It never rains but it pours, right?

[conuly]

Now that Evangeline is reading harder books, I'm noticing something interesting, and I don't know what to make of it.

Evangeline rarely reverses letters in a word. Sometimes she'll write "tow" for "two" or "on/no" for "no/on", and she does have trouble with "saw/was", but in general, what she sees is what she reads, and if she gets it wrong she at least tends to get the first sounds right (unless she turns to guessing, and then she goes on meaning, making it easy to tell she guessed!)

Edit: That is, she rarely reverses when reading. She does sometimes, as I noted below and above, do it when spelling... but it's hard to tell sometimes what exactly is going on.

However, I'm noticing that she often switches the order of words. So if the sentence reads "Am I going outside?" she will very often automatically switch it to say "I am going outside", possibly because statements are more common than questions. And if you point it out, she'll repeat the error until you literally break up the sentence for her.

She also has trouble reading words out of context. This is so bad that her teacher thinks she's not nearly as good a reader as she is, probably, I realize, because she was assessed by having her read words off a chart, and Evangeline doesn't really do that. I mean, she can, but it doesn't seem easy for her. She doesn't need pictures, but she needs the words to be in sentences to read them.

Now, here's what I know. I know dyslexia runs in her dad's family. I know that learning disabilities can be very well hidden by effective coping strategies - especially by bright children. And I know Eva sometimes, in writing, reverses the order of letters (carefully sounding out "you" but writing "uoy", probably because she started off saying the word and then writing the letter that is called yoo!) and their shapes (normal at this age to write your 5s backwards or to confuse your bs and ds). But I've never yet in my life heard of dyslexics, or anybody, switching the order of words in a sentence! Reversing the order of letters or jumbling up the sounds, I've heard of that. But shifting around words in a sentence to make a new sentence, and not even realizing it? That's new to me.

Am I jumping the gun here and worrying about nothing? Or am I on the right track here?

Comments

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

But I've never yet in my life heard of dyslexics, or anybody, switching the order of words in a sentence!

Not only have you heard of this, but we have discussed it at length. Ten years ago, yes, but it was done. Because I do it. I also will have words from a few rows down pop up into a sentence when I am reading.

[conuly]

Really? Well, I forgot all about it in the intervening decade.