A mom in Utah shares her son’s progress after doing Edublox for five months. He was diagnosed with apraxia of speech, poor working memory, sequential processing disorder, and severe ADHD. His parents also suspected severe dyslexia. This is her story.
Diagnosed with apraxia of speech
My son Carsten was suspected of having apraxia of speech at 2 years old. At 3 years old and in preschool, he was started on an IEP. He was later diagnosed with severe apraxia of speech.
Even after 2 years of speech therapy, when he entered kindergarten, he was considered nonverbal. At that point in time, it became very evident that school was going to be a struggle for him. He struggled to focus on words or sound out words. Memorizing the alphabet seemed almost impossible for him. His math skills were also very lacking. However, compared to the other challenges, they were a relative strength of his.
Sequential processing disorder, ADHD, dyslexia
After being evaluated by a neuropsychologist in 1st grade, we were told his working memory was severely lacking and that he had a sequential processing disorder and severe ADHD.
At that point in time, they hinted at the possibility of dyslexia, but being the school system, they wouldn’t come outright and tell us it was that. Carsten was finally able to spell his name by the second grade.
Between his speech disorder and the dyslexia, his problems were very much compounded. In third grade, we moved to a different state and enrolled him in a dyslexia tutoring center, believing at this point that he had severe dyslexia. He worked with the center for 2 years and made some progress, but not the progress we were hoping to see.
Scoring very low on IEP tests
About the 2-year mark, working with the dyslexia center, he was evaluated for another IEP since we had just switched schools from a public school to a charter school. At the meeting, they told us he scored really low on everything on the tests except for social. If not for his social skills, he would be labeled intellectually disabled.
This hit me hard. It didn’t sit right with me. I KNOW that my son is not intellectually disabled. Though he still struggles somewhat still in speech, he is mostly intelligible. Talking to him, you would never know that he struggles academically as much as he does. You would think he is a normal 11-year-old who has some kind of speech delay.
Edublox gets discovered
After the evaluation I started searching. There had to be another path. Another solution that could help him progress the way I knew that he can.
That’s when I came across the Edublox program. I read some of the reviews and was instantly curious. I contacted Edublox and had some of my questions answered. Shortly after I contacted them, I made the decision to start Carsten on the program.
Because of the time commitment, I decided to pull Carsten out of his Orton Gillingham-based dyslexia program and do Edublox instead. At the time, his tutor expressed that she was worried she wasn’t ever going to get him off of the second level of the program. Carsten was reading 4 and 5-letter words at the time, but his spelling was pretty much nonexistent. He was lucky to be able to spell a 3-letter word right.
Success at last!
Now, after working with Sue and the Edublox program for the last 5 months, Carsten is reading 6 and 7 letter words, and the most amazing part is he is spelling them as well! AMAZING! I never would have thought he would be spelling words that large so quickly.
I asked his school teacher about what she had seen, and she told me she’s seen a big difference in his ability to multiply numbers. She’d also seen a big improvement in his ability to sound out words and not add words like “a”, “an”, and “is.” He’s also making inferences about things that he is reading. These were all things he had struggled with before. She’s really excited about his progress, and so am I! I can’t wait to see his future progress!
Lisel Nielsen
Utah
United States
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Edublox offers cognitive training and live online tutoring to students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and other learning disabilities. Our students are in the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Book a free consultation to discuss your child’s learning needs.
