Letter Recogition Problems

[bugsntazz]

Hello,
My son is three and half. He knows his ABC verbally. If you ask him to say his ABC's he blurts them out with no trouble. If you show him a letter and ask what letter this is, he has trouble. So far he only really recognizes A, E, F, J, and that is about it. We try various ways, painting the letters, bookes, and leap frog. He is now at the point of not wanting to have anything to do with letters. Anywho have any trouble with this. He did loose oxygen at birth, but has been advanced in speech and compresion. His speech is that of a 5 year old.

[Raquel and Kaylee]

Hi,
Have you had his eyes checked. I have a friend whose son was about 4 at the time. He is really one of the brightest kids I have ever met. His speech and comprehension were far above average, but he had a lot of trouble recognizing his letters and numbers. He knew them all, but couldn't recognize them. They finally had his vision checked. It turned out, his eye sight was really bad. His parents had no idea he couldn't see. Now with glasses he is doing great. Hope this experience helps.
Raquel

[Tessie258]

My son who is 12 is very intelligent and if you ask him a question he can tell you the answer. He was even placed into the gifted program when he was in the 5th grade....Here's the problem...He has a hard time getting his thoughts into letters...He has a hard time writting it down. I think it is because he was right handed and his right was injured and now his poor brain is trying to constantly switch back....He could never do puzzles..even the easy big peice puzzles....I haven't tried again recently... It was always so frustrating to him. I didn't push because it always turned into a negative thing...Now unfortunately school is a negative thing eventhough he's probably smarter than 75% of his class...He is no longer in the gifted program because he asked to be removed because he couldn't keep up with all the writting and was starting to fall behind. It is VERY frustrating because he is so smart but gets D's and F's and then he basically goes into the "I quit" mode. I wish I had the answers...I don't, let me know if you find any.
T.
P.S.
Keep in mind 3 is pretty young...I have 6 kids and all have read and talked at different ages...One son didn't start reading until he was in the second grade and now he's practically a rocket scientist(not literally LOL) Just keep an eye on him.

[admin]

Tessie I had the same problem. In fact i still do. One sentence takes about 30 seconds to write down. It was something i never told anyone. Chris found out about it last year. I gradutaded high school in 1998 so they knew about lurning disblities but i fell though the cracks. I can not spell at all. but i was in advanced classes in school.multable choice test where fine. if i had to write stuff down i would fail everytime.

[karen r]

I don't think you should be overly concerned yet. 3 1/2 is pretty young. Perhaps, instead of focusing on isolated letters, you could use that time for reading aloud to him...having him imitate sounds, making it a game. Letters are a very abstract concept...I have 3 children and I never hurried reading with them...just emphasized a love of reading. Now the two older two are excellent readers who love books. They still like having me read out loud to them...and they can read out loud to their 3 1/2 yr. old sister (robpi).

When is your son's birthday? If he's a late birthday (depending on what the cutoff is for your state), you might consider giving him an extra year of preschool/pre-K to boost those pre-elementary school skills and give him the advantage of maturity.

I waited until the next year for my children to attend school because they're all summer birthdays. They definitely have an advantage over where they'd be if I had sent them ahead. My 3rd child is the bpi and, although her birthday is June and she's very big for her age, I'll wait to send her until the following year. She's having more difficulty "writing"/drawing than the first two did (can't decide whether to be right or left handed) and I want her to be older and "wiser" to handle herself in situations that the older two never encountered.

Can you introduce the letters in your son's first name to him and then, when you're out driving around or shopping, play a game of finding "his" letters.

[admin]

Hi. I think it just means that your little one is probably going to be stronger as an auditory learner. By the time he gets to Kindergarten, it probably won't even be an issue but if it is the teacher will hopefully use visual along with audio techniques. Personally, I'm a visual learner - I can't remember a phone number unless I see it. Try working on his letters while singing them and showing them. Gotta run-I'm at work.

[admin]

My daughter, Logan, is very smart. She walked before 12 months (we were told with her OBPI that she wouldn't walk until she was between 15-17 months (?)), completely potty trained at 16 months, knew her colors at 19 months, knew her ABC's before she was 2 and counted to 20 before she was 3 and NEVER forgets a thing from something I said a week ago to what the billboards on the road say. BUT she is behind in speech and doesn't know any letters except A, B, C, and L. I think your son is fine. I also think in this day and age, we stress too much on what we think they need to do and know before the child is ready to take it in. It won't be fun for him to learn letter recognition if it's a stressful environment. Not that I am placing a blame on you, you are only doing what I and millions of parents do when we want only the best for our children. He'll learn them when he's ready. I would talk to your pediatrician to alleviate your fears.
PS- my second daughter is just as smart and she didn't walk until she was 14 months and could care less about sitting on a pot- ha!

[christy]

Another way too is to put tape letters (from construction paper) on a variety of things, especially starting with his name. He will eventually progress on to more and more. 3 is a little young to recognize many letters and numbers so I wouldn't worry too much if it were Katie in his place. She has known her alphabet and counts to ten since she was 13 months old but recognizes pictures more than letters (apple, red, a and then she usually sings a song to go along with it). Of course, she is a singer so everything works it's way into a song...lol, she has all of us doing it now.