Susan Hall - Parenting a Struggling Reader: A Guide to Diagnosing and Finding Help for Your Childs Reading Difficulties

I know firsthand the range of emotions a parent of a struggling reader can feel, because my child had trouble learning to read when he was in first grade. I share my story because it offers hope and encouragement to parents. Everything started out well for our son. His preschool teachers gave us nothing but positive feedback at each conference, as did his kindergarten teacher. His development, including speech development, was on track at each checkup with the pediatrician.

When our son was a preschooler, he loved to listen to stories read aloud to him. Because he was such an active boy, it always amazed me that he could be read to for an hour or more. We had done everything we knew (and were told) to do to prepare him for kindergarten. We had taught him the alphabet and had read, read, read aloud to him, not only every night before bed for fifteen minutes but also many times during the day. I can still retell some of his favorite stories such as the Curious George books and his preschool favorite, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

When he started first grade, our son looked forward to school each morning. After school when he bounced out of the classroom to where I waited to walk him home, he would drag me by the hand back into the classroom to show me the spiderweb he had made that was suspended above his desk. As we walked home, he talked nonstop about his day, filling me in with rich details about what he had built in the block corner or the story the teacher had read to the class.

I noticed the first signs of change late in the fall. As he walked out of the classroom, his demeanor was subdued and he no longer wanted to show me anything. His enthusiasm was gone and he just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. On the way home when I asked my usual question, How was school today? he would say very little.

By January I knew something was wrong. Yet, when I asked my son questions, he didnt give me any information that pointed to what the problem was. When I received a phone call from a room mother asking me if I was available to help out in the classroom on a project, I jumped at the chance. I had to get into that classroom to try to figure out what was bothering my son. Why had he lost his enthusiasm for school?

On the designated day, I arrived in my sons classroom and was asked to work with a group composed of my son and four other children. Each child was to read a paragraph from a book the teacher had selected for our group. The other four children read before my son did, and I realized after listening to them that they read better than he did. When it was his turn, I watched his face as he read. His reading was slow and choppy. He stumbled over more words than the other children had, needed me to tell him nearly half the words, and reversed words such as was and saw. His face showed that he was sheepish and embarrassed. When I left the school building that day, I had a sinking feeling that we had a problem.

As I tucked him into bed that night, we talked about his feelings about his difficulty with reading. The memorable question my son asked me that night was, Mom, why am I the first one done with the math sheets, yet Im in the lowest reading group? He knew that he was as capable as his peers but that reading was too difficult for him.

My first step was to ask his teacher whether she thought he was behind in reading. She had not mentioned any concerns at our fall conference. Until the day I helped out in class I really wasnt aware that he was in the lowest reading group. It had never occurred to me to ask that question at our parent/teacher conference. His teacher responded, Dont worry. Hell catch up. Its just a developmental lag. She explained to me, Children develop at their own pace, and some read earlier than others.

We continued to read aloud to our son every night. Since he needed a little extra help, I was prepared to spend some extra time listening to him read. But what I found was that he didnt want to read to me. When he did read, it was very laborious. He had to stop to figure out many words, sometimes hesitating so long that he lost track of the rest of a sentence. When he didnt recognize a word instantly, he would look around the page at the pictures and then guess the word. Often the word he guessed made sense contextually, but didnt even start with the same sound as the word in print. It was clear to me that he couldnt begin to sound out words.

As I watched how labored his reading was, I became increasingly worried. By March he was more discouraged than ever. Finally, I asked his teacher if he should be tested for a learning disability. I still remember her response. She said to me, Oh no. I couldnt possibly refer him for testing. Hes not a year behind. I remember walking out of that classroom very angry. All I could think about was that we were not going to wait for him to be a year behind before we figured out if he needed help. I was determined