Your Child Struggles to Read
Your child still struggles to read. What else can you try? You’ve done your best and your other children can read without any major roadblocks. It just seemed a lot easier getting them on the path to success as readers. What could you be missing with your beginning reader this time?
Teaching phonics to your young reader also begins with a solid foundation. That foundation is phonics. If your young reader struggles to read text, there may be a crack in the foundation so to speak that we need to go back and fix. Let’s explore the next step you can take to try and figure out WHY your son or daughter is struggling to read. Let’s dive in!
Before I continue, I want to offer a disclaimer. There could be many reasons why your child struggles to successfully read simple text. I am not a speech and Language pathologist, I am not an audiologist, nor am I an expert in helping children with Dyslexia or children with Central Auditory Processing challenges. I will give you suggestions and a starting point to lay a firm foundation built on phonics skills with your child.
Why Your Child Struggles to Read
Poor phonemic awareness. Every word we speak is made up of sounds. Your child needs to be taught the 44 individual sounds in the English Language through ages 4-7, or K-2, so that she can successfully read text. If your child is still struggling to read, you’ll want to revisit early phonics lessons with short vowels and simple consonants before moving onto digraphs and long vowel teams. Short vowels and single consonants have 1:1 sound-symbol correspondence. A spells ‘a’, g spells ‘g’.
Does your child struggle to read because he hasn’t been taught phoneme Isolation. Can Your Child Isolate or tell you the beginning sound or phoneme in a word? Can she isolate and tell you the middle or medial phoneme in a word? Can she isolate and tell you the final sound in a word? If so, she should be on path to being a successful reader and speller.
Your child struggles to blend sounds to read words. Can your child orally blend 3 sounds you individually say into a word? If you say /c/ /u/ /t/, can they blend these 3 simple phonemes and say the word ‘cut’? If blending sounds orally is still a challenge, you’ll want to spend more time here offering your child multiple opportunities for practice.
Segmenting. Does your child struggle to segment sounds to read and spell words? If you say a word, can your child orally segment a word into its individual sounds. If you say ‘tap’, can your child repeat this word back to you in segmented form /t/ /a/ /p/? If your child struggles with this foundational spelling skill, rinse and repeat with many CVC words until it sticks.
If your child still struggles to read even though you’ve taught her phoneme isolation, blending and segmenting, consider having your child’s hearing and vision tested. Book an appointment with an ear and/or ear doctor or audiologist.
If your child still struggles to read, you may want to observe if he is showing signs of dyslexia. If your child has dyslexia, which is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words, she will benefit from extra practice in sound-symbol relationships. Put phonics lessons ‘rinse and repeat’ until your child can demonstrate an understanding of a phoneme-grapheme relationship.
Finally, if your child still struggles to read text, check for speech difficulties. As parents, our ears are so accustomed to hearing our child speak, that we may not actually notice speech concerns when they talk. Ask a friend if she can understand your child when she speaks. It is common for children to struggle with correct pronunciation for the l and r sounds /l/ and /r/. However, if you notice other adults have difficulty understanding what your child is saying, it might be time to look into getting some speech help from a local Speech and Language Pathologist. Speech difficulties can increase challenges for your child to link phonemes to graphemes to read words.
