Hello! This blog is about my daughter Hailey (currently 12 years old) and her experiences living with auditory processing disorder. Auditory Processing Disorder is Hailey's primary issue, however she has also been given the labels Sensory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, Visual Processing Disorder, Mixed Expressive Receptive Language Disorder and Phonology Disorder at various points in her life.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Love of Reading Spurs Reading, Writing, and Spelling Skills

Recently I wrote about how my daughter has found graphic novels, particularly what is referred to as manga, and she has become a huge fan of reading.  She absolutely devours the books!

Well, all this reading is paying off in not only her reading skills, but her spelling is suddenly just clicking. I find her playing with words all the time; she'll just out of the blue tell me how the sound of long e at the end of a word can be spelled with a y, an ie, or sometimes just i.  Then she'll speak about scooping parts of words from one word to put into another word because those words share that part in common.  It is as if the whole puzzle of how the written language works is finally apparent to her and it all just makes sense.

I know this is directly related to all the reading she is doing because I homeschool her.  I have never used the term "scooping" in terms of language before, and we have not talked about the phonics rules in quite a long time.  In fact, she's been enjoying reading and writing on her own so much, the only input I have been giving is when she asks me to listen to her read, look over her writing for spelling or grammar issues, or we talk about what her book is about, where sometimes other comprehension topics might come up like foreshadowing and protagonist.

I truly think inspiring a love of reading has made my daughter with severe Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia not only read better, but write better, and to all of our surprise, become a pretty good speller.

So when those busy bodies who insist that "a child should only read classic literature" and other such nonsense start talking, just ignore them.  A love of reading will outshine anything else when it comes to literacy development, and whatever your child likes to read is perfect!



(I put a list of the graphic novels she has been loving in the list at the right.  It does link to Amazon, but if you want the books, check out your library too.  Ours has a very large selection!  Also, remember my daughter is an almost 12 year old girl, so some of the books are more appropriate for teens and pre-teens rather than younger kids.  I also put a few that were recommended by others.  If there are any your child likes, let me know and I will add them to the list.)

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