Worried About Your Beginning Reader? Why ‘Wait and See’ Isn’t Advised for Reading Difficulties

At the Mary J. Wright Child and Youth Development Clinic at Western University, I work on a team that trains future school psychologists. In our work, we encounter parents almost daily who are concerned about their children’s learning.

When I started my training almost 15 years ago, I was less confident about how to respond to these concerns. Are caregivers perhaps too concerned and not informed enough?

However, from my own research and experience, I have learned that caregivers’ concerns about reading usually indicate meaningful learning needs.

For example, in a study that my colleagues and I conducted, we found that when community parents were concerned about their children’s reading ability in grade two, nearly half of their children performed significantly below age expectations on a standardized word reading test. An additional number of children showed language problems.

This is consistent with my clinical experience, where most parents who request an assessment for suspected learning difficulties ultimately receive a diagnosis such as a learning disability, language disorder, ADHD or intellectual disability.

If you are concerned about your child’s reading behavior, or if you would like to support your child in learning to read, here are some suggestions.

Screening instruments

Although parental concerns should be explored, this does not necessarily mean that parents have specific and in-depth knowledge of children’s developmental norms.

When it comes to reading, even teachers struggle to accurately identify the skill level of low-performing readers. Teachers and parents can miss reading problems or misunderstand what they see.

That’s where rigorous reading screening tools — tests that teachers or a school psychologist can use to gauge a student’s reading level — come in. For screening tools to be effective, they must be rigorously tested to demonstrate that they accurately identify struggling readers, with minimal time and effort.

School psychologists can also accurately compare children’s reading skills with those of their peers.

How comfortable is text at level?

Even without formal testing, it is possible to get an idea of ​​children’s reading development by looking at their reading accuracy for grade-level text. It is generally accepted that children should be reading grade-level text with about 95 percent accuracy (by the end of grade 1).

So, have a child read 50 words from a grade-level book. If they make two to four mistakes, the grade-level text may be challenging. Five or more mistakes is a more likely sign of significant difficulty. (You can check out Reading is Fundamental for free for printable grade-level passages. I recommend choosing the “medium” difficulty level.)

Helping readers who have difficulty reading

For struggling readers who have difficulty recognizing and pronouncing words, intensive, individualized reading programs that include a phonics component are an established way to improve reading skills. Phonology involves explicitly teaching children the relationships between written letters and their sounds.

Phonics instruction doesn’t have to be boring or dominate class time. When teaching phonics skills or common words, games can be an effective strategy. Research suggests that children can be engaged through personalized games (e.g., with a child named Ali, “Ali’s sight word hunt”), choices, and games with interesting context (e.g., “Olympic Reading Challenge!” versus generic reading exercises).

Phonics instruction must be coupled with real reading exercises and teaching children strategies to read text at the appropriate level. Isolated exercises, worksheets or computer games will not work.

Be wary of general tutoring for people who have severe reading difficulties or non-reading therapies such as visual therapy or auditory therapy, which may not have a strong scientific basis.

Reading with children at home

For parents who want to read with children at home, it is important to avoid the stress. Struggling readers can feel bad about their reading skills from the early grades. In my experience, the reading process can be stressful when children are struggling.

Try easier, more comfortable reading material. This is actually more effective at improving children’s reading skills and comprehension than making them struggle with more difficult texts. Also, don’t be afraid to reread your favorite books! Repetitive reading (reading the same text over and over) has some evidence as a strategy for improving reading skills.

If children are having trouble reading a particular word, give them a hint about how to pronounce it, such as saying, “Try to cover the last part” or “The first sound is ‘sh.'” If the word is difficult to pronounce, don’t be afraid to just say it out loud. Remember that children in grades 1 and up should make very few errors per page in a text at their level.

Help with reading comprehension

It is very important to help children not only read words accurately, but also understand what they read. Building this understanding, known as reading comprehension, involves more than asking questions after reading. It may even be more useful to build children’s background knowledge for reading, for example through hands-on activities or by discussing what they already know about a topic.

Therefore, consider connecting reading books to other daily activities, such as nature walks, cooking, or discussing relationships. Talking about how texts are structured can also help children better understand what they are reading. For example, when reading a nonfiction book, discuss how it provides information and look at the table of contents. When reading a story, review the key elements of characters, setting, problem, and resolution.

Multilingual Beginning Readers

Parents of children whose first language is not English are likely to be more concerned about their children’s reading than parents of English-speaking children. However, most multilingual children can read aloud as accurately as English-speaking children quite early in their education.

Read more: 5 Ways Immigrant Parents Support Their Children’s Home Language Acquisition

So when parents and teachers of multilingual children notice that they are having difficulty identifying and pronouncing words, this should be addressed promptly. Children who have language difficulties in their first language should also be assessed for learning challenges.

Learning difficulties often occur simultaneously

Caregivers, teachers, and other professionals should also be aware that learning disabilities often coexist with other problems. If children also have difficulty paying attention, doing daily tasks, following rules, getting along with others, or managing their feelings, talk to a doctor who will listen and carefully investigate your concerns.

Using free, high-quality screening tools such as the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire or the Pediatric Symptom Checklist, health care professionals can quickly identify potential behavioral or mental health problems.

Don’t wait, investigate it

Encouraging parents who are concerned about their children’s reading to ‘wait and see’ flies in the face of evidence that reading problems that emerge by the end of grade 1 are highly consistent and persistent.

Moreover, it contradicts research showing that early intervention (as early as kindergarten and grade 1) is more effective in preventing and treating reading problems than later intervention.

So if you have concerns about a child’s reading habits, trust your instincts and find a professional who will take your concerns seriously. Research and clinical experience have your back.