught reading. We do a combination of one day learning some sight words from a book we are “reading” (very slowly!). The next day we take one of those words she learned and build new words from it. For example, if she learned “star” one day, the next day we would make “bar, car, far, jar,” etc. 

She is now to the point where she is reading so many words that she never “learned,” I’m often surprised. I no longer teach her the sight words that she will encounter in the chapters. She’s picking them up from context and just enough phonics to confirm her attempt at decoding them, I guess. Since December she has read First Steps, Days Go By, and we’re about halfway through More Days Go By (Pathway Readers). 

So I guess my advice would be 2-fold: (1) Be patient and hang in there until she is ready. It’s hard, I know; and (2) Try some sight words and see if she grasps them. If so, do a combination of sight words and phonics-related word families. If not, wait. My biggest clue with Hannah was that she started asking me what words around the house were — on packages or signs outside or book covers. Once she wanted to know, she was ready to roll. Patterning was another clue. Her patterning skills improved tremendously right before she started to read. 

As far as other activities goes, you might try doing a picture study with her. Hannah enjoys looking at the pictures that we do for picture study. She can’t narrate or describe them, but she will look quite attentively and sometimes point out some detail that she likes or has a question about. And since she’s so visual, I think she’s getting a nice little collection on the walls of her mental art gallery.