Reading

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It sounds unreal to me to be writing this, but speech therapist proposed to start teaching reading to my son.
As some of you know, my son is 4 yo an he has calssic autism. He started to speak 2 months ago and when he was 3 he seemed nearly hopeless.
She proposed to use phonics method. I'm not informed about teaching methods, I only know that another method exists that uses the whole word.
In Italy it's unusual to teach reading to a 4 yo autie so I can't relate to other parents' experience.
You have to consider also that italian has a one-to-to one relationship between sound and letters and we only have 21 letters/symbols and sounds are 24.
For instance, "I" is only related to "sheep" sound.
On the other hand, it should be easier for autistics to learn the whole word associated with a picture.
I'm thinking to introduce pictures when my son learns single phonics so he can put them toghether and attach a meaning.
What's you opinion?
(my question is also for auties/aspies, not only parents!)

That's an interesting question. I taught my kids using phonics. I don't know how I learned at the age of four or three. My mother is gone so I can't ask her.

From my knowledge of Italian (I've visited several times and have been trying to learn some for a long time, without much success), I'd say that it lends itself very well to phonics. My daughter is learning to read (in English of course) using the phonics method, but she also learns individual common words by sight (it's called her 'word wall' or you'll hear the term 'flash cards'). Phonics is very useful for learning how to pronounce new words. But it's good to be able to recognise the most common words on sight and eventually that memory bank will increase to include thousands of words. I think a combination is best and I'm sure phonics will make more sense in Italian than it does in English.

I've also been reading 'How Children Learn', by John Holt. The author says that children learn to read by reading. That sounds obvious, but what he means is you shouldn't start by introducing the individual letter sounds. Show your child the whole word and help them to sound it out, then another, etc. However, my daughter learned first by getting to know the 26 letters, then the combination sounds (th, sh, ou, etc). Only then did she start to learn words. She's doing fine with it all, but I think it could have been done better. She's very comfortable with phonics. The word wall was more of a struggle for her, but she's getting there now (we don't have picture cards, as the words are 'the', 'and', 'everyone', etc).

I'm hyperlexic and taught myself to read by 3yrs, so my Mum didn't have to do anything.

Ciao e buona fortuna

I taught my high functioning 7-year-old with classic autism to read early, and he has always learned reading and speech at the same time.

I also started teaching my younger son, the four-year-old with Asperger's and OCD, to read as early as he could learn.

It works. See the uploads from my free speech channel for the results of my older son's testing--remarkable improvement in speech and IQ over a three year period based mainly on a combination of intensive reading instruction and speech therapy at home, home based social skills training, anti-anxiety meds, and some private ABA.

I have also included some examples of the homemade materials that I used with him. (These are slides of actual flashcards and books that I made to work with my older son.) I also have many more homemade materials not on YouTube and every commercially available flashcard and almost every speech DVD that I could find for sale on the Internet.

http://www.youtube.com/user/vids4autkids3#p/u

Both of my kids have a natural tendency towards hyperlexia. I am sure that I did, too, as a child.

We also have an entire shelf of children's picture dictionaries, and lots of alphabet videos (which usually have lots of basic vocabulary words), always watch TV with closed captioning or English subtitles on, and I have 5 box sets of phonics videos and DVDs. (My kids learned phonics by watching videos. My younger son also learned a lot from my free YouTube Reading and Grammar Channel, where I have an entire set of videos devoted to each letter of the alphabet in the "playlists" section.)

Anyway, phonics, at least for English, can be taught using commercially made materials alone. There are so many computer programs, DVDs, YouTube videos, etc., that I would not have anyone waste their instructional time trying to teach it himself or herself.

Unfortunately, there are a lot less computer and video materials for teaching sight words in English, and the ones that are available often do not teach enough words or they are boring.

I learned using the phonics method, and personally don't know if I would be able to read as well had I learned the other way. I only say that because the phonics method helped me to be able to say words I didn't know aloud-and once I heard them, I almost always recognized them. I wonder if my early propensity for "root words" has anything to do with being taught that way. If so, it was massively helpful to be able to use all those clues to figure out what the word meant.

A major problem with using a phonics-only strategy for teaching reading is that children can learn to sound out words without knowing what they mean. Children with severe speech delays associated with classic autism can end up "reading" without comprehension.

That is why for these kids, I think that it is so important to learn sight words also and to learn to associate those words with pictures. I think that it is also important to associate sentence patterns with pictures as much as possible, through use of closed-captioned children's videos, simple picture books, computer software, read aloud eBooks, and homemade flashcards.

I have a friend with identical twin girls, aged 11, with high functioning classic autism, who can sound out words and read aloud fluently. However, their comprehension is poor.

My older son, aged 7, with high-functioning classic autism, could read children's books aloud fluently by age 4, but his comprehension was much behind his reading fluency.

My four-year-old is a beautiful reader. However, he doesn't know many of the words that he reads. He knows phonics well, so he is able to sound everything out.

Both of my kids learned phonics at early ages via video and computer software. (There is a ton of great phonics stuff commercially available--see Amazon.com and the reading and ebook links on my free website www.freevideosforautistickids.com and the playlists of my free reading YouTube channel for materials in English). Also, here, the majority of kids are taught to read via phonics in school.

My friend's identical twins were apparently taught to read via phonics at school.

Basically, phonics is great, but it is not enough for many kids with speech delay because it basically just involves sounding out words.

I agree. I will add pictures to words when he knows some phonics.
Thank you Mum of Peanut, how nice your italian greeting.
I'm still amazed by the difference between my country and english speaking countries. Here no one would teach reading to a 4 yo autistic boy. I'm lucky I understand english.

On the other hand, my husband, his sister and his brother learned almost entirely by sight reading with little to no phonics. They all blame their horrid spelling skills on that. (I think there is a little dyslexia in there as well). They all have good reading comprehension, but poor recognition of unfamiliar words, horrid spelling and are very slow readers. Now whether that is due to genetics or the teaching methods of the tiny school they attended, I am not sure.

My AS son did not have hyperlexia and no interest in learning his letters or their sounds until he found out that he needed to know them to go to first grade. He has never loved reading, no matter how much his sister, father, and I love it. I have bought books on all his interests, and read to him since he was an infant. He does okay and reads at grade level. He still loves for me to read to him at 10 y.o. so I do that about 2-3 times a week instead of him reading silently.

My NT daughter on the other hand loved letters from when she could first sing the alphabet song before she was even 2 years old. While she didn't read early, she would spend hours pretending to write letters and teach her baby dolls school. She would "read" books to her babies by turning the pages and telling the stories. At 12 y.o. she reads at a 10th grade level and has to be reminded to stop reading like other children are reminded to get off video games.

As for the sight/phonics debate... There are just too many arguments. I think whatever works for you and your child. Some studies even show many children are not even ready to read until age 7 or 8, so I wouldn't get too worried. I also am a believer in developmental learning. There are so many developmental things your child needs to learn at 4, and reading is not one of them. What they do need to learn is words we say are these things on the page. There is a rhythm to speech and story telling. There is a pattern to story telling (beginning, climax, conclusion). Tone changes with questions, commands and statements (related to ?, !, and .) Thus good readers, don't all read early. Just like learning patterns and rhythms helps kids be better at math later on, these things help kids move into reading more readily.

I could go on and on about reading and children as that is a passion of mine, but I will end here.

Does your son show any signs of hyperlexia? That could be why the speech therapist wants to start teaching reading.

My own son knew the whole alphabet by age 2.

Now, we show him a lot of spelling videos on youtube and he loves it. He seems mainly interested in spelling words he knows.

He already seems to understand the first letter/sound for words (w - water, b - ball, etc.) which is the way they teach it on Sesame Street.