To worry about my kid's intelligence?

[Booboobunnywoo]

I know this is sensitive, but honestly just looking for input because I don't know much about kids, I don't have close friends who are parents, and I don't spend a lot of time with kids other than my own.

Anyway, DD is 5 and an absolute delight, but I worry about her cognitive development. She has a very limited vocabulary, often mixes up words, and we still struggle to understand her when she's telling a story. Short sentences are ok ("I can't find my jacket") but any utterance longer than two sentences is usually incomprehensible.

She cannot seem to understand stories beyond basic picture books when we read to her. I've tried some chapter books, like My Father's Dragon and Magic Treehouse, and she sits and listens obediently, but she cannot answer any questions about them while we're reading or afterwards, and I don't think she is following along at all. She also has watched some Disney movies such as Cars, Frozen and Finding Nemo. Eyes fixed on the screen the whole time, but she's completely clueless about what's happening, often focusing on little details that are not relevant to the plot and completely misunderstanding (or simply missing) major events.

Counting's all right, at least up to 10, but she cannot write her name beyond a few randomly placed letters (about 3 out of the 7, in random order).

My question: is this normal for a five year old? Should I worry?

OMG, my Dad would be just like brother number 1! He worked as a Nuclear Physicist. 😝

I was going to mention DLD. Sounds very like my son at that age. He now has a diagnosis of DLD, ASD, dyslexia and hypermobility.

The DLD qas his first diagnosis by educational psychology at 4. The rest came much later as his needs increased

look up Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and see if it fits. If she has DLD it doesn’t mean that she’s not clever.

I think given how committed you are to reading - yes that does worrying that she can’t read anything just yet. I’d apologise to the school for your initial defensive behaviour and ask for a referral.

Dyspraxia maybe? Or a hearing check op?

I don't want to dismiss your concerns and I think they are very much worth investigating but just wanted to say that my daughter couldn't read at this age, couldn't understand a long story or follow a film. Now she's at high school and is doing very well.

I would speak to the SENCO at school and see about getting her some additional support. She may have mild learning difficulties, or dyslexia/dyspraxia. She may just be slightly developmentally delayed and catch up. It’s hard to say.

I have a towering IQ, reading chapter books as a toddler etc. My DS has profound learning disabilities and multiple SEND. The one thing I will tell you is that comparison is the thief of joy. Don’t compare her to her peers, or to you and your DH and just celebrate every achievement she makes on her own terms, and you’ll feel better about things.

DD is about the same age, according to her teacher they have to give her extra work at school and because she’s a bit ahead in numbers (can add a bit etc) and reading as well.

She doesn’t completely get movies and with books her comprehension can be hit and miss and any explanation of events tends to be stream of consciousness rather than linear, often garbled.

I would try buying some read it yourself books they have comprehension questions at the end and start from there. comprehension at this age is a skill so just start developing it slowly. If we are at a cafe we would get the sugar packets out and say “white, brown, white, brown whats next”. So perhaps patterns in a different context. Make sure you are looking at her when you are talking, it’s important she sees your mouth when you speak.

It may not be about intelligence at all it could be how she processes things. If the school offer extra support grab it. Also there is quite a lot of variance at this age, they are still quite little.

You sound like lovely engaged parents and that is great for your daughter.
To give you an idea of an ‘average’ child in my reception class

• can recite numbers past 20, can recognise all numbers to 10, can continue repeating patterns, can solve simple problems
• is starting to recognise more tricky words by sight, recognises all phase 3 sounds and most phase 4, can recall key points about a story, write captions (few words) and are starting to attempt writing a sentence but not there with it yet

She is way to young to worry about “intelligence”, she’s 5!

The school voicing concerns is because she may be a little behind in some areas for her age. If she’s sociable and happy and plays with other children nicely that’s a huge indicator that she’s going to do absolutely fine in life (even if some areas of learning are more challenging for her).

Not read all posts yet so apologies if already mentioned.

At her age you need to foster the love for learning/reading etc, chapter books probably aren’t very interesting, no pictures or colours etc so she’s not taking it in all that well. Scale back to picture books, Julia Donaldson type stories, that way when she looks at the pictures in those stories she is learning how to link the text to pictures - and can then go on to visualise when reading chapter books.

I can’t find it now but read a post that said along the lines of in children 80% of new brain synapses are developed during play, only 10% are developed through traditional learning methods

Writing is tricky at her age…..lots will be doing it but lots also won’t be, it takes a lot of skill, remembering the letters needed, sounding out, remembering the formation of letters, concentrating on holding the pencil, holding body up to sit (don’t underestimate how hard this is for some children), concentrating and blocking out distractions.

Ask school about results of any tests, baseline, speech and language link (language link score is a very good indicator and is based on exact age so if shes only just 5 score will reflect that).

Five minute mum on FB/Insta is great for games and ideas to support learning, I’ve got her book and it’s helped my DC loads lately with boosting their learning.

What @Georgie743 said.

but add, as others have said, it's nothing to do with intelligence

Btw I don’t want to dismiss posts of additional needs but I also think take with a pinch of salt and consider the whole picture of your own child, I’ve done some cover in reception classes this year and what you’ve described is very much 50% of the class, some of them have additional needs and some don’t.
Ask your DDs class teacher if she suspects any additional need by all means, they spend a lot of time with different children and will have a good idea if the symptoms are there but I wouldn’t pin it just down to that yet without speaking to teacher first.

Ex reception teacher here. It definitely sounds like she has a learning delay and needs extra support. She will be one of the lower ability children in the class. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she will always need extra support, although for many at this level at this point in reception, they will require this support all the way through school. It could just be a low maturity level - some seem very behind at this stage but pick up quickly in Year 1 or beyond. I once taught a lad in Year 3 who started the year at Year 1 level in numeracy and finished the year in the top set, working at year 4-5 level. I’d like to claim in was my super teaching skills but really he just had a massive maturity leap and his understanding of a lot of concepts suddenly clicked into place.

In the grand scheme of things, if she’s a happy child who behaves well (not perfectly! I wouldn’t expect that from any 5 year old) and has good friendships, then I would focus on those positives and just gently support her with her learning. However, if there are other things amiss such as difficulty making friends, following basic instructions, hearing, seeing clearly, coordination, toileting issues, meltdowns and so on, it may point to a larger issue. Keep talking to the staff at school as they will be carefully monitoring her and will report any other concerns quickly if you’re open and approachable.

Things you can do to help her:

Ask lots of open questions (day to day life and when reading books and watching tv). This really helps to develop comprehension in reading and also of general events. What do you think will happen? Why? What should they do to help? Has anything like that happened to you? Can you tell me about it? How do you think they are feeling? Why?

work on the name writing - have a little go every day. Try and work out if she’s not recognising the letter or if it’s a motor skill issue. If she needs to build up the strength and control to write, google early years fine manipulative skill activities and gross motor skill activities for loads of ideas to help with this.

Can she count objects or just recite numbers in order? She should be able to reliably count up to around 10 objects With no miscounts and without missing any out at this stage. Have a go at that. If she struggles, work with amounts within 5 rather than 10.

Im sure you do loads of stuff like this already but lots of activities like baking, arty stuff, junk modelling, play dough etc - do them with her and chat all the way through with her, describing what you’re doing and encouraging her to do the same.

Good luck. She sounds like a lovely girl and a happy child so don’t worry too much.

I’m a speech and language therapist and my immediate thought was this was more language related than intelligence related, definitely reach out to the local speech and language therapy team and see if they can assess her.

You sound great and I think working with the school to identify specific support needs is a good idea.

Specifically on the reading, have a think about the way you read together. I used to read loads with my son, but I would read 'at' him and just expected him to pick it up. He had a great vocabulary at 5, but I was quite surprised when I realised how little he was sometimes understanding of the stories. I would switch back to picture books with her. Rather than asking her comprehension questions, which might just stress her out, take time to explain the book as you go along. E.g. pick a word you think she might not know and talk about the meaning; summarise what has happened on the page and then get her to guess what happens next or ask how she thinks the characters might feel.

If you can afford it do a WISC test.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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 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.

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

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