To worry about my kid's intelligence?

Well done for getting back in touch with the school. You definitely won't be the first parent to react defensively when they raise concerns. You were surprised and blindsided, and we can all get overly emotional where our kids are involved. The school will understand this and won't judge you for your initial reaction. The important thing is to move forward and work with the school to make sure she gets the best support possible.

My daughter was exactly the same. She didn’t speak until she was almost 3, no babbling nothing. By the time school started her speech was still a long way behind. She missed key sounds like F. She couldn’t read at all until year E4 when it all finally clicked into place. Her writing was ok though. Every area of her development was delayed. My eldest is severely autistic but she was nothing like him at the same age , she understood everything we said to her and followed commands etc . Throughout primary school she really struggled academically . When she started year 7 she wanted to go in the ski trip which we booked . We booked her in for a few lessons on the dry slopes. After hours and hours on the dry slopes it was clear that she just couldn’t co ordinate the skis and her feet and was coming away in tears. We cancelled the ski trip and I started researching! I literally googled why can’t my child ski ! Dyslexia came up and reading about the early signs she ticked every box late motor skills, late walking, late talking etc etc. She was assessed and diagnosed with dyslexia. She’s 18 now and doing really well, has a clear career path mapped out . It’s just a thought as Dyslexia is a lot more than writing things backwards and struggling with reading. I was interested to see just how it affects kids in many different ways.

I have a lot of concerns with one of mine who I am hoping can be helped by the children's OT service as we have concerns about dyspraxia. He is going to be 9yo this year and will not attempt to ride a bike even with siblings' encouragement.

Hopefully you get lots of help for your DD. It's no reflection on you, please don't worry.

Hearing and eyesight tests asap to rule out basic issues before going any further. It's surprising how often there are problems with those that adults round the child don't notice so get them checked.

I'd read up about dyspraxia.
She sounds like a mixture between my 2 dyspraxic DDs.

Thank you

Yes it's often the first thing to be diagnosed. Not sure why, maybe the waiting lists for speech and language therapists etc.. aren't as long in some areas.

Definitely worth looking into.

I agree with previous posters that you sound like a great parent and despite any difficulties your daughter may have, having an invested and caring parent is a huge leg up in the world.

Start off with the simple things that need checking. Make an optician appointment and get her eyesight tested. Then get her hearing tested.

Look at some speech therapy videos online.

Do these alongside talking to the school, GP etc because it can take quite awhile to get referrals etc in place and you want to have covered the basics.

So school have raised concerns. Delayed? They have suggested things to put into place to help her. So I'm struggling to see what the problem is.

You're giving her loads of good learning opportunities. Keep going!

Try some books with interesting pictures - can she talk about what's happening in the pictures?

OP your DD sounds like mine! My DD1 was definitely a bit behind when she started school. There was a meeting arranged by the teacher, and I got super defensive. They mentioned her abilities to grasp and follow instructions etc. It turns out she had combined ADHD, and once we knew and adjusted, she really excelled at school. She is now at grammar doing really well. Good luck!!

look up DLD.
Ask school to help refer to SALT.

Hearing
Eyesight
Dyslexia

I am impressed that you have apologised to the school and asked for another meeting, It can be incredibly hard to see that your dc is struggling and ask for help.
It does sound like your dc has a problem with processing and I expect she may have dyslexia. School will be a struggle but you’ve done the right thing asking for help as she will be supported. Keep on advocating for her & you’ll find plenty of ways to help her.

The film thing sounds like possible dyslexia (maybe with an atypical profile)- a low visual processing memory score would cause difficulties following films amongst other things, even with a gifted level IQ. Dyslexia often goes hand in hand with dyspraxia too, hence the motor skills issues.
Id ask school to refer her to an Ed Psych.

Oh yes; I definitely agree about hearing checks too! It's often a factor. You have all these concerns and then realise your child's been trying to function while arguably deaf.

It does sounds like she could have some kind of SEN, like dyslexia or dyspraxia. Unless they are very severe (eg preventing her being able to learn to read) they are not a catastrophe and will be manageable in school with certain supports in place.

I would read picture books rather than chapter, personally. Across my two kids, I would take out 15-20 (!) from the library each week and read 2-3 per night, right through to about Y4/5. Pictures help understanding a lot, as they give context for the words. I love the wordless Journey-Quest-Return books by Aaron Becker, and my children also. They loved finding clues and links in the pictures! My DD, who also struggled a bit with things like rhyme, loved You Choose books.

I found that there's always a stage, when reading, where a child needs to sound out loads of words and it gets rather exhausting. Push through that bit by just getting them to read 2-3 pages a night but never not reading. If you are reading daily but not seeing improvement then that will be more indicative of an SEN getting in the way of your DD's development. Not a lack of intelligence by the way.

Try not to worry - all children have something they excel at; get them the basics as much as you can and nurture their talent when it presents itself xx

To add that as a Reception teacher and a parent please don’t get bogged down with parents you might come across who talk about their child doing this and that. All of my own children are lovely and have many strengths but none are the highest ability in their own classes (despite having a lot of input from me since birth, limited screen time, good diet etc).

What they do have is a lot of social and emotional intelligence and that is so hard to teach and that sounds like a real strength of your daughters. Some of the higher ability children in my class really lack social awareness and, despite being the most academic, they spend the most time coming up to me, upset and struggling to find friends and just learn to mix with the other children.

Get all the clarification from school and you can form an action plan together. Good luck x

I agree with previous posters that you might need to reset your reading materials.

Maybe try switching to something like the Mr Men / Little Miss series. They're very dated, but there are pictures on every page and the stories are easy to follow. Something like 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt' might be good.

Make an appointment to get your daughter's hearing checked, just to rule it out.

The lack of basic problem solving skills suggests there might be something deeper in terms of cognitive ability.

Make an appointment with the school and listen to their concerns and proposed plan of action. Take a notepad and pen and write everything down. I'm sure they don't mind pausing the discussion while you make notes.

If the school has raised concerns, then you then you need to speak to them again. Schools don’t tend to raise concerns with parents unless they think there is an issue that needs to be investigated further. It causes a lot of extra work and often a negative (occasionally a very angry), reaction so it won’t have been a frivolous decision to bring it up with you.

I forgot to add one of the things I did wrong with helping my son's reading was by reading different books. Better to concentrate on old favourites with pointing to the words as you say them. He didn't learn phonetically at all - and I had always thought whole word recognition was the root of the literacy crisis. Eventually in time he learnt to sound out words but he didn't learn naturally that way.

The most helpful book, and I read many many books on the subject was Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World by Jeffrey Freed. It is specifically aimed at ADHD children and my child is ADHD but it revolutionised our approach to learning spelling. His 10 word spelling list used to be week long ordeal and the method in the book cut down the time to a fraction of the time we spent drilling spelling. (I have no connection at all to the author though I suppose I should write him a thank you letter.)

It does sound to me like there could be a developmental delay or an additional need. I understand why you acted defensively but if the school have voiced concerns already you would be better arranging a meeting with the SENCO now to see what they have in mind moving forward and putting things in place sooner rather than later. At this stage in reception should be reading simple books, knowing all initial sounds and some digraphs and blending them into words accurately.

it can be really shocking when someone tells you that your child is not doing what they “should” be so sending you unmumsnetty hugs.
You have been very brave and done the right thing in going back to school like this. With you on her side, your daughter will fly in her own way and time.
On a practical level, getting eyes and hearing checked now will prevent delays if school wants to get a specialist to observe or work with your daughter, as many services ask for this to have been done before referral.
your daughter is getting all the help you can give which is so powerful.

My son had undiagnosed hearing loss at four. It affected his speech. The ENT specialist told us that the very first thing to suspect with poor speech or delayed speech is a hearing problem. While he was waiting for grommets the advice was to talk to them face to face with no background noise and getting down to their level. My son fooled a lot of people with masking his hearing loss. He fooled doctors, child care workers and possibly the most stupid child speech therapist in the world. He was very good at picking up on visual clues and probably taught himself to lipread a bit. We never suspected for a moment that he had a hearing loss - until I sat through the speech therapist testing him for comprehension. She announced that he had global development delay. I hurtled him off to an audiologist who confirmed he heard almost nothing. Within about ten days he had an ENT appointment and grommets and was minus his adenoids thanks to a cancellation on the ENT specialist's list. In retrospect it explained why he wasn't very upset when we had sound card issues and he had to watch his favourite cartoons with no sound. He was very fond of slapstick cartoons because it didn't depend on hearing. He had quite a lot of speech therapy and strangely ended up with a bit of an English accent. (We are not English!) He did struggle during school because it affected his spelling and so on but has managed a respectable university degree.

If you can afford it do a WISC test.