When Reading Isn't Easy

Many adults have fond memories of their first encounters with reading—piecing together the mishaps of Dick and Jane, rollicking through the rhymes of Shel Silverstein and Mother Goose, or slowly learning to print their names. For most of us, it seems, reading comes naturally from repeating the alphabet and sounding out words. Yet imagine if those letters didn’t have sounds associated with them, or if words on a page seemed to have no meaning.

Such a situation requires no imagination for the almost three million kids nationwide who have a learning disability, and the 75 to 80 percent of them who have problems in reading- and language-based learning.

“The statistics are staggering,” says John Alexander, head of school at Groves Academy, a St. Louis Park school for students with learning disabilities. “If you don’t have the proper intervention by the end of third grade there’s only a 25 percent chance that a child will read at grade level in his or her public school career. We need to eliminate this attitude of waiting and not identifying a problem because it might be a stigma.”

Knowing the kinds of reading issues a child might face and the resources available to address them can help parents understand what they’re up against early on and get the necessary help.

Why Kids Struggle With Reading
In the world of reading disabilities, dyslexic is the word most often used to describe children who struggle to read. Characterized by poor spelling, weak decoding abilities, and a difficulty with accurate word recognition, dyslexia affects one in five school children. But in many respects, reading disabilities fall on a continuum.

One problem area can be phonological awareness, the ability to understand the way oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated. For example, the word “cat” is made up of three distinct sounds, each of which a child should be able to identify and separate. “For a lot of kids, this is the hardest thing to learn because they cannot manipulate the sounds in the language,” says Lori Helman, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Minnesota. “If you ask a child to say the word ‘cat’ without the ‘c’ sound and they struggle with the task, it is clear the problem is on the phonological level.”

Phonemic awareness, another potential problem area, is the ability to understand that words are made up of  phonemes, or individual sounds, that can be blended into words. A child who struggles with phonemic awareness has trouble manipulating individual phonemes within words. Ask a child what sound the letter “m” makes, or what sound “s” and “h” make when combined requires them to associate sounds with the letter symbols of the alphabet—an impossible task for a child struggling with phonemes.

Some children have phonemic and phonological awareness but they  aren’t fluent readers—recognizing words is laborious, not automatic. “Now that the child knows phonics and can match the letters with sounds, they need to put those skills together quickly to read at a normal pace,” Helman says. “Obviously, beginning readers are slow, but if a child seems to stall out, then it’s a problem with fluency.”

If a child can’t relay the concepts of what he or she is reading, comprehension is the issue, a problem that often comes to light in the fourth grade when schoolwork requires them to read more for meaning. “All the phonological and fluency skills can be in place, Helman says, “but if a child can’t explain to you what they’re getting from the page then they aren’t getting any meaning out of what they’re reading.”

For all that we do know about reading disabilities, scientists haven’t figured out precisely why some kids struggle with reading and others don’t. Neurobiological disorders, brain injury, being a non-native English speaker as a child, and even poor reading instruction in school have been cited as contributors, but increasingly scientists speculate there is a difference in the neurological wiring of struggling readers. There is also some evidence there is a genetic component to reading disabilities.

“Some parents discover there’s a name for a problem they encountered when they were in school, but they didn’t realize it was a problem until their own child experienced the same thing,” says James H. Wendorf, executive director of the National Center for Learning Disabilities in New York.

It can take time, though, for parents to accept that their child might have a problem. When they hear the word “disability,” some parents worry their child is being prematurely branded with an undesirable label.

“The initial reaction parents go through is they feel that their child doesn’t work or try hard enough and that if he tries harder he will learn to read,” Alexander says. “But that’s not true—they do try and parents need to get through that. Then they wonder if it’s a cognitive issue, some mental retardation issue, dyslexia, or an issue of IQ. Next there’s the guilt of ‘Did I do this to my kid? Is it my fault? Could I have done something different?’ Finally there’s the acceptance stage where parents increase their knowledge base on what the problem is, get a handle on it, accept it, and start to work towards a solution.”

What Parents Can Do
Thankfully, resources abound for families and they include websites, message boards, and local symposiums such as last month’s Ted and Roberta Mann Foundation Symposium for Children’s Mental Health and Learning Disabilities in Minneapolis. Co-sponsored by the Pacer Center, which works to help parents of children with all types of disabilities, the symposium addressed strategies for parents and teachers to address learning disabilities.

Mary Schrock, development director for the Pacer Center, says the response from the community was overwhelming. “There is a great demand for this kind of information,” she says. “We had a waiting list for attendees because parents want to do the best they can for their children and teachers want the same thing in the classroom.”

Sometimes the need for information can begin before a disability has been formally identified, as parents pick up on symptoms that teachers can overlook. “Parents are usually the very first to sense there might be a delay or an issue, something of concern that a professional should look at,” Wendorf says. “Yet what we found is that the majority of parents do not bring their concerns to the attention of a teacher, often waiting a year or more. That’s a problem because early detection and intervention is critical—it can mean the difference between successfully bringing [a child] up to proficiency or not.”

What can parents expect from their children’s teachers? “It’s important for teachers to listen to parents and pursue options if the parents have a concern, and the response could be more support in the classroom,” Helman says. “If that doesn’t work they might take it to the next level and go to small group support within the class. And if that isn’t adequate, special ed testing could be next. It just depends on the problem.”

Parents are also encouraged to help their children work on improving their skills at home and through tutors who can offer the extra attention that might not be available in school. But Helman warns against overdoing the extracurricular studying.

“I don’t think you want to make your den another schoolroom of worksheets. You don’t want to ruin your relationship as a parent by becoming a teacher at home,” she says. “You want to be supportive, and you want to do things teachers can’t do like individualized work connected to what is exciting and interesting to them. At home you can go to the library and find exactly the kinds of books your child likes and really tailor the learning to your child’s needs.”

Rebecca Hahn, director and owner of Huntington Learning Center in Maple Grove, recommends working with your child thirty minutes a day, but breaking that time into short five- or ten-minute segments of games and other fun lessons. And parents have to accept that children aren’t always going to go along with that. “Sometimes parents will hear, ‘I don’t want to do that right now’ and they should stop and say, ‘You tell me when you’re ready,’” Hahn says. “That gives the child a sense that they have a little bit of control.”

Gail Bregi, owner of Sylvan Learning Centers in Minnetonka and Chaska, echoes Helman’s advice to keep things upbeat. “Parents need to emphasize what they do know, and not make kids feel like they’re failing just because they have a reading problem. We try to model that behavior and encourage parents to jump on the good things their child does and be positive about their abilities.”

Modeling behavior as Bregi suggests can begin before a child’s first birthday as a way to introduce both language and reading. “Don’t feel silly talking with an infant,” Helman says. “They can’t talk back, but it’s really important for babies to hear language and hear vocabulary and figure out how we communicate.”

Songs, nursery rhymes, and word games—regardless of how goofy—are a great way to encourage language skills from birth. As children grow up, exposing them to writing is just as important: everything from making a grocery list to writing an e-mail sets an example in the home. And even reading a book out loud together, whether it’s nursery rhymes or Harry Potter, can keep home reading interactive.

In the end, working with your child through a reading disability doesn’t have to be a negative experience for parents or kids. “Build on what they do well so reading doesn’t feel like torture,” Helman says. “Different things work for different kids, and you’ll get to know your child better through this experience.” 

Resources
Groves Academy
952-920-6377
Huntington Learning Center
800-CAN-LEARN
International Dyslexia Association
410-296-0232
KnowledgePoints
651-464-7095
Lifetime Library
952-920-8300
National Center for Learning Disabilities
212-545-7510
Pacer Center
952-838-9000
Ready 4 K
651-644-8138
Sylvan Learning Center
888-EDUCATE