This Needs To Happen Before Your Child Can Learn to Read
You read to your child from the time they are babies, and when they start school you have this amazing excitement for them: they’re going to learn to read, too! Reading is such a powerful tool not only for education, but also for personal development, enjoyment, relaxation, and expansion. But then something happens… Your kids dig their heels in. It doesn’t click. They struggle through and all of a sudden are saying that they “hate reading.” What do you do now? Before your child can learn to read, there are critical things that can set them up for success.
When Will My Child Learn to Read?
Reading clicks at different ages for different individuals. Every person is unique, but reading typically begins to become natural and fluent by 2nd grade. Reading earlier doesn’t necessarily mean that a child will continue to be ahead, but it is a sign that their brain is wired naturally for reading, while kids who struggle may need some extra intentional work to form these connections.
Third grade is typically the year that class content switches from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” This means that in 3rd grade and beyond, students are expected to read a text and remember what it says. This is why many families hit 3rd grade and begin to seek outside reading help because — PANIC — now every subject is being impacted by reading struggles.
How Do People Learn to Read?
Reading is a complex process. Not only do you need to visually recognize letters, but you also need to:
- Decode the letters and assign them the correct sound
- Blend the sounds together
- Hear the combination of sounds correctly
- Connect that word to the meaning centers of your brain
- Remember what you’ve been reading so you can intuit meaning from a whole sentence or passage
- And do all of this quickly and fluently.
Because of the complexity of reading, many people compensate for weaknesses. They get good at guessing. Maybe they memorize sight words instead of sounding them out. They rely on audiobooks or having passages read aloud.
Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, but before we can get there we need to dive deeper and establish a strong foundation of phonics, auditory processing, and fluency. Here’s a visual of how these skills are formed:
Critical Brain Skills Need to Be Strong Before Reading Can Happen
The foundation needs to be solid before the structure can continue to be built. As you can see, even before phonological awareness (the first step of learning to read; simply recognizing word parts and patterns), there is an even deeper need for strong cognitive skills.
Your brain’s ability to take in information and process it efficiently directly impacts your learning in all areas of life, not just academically. By building a foundation of cognitive skills, you set your child up to be able to:
- Grasp something the first time they’re taught it
- Remember what they’ve learned and how to apply it appropriately
- Problem-solve and strategize
- Recognize patterns and intuit next steps
- And more.
In reading, this foundation makes all the difference! Most reading struggles are not a result of poor teaching or a lack of effort. Instead, they happen because of a disconnect in one of these core learning skills.
Whether you have a child who’s in the weeds of hating reading and you’re not seeing progress, or you’re trying to set up your younger kids for success before the struggle starts—you are in the right place!
