Public Elementary School, 4th Grade, Reading Comp Program?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm getting nowhere trying to get some reading comprehension help for my 9-year-old Aspie son. He has speech therapy for pragmatic language skills once a week. The school added on a second session with the speech therapist that is supposed to be focused on reading comp, but she really has no background in teaching these skills. I think, as a result, all he is getting is a second session of speech.
Has anyone had success in getting their public school to offer a reading comp (inference, perspective-taking) program? My son does well with fact recall; needs help with drawing conclusions, grasping the concept of inference.

When my son was in public school, they had written materials that they were doing pragmatics with in speech in addition to verbal communication. I wanted proactive assistance with reading comprehension and that is what they told me anyway. They had separate reading comprehension assistance, but that was for kids that scored below a certain percentile in their test taking and was designed for NTs.

If we stayed, I don't know if this would have been ever offered to us or not. I tend to think not, and I am not sure it would have been beneficial b/c the speech remediation folks were not trained in ASDs whereas the speech folks were. Many of the issues we have with inferences and predictions and all of that is very peculiar to ASDs. I don't know that someone untrained in ASDs would have been any help. I think I would have ended up asking for more speech instead.

Here is why I say this:

In a story, let's say child x says something NT kids recognize as a mean statement to child y and then the student is asked to predict what child y might say or do next. (this may be a free response or multiple choice.) The student has to first recognize the statement as mean, before predicting the response, right? My kid would likely not know what was said was mean, and I do not think a standard reading teacher would know that or be able to deal with that. The reading teacher would take that as a given.

These are generally the sorts of issues we have. In addition, even if he did know the statement was meant to be mean, he may not care if he were in child y's place, and therefore would still not answer appropriately. My child would never even see the sense in trying to figure out what the typical child would do. His reading comprehension reflects that and so does his writing. In additio,n he may not even get the right answer on what the main idea of a text is if the main idea has to do with how NT kids feel when things happen to them or what they typically do.

We have purchased some workbooks on this stuff, and mainly what it allows me to see, is what kind of social knowledge he has and doesn't have and then we work on helping him grok the stuff he does not know. It won't help with new scenarios and honestly we have not have had much success as I think he needs some kind of maturity first to get it.

The materials like SuperFlex that I think were mentioned on another thread, is more for behavior--and honestly we aren't making much progress there either because you have to care if other kids feel uncomfortable when you are doing your autistic thing, and he doesn't. It is hard for me to push it too hard b/c I don't 100% like the message, even if it is true---and I especially don't want him to feel bad about things he does not yet have the ability to control, even if he had the motivation.

Thanks, you give me much to think about.

I have been struggling with the whole reading comp thing for months, and you make me realize the most I'm going to accomplish is exposing him to situations to gain an understanding. I started out thinking, 'ok, his brain doesn't make the same connections as NT kids, so he has to be taught how to do that.' But I'm coming to a place of thinking that 'teaching' is really just exposing him to a situation to he can use his incredible memory and add it to his knowledge, just like any other fact.

And fyi, the SuperFlex stuff is more than just social. Many of the characters have emotional components, and this has helped him recognize and understand emotions in others. Just this week when I dropped the peppermill on my foot after trying to carry too much away from the dinner table, he looked up at me and said, "Well, I think I see Impatient Octopus right there - you need to carry those things one at a time."

I am terrified right now of my kid going to middle school, and I feel like I have two years left to help prepare him. Inference plays so much into social skills; and he is becoming aware of the concepts of self esteem and self worth.

I read an essay last night in "Thinking Person's Guide to Autism" that made we question the value of pushing this at all. I don't want to try to make my son into a NT kid, as he is not and never will be that. So perhaps what I need to do is get an IEP modification that would replace fiction-based reading with alternative assignments and learning opportunities. The author of the essay I read (Katharine Beals) makes a persuasive argument that the costs of getting an ASD kid to understand fiction outweigh the benefits.

If the school doesn't provide good enough reading comp, you could try getting a reading comp tutor for your son.
Basically any high school or college student who like teaching and is good at language subjects could help your son, doesn't have to be highly trained professional, doesn't have to be paid a huge amount by you, just reasonable tutoring rates.

I don't think you should give up on true reading comprehension and just have your son rely on memory. That will not work well in high school and college when reading material gets more complicated and writing standards go up. It is not true that autisitc brain can't have high reading comp, there are many autistic people who are great at reading and writing, including fiction. Instead, reading comp can be a weakness in any person, and as in any person with a weakness that could hold them back in school, some more help is a good idea. They don't have to be the best and get all A on reading/writing, but should seek a grade-level competence and at least a B average in language subjects.

My daughter is 12 in 7th grade. She has always struggled with reading comprehension. She was an early reader (age 4) and can read college level words. Where she has trouble is recognizing the underlying motives, underlying dynamics, and keeping track of who is which character, how they relate to one another, and who is talking to who. Also, keeping track of the storyline in her mind. I think (she has told me) that she doesn't "see" the images of the story in her mind. This all adds up to her not reading fiction at all. We use a program called visualizing and verbalizing. It has helped a little.

I'm not sure what the answer is but I don't worry about it so much anymore. She is smart and finds work arounds. We homeschool so we aren't dealing with the schools, they were never much help when we did. I think this might be a lifelong struggle for her "numbers/pattern" mind. We find work arounds where we can and I try to build her confidence in what she excells at, and not focus on what she struggles in.

I don't think you can know yet how she'll do with fiction as she gets older. Assuming her understanding of pragmatics improves, she may do better than you expect.

My daughter hated all fiction, but then started accepting historical fiction, and read a lot of it, and it really helped her pick up how to deal with fiction. Because she mostly moved forward as she was ready.