Why Does My Child Struggle with Reading?
** This is a long blog post so you might want to grab a cup of coffee or tea before settling in to learn why your child might be struggling with reading. Happy Reading! **
I get this question a lot.
It might come in slightly different packaging, like “What causes poor reading comprehension?”, “How can I help my child with reading comprehension?”, or it might even be a plea for help like, “My child is reading below grade level…HELP!”
Reading is difficult! It requires lots of parts to work together at the same time and, unlike language, is not an innate skill. Reading needs to be taught.
Lucky for us the International Literacy Association published an article in 2021 that presents a model of reading, the “Active View of Reading,” to help us break down the many causes of reading difficulties.
I want to make this important model more accessible to everyone so I made my own version that might be a little more approachable.
I want you to understand why your child in elementary or middle school, your teenager in high school, and even your college student might be struggling to read.
Note: I’m writing this post based on a wonderful article that came out in early 2021 that summarizes a lot of the research. It is NOT in parent-friendly language, it’s made for professionals like me, but if you are interested in taking a look at the original article you can at https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rrq.411.
Second Note: In this blog, I’m going to talk a lot about the connection between the written language that we see and the spoken language that we hear. Those are not the only ways people communicate! For example, sign language and braille are forms of communication that I won’t be discussing in this post. I will also be focusing on American English as I’m located in Chicago, Illinois.
Before we get into it, let’s clarify what I mean by “good reading comprehension” in the above visual. I don’t just mean you can read all the words out loud, I mean that you understand what the sentence, paragraph, or essay actually says. You understand the words, the humor, the metaphors, the structure of the sentences (syntax), and you are able to connect what you read to what you’ve read before and your personal experiences.
To get super ~ meta ~ right now, you’ve just read (or skimmed) a few short paragraphs that I’ve written. Not only have you read the words but you’ve also probably figured out the tone (casual), inferred a little about my personality (silly), and the purpose of this blog (to educate you on something complex without scaring you off). You might be connecting what you’re reading to what your child’s teacher has told you or to struggles you might have had in high school (or continue to have).
Reading is complex.
Let’s demystify some of that complexity.
To better understand why your child (or you!!) might be struggling with reading, let’s take a look at a few of the areas that are necessary for reading. To connect to the visual I made above, if any of the parts (outlet, plug, cord, or lamp) aren’t working, the light may flicker, it could be dim, or won’t turn on at all.
Let’s go over those parts.
This is difficult to understand so don’t be hard on yourself if you have to read this blog in bits and pieces.
Feel free to send any questions you might have to hollis@mindfulspeechchicago.com so I can clear up your questions in a future blog post.
Reading Words:
To read sentences, paragraphs, and more, we first need to be able to read words. We need to be taught the special code our language uses to represent what we say out loud into print. Said in another way, to read words we need to be able to connect the letters we see with the sounds we’ve heard all of our lives.
There are several skills that work together to help us read words. They are all important so if your child is weak in just one area, that can be causing their difficulty with reading words.
Awareness of sounds, AKA phonological awareness
If you have “phonological awareness skills” you are aware of the sounds in spoken words, like you know that the word “cat” is made up of the sounds /k/ /a/ /t/.
Important to note, we aren’t even talking about written words yet, we are just thinking about sounds because, in order to connect letters to sounds (decoding/reading a word), we need to have some knowledge of sounds.
Some examples of phonological awareness:
Phonological awareness of syllables would be like knowing that “basketball” has three syllables or knowing that “Hollis” has the same number of syllables as “awesome” and “language.”
Phonological awareness of sounds before a vowel (aka onset) and the rest of the syllable (aka rime) like c-at and spl-at. Knowing that these two words rhyme, i.e. have the same vowel and consonant that comes after the vowel, helps make learning how to read and write more efficient. If I’ve read the word “cat” before and know how to read it, it’s going to help me read the ending of a new word like “splat” which will help me be less frustrated by trying out a new word.
You also need to be able to separate and put sounds together in order to read and spell. If I want to read the word c a t when I’m first learning how to read, I need to be able to sound out each letter: /kkkkkkk/ /aaaaaaa/ /ttttttttttttttt/ and then put those sounds together into /kat/ a word. This may seem very simple to you if you can do it (which you probably can!) but for many students who struggle to decode, this is difficult for them.
If you want to learn more about phonological awareness, look at my Instagram, which has several videos on phonological awareness, like what does phonological awareness mean, an example of a task that requires phonological awareness, and why we care about phonological awareness.
Understanding that letters represent sounds, AKA the “alphabetic principle”
The alphabetic principle is the understanding that sounds from spoken words are presented by letters when written down. Again, this is pretty fundamental so it might be hard to imagine but there was a time when you were a lil baby and if you looked at a bunch of letters you wouldn’t have even known that was related to the sounds you were hearing all day long.
This is not the same as knowing the names of the letters in the alphabet or the alphabet song:
“ay, bee, see, dee, ee, ef, gee, aych, eye, jay, kay…” it’s more like a= “a” like in apple.
One way to model this principle with your young children who don’t know how to read yet:
You are reading the Cat in the Hat. You see the word “cat” written, you sound out /kkkkk/ /aaaaa/ /ttttt/, you blend it together: /kat/, you say, “HEY! I know that word, I’ve heard it before. CAT! meow meow cat cat cat. These letters tell me that the book is talking about a cat. meoowwww.
Knowing which letters connect to which sounds, AKA phonics skills
This is probably what a lot of you think about when you think about reading: programs like Hooked on Phonics, Orton Gillingham, reading tutors, etc. etc.
Having good phonics skills involves knowing how sounds and letters are related. The more automatic this skill is (aka you don’t have to spend time thinking about it), the easier it will be for readers to decode, or sound out, words.
If your child struggles with reading words, it might be because they don’t quite know how sounds and letters are connected. They might know some of the “easier” connections (like b, g, p, t, v, c, d) but some might be harder. Your child might get b and d confused or they might struggle with sounds that have two letters like ch, sh, and th.
If your child has difficulty with these types of things, they have trouble with phonics.
Ability to sound out written words, AKA phonic decoding
Phonological decoding is the skill of taking a written word, sounding out each letter, and then putting those sounds together to make a word.
In order to “decode” or sound out a word, you need to know which sounds are connected to different letters (phonics knowledge discussed above) and then you have to be able to “blend” or put together those sounds (phonological awareness) to hold those sounds in your mind and put them together. These skills really build on each other!!
If your child has difficulty sounding out words it means they have difficulty decoding. They could have difficulty with sounding out words because they don’t know how sounds and letters are connected (phonics), they don’t have the sound skills to blend them together (phonological awareness), or both!
Reading words automatically
Students typically learn how to read words by decoding them a few times, but eventually, we want to be able to read words automatically, aka without thinking about it. If you had to read this whole blog post by sounding out each word, I don’t think you would have made it this far.
Sounding out words takes a lot of energy and we want to save that energy for thinking about understanding, connecting with, and forming an opinion about what we read.
We want to focus on reading comprehension (the lightbulb going off!), not sounding out words. If your child has to read every word by sounding it out, and struggles to remember what they read, they might benefit from activities that work on “orthographic mapping” aka turning reading words and parts of words into an automatic process.
Little soapbox:
You don’t learn how to read words automatically by memorizing a list of words every week. It breaks my heart to hear that many students have been given that advice and that is the main way they are encouraged to learn how to read.
That isn’t how we learn how to read!! Sure, we’re talking about English here so there are some “irregular words” that we are going to have to memorize parts of, but even those irregular words are mostly made up of words that are “regular.” More on that in a future blog post. Okay, dismounting soapbox now.
Alright, phew, we’ve discussed the factors that come together to help you read words. Yippee!! If you need a break before moving on to the next section, I wouldn’t blame you. But if you are feeling excited that you are now understanding why your child or teen struggles with reading, feel free to jump into the next part: connecting the words that we’ve read to meaning.
Connecting Written Words to Meaning:
Once we’ve connected the letters we see to the sounds we hear, we have to connect that understanding to meaning in order to comprehend.
Print concepts
“Print Concepts” essentially refers to how words are printed in your language and culture. For example, in English, we read left to right, top to bottom, and from the front of the book to the back. I remember being so surprised when I got into a manga series in middle school (Marmalade Boy, anyone?!) and it was read from the “back” of the book to the front. This was so exciting and delightful for me because it “violated” my expectations of reading from front to back.
Poetry is another arena in which many print concepts are “violated” or played with in order to draw our attention to something.
This isn’t typically an “issue” in the clients that I work with but it is an important stage in development.
Is your toddler pretending how to read a book? Have they gone from opening the book at random to flipping the pages from front to back and “reading” left to right? That’s growth!! Your child is learning the “print concepts” of English.
Efficient reading with emotion, AKA reading fluency
When we talk about someone “reading fluently” we mean they are able to read sentences and passages accurately, automatically (quickly, without decoding), and with typical prosody (intonation, rhythm, and emphasis on correct words). When someone reads “fluently” it usually indicates that they actually understand the meaning of what they are reading.
An example to clear this up, digital helpers like Siri and Alexa are pretty accurate (they can say most words), they are pretty automatic (they respond pretty much right away) but their prosody can make us laugh because it “sounds weird.” They might emphasize the wrong syllables or words which makes them sound robotic.
Children, teens, and beyond can struggle with this too by sounding monotone or halting when reading. This often means that the person reading doesn’t really understand what they are reading because they are only getting the parts (words) and not the whole (sentences or paragraphs).
Vocabulary knowledge
This is a big one, and maybe the easiest to explain. Even if a reader can decode a word perfectly, they aren’t going to really understand what they read if they don’t have a meaning to connect with the word.
For example, if a child can decode (sound out) a word like “cat” but has never seen or heard about a cat before, they don’t have any meaning to connect with the word “cat” even though they read the word correctly.
It might be unlikely that your child has never heard of a cat before, but they might not know the words “lab” (dog) and “cab” (taxi). This means that even if they can sound out the words in the sentence, “My lab is stuck in a cab” they won’t understand the meaning because they won’t understand two key vocabulary words in the sentence.
We could talk about the importance of vocabulary for reading for a very long time but hopefully you’ve gotten at least the gist of why vocabulary is important for your child whether they are in elementary school, middle, high school, or college.
Knowing the parts of words that have meaning, AKA having morphological awareness
Morphology is one of my favorite language concepts to discuss because the average person doesn’t know what it means but it usually clicks pretty quickly. Morphology is the awareness and knowledge of the smallest units of meaning in language.
Let’s take the plural -s morpheme in English as our example morpheme. This little letter “-s” packs the important meaning of more than one. Cat vs. cats. For example, with the word cats, the “-s” at the end of the word tells us that the word is plural so we are not just talking about one cat but 2, 3, 4, or more cats.
Cat
vs.
Cats
Another example of morphemes is the word “unbelievable,” which contains the prefix “un” meaning not, the word “believe,” and the suffix “able” meaning able to. All of this comes together to communicate that something is not able to be believed.
A student who doesn’t have strong morphological skills might have difficulty reading long words that have many parts, making reading comprehension difficult.
Ability to shift between thinking about sounds and meaning while reading
We don’t have to wait until we’ve read the whole word before we can get some meaning. In fact, great readers shift between thinking about sounds and meaning which helps them anticipate both while reading.
This is great because it allows us to learn new words that have morphemes we know more quickly.
Understanding Meaning & Context:
Cultural context and knowledge
Have you never heard of a chandelier? Then all the decoding in the world is not going to help you understand that word. Never heard of Hanzel and Gretel? Reading that story will be harder for you than for someone who has heard that story many times. Haven’t learned about precipitation? Reading about the water cycle might be pretty difficult for you to understand because you don’t have the foundational knowledge to help support your reading.
Have difficulty with telling or understanding stories? Do you not understand that a story typically has a “problem” that is resolved by the end? Then you might not be able to notice and remember the important parts of the story.
Reading-specific background knowledge
Do you know to pay special attention to the title of a story or book? Do you know that the phrase “Once upon a time…” usually starts up a fairy tale?
Do you skim the headings of an article to preview what it will talk about so you can have a roadmap of what you are about to read? Do you know how to read a diagram or graph?
Readers who don’t know to read titles and how to read diagrams miss out on a lot of helpful information that can help them understand what they read.
Verbal reasoning
Good readers can go beyond just the words that are written and can infer meaning from what the characters are and aren’t saying, what the author’s purpose might be, and can understand the metaphors included in the writing. Readers with good verbal reasoning skills will also be able to pick up the “moral of the story.”
Being able to make inferences is critical for digital literacy, aka being able to think critically about what you read. Is the author trying to convince me to do something?
Are they trying to present a certain perspective as “other” and “bad?”
Are they trying to make me feel bad about myself so that I will buy something?"
Language structure, like syntax AKA how words are ordered in a sentence
This is probably one of my very favorite areas to work on with students because it is usually not worked on by other professionals. The students I work with, particularly those in middle school, high school, and college, often struggle with long, complex sentences. They struggle with sentences that have different clauses in them like:
nominal clauses “I predict that the party will be fun,”
adverbial clauses “If you don’t finish your homework, you can’t have dessert“
and relative clauses ”I like the books that my grandma gave me”
Students can also struggle with passive sentences, especially if they have difficulty with working memory (the ability to hold ideas in their minds). Examples of passive sentences include: The ball was hit by the child. The dog was bit by the child. HAH! Can you tell which one of those sentences was a little weird? Passive sentences tax our brain so we usually compensate by assuming that the sentence conforms to our expectations.
Decoding won’t help these issues but speech-language therapy can!
Students who struggle with reading long sentences, those who particularly struggle with reading social studies/history and science texts, may be struggling with language structure. They don’t know how the words are working together in a sentence so they can’t understand the meaning.
This is a big area of difficulty for students in middle school, high school, and college as they are encountering more and more complex ideas. Do you know the way we communicate complex ideas? Through complex sentences and language.
Theory of mind
Theory of Mind is the ability to understand and take into account your own and others’ thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs, and intentions. This is important not only when interacting with others verbally, but also when reading. In order to make inferences about what a character might do next or why a character did what they did, a reader needs to have theory of mind skills.
Theory of mind is also critical for my favorite part of reading: making personal connections to characters, like “I can stand up to bullies because Megan did” or “ I can try new things because Jose did. ”
Having difficulty with theory of mind is often considered a hallmark issue with people with autism/ASD. So your child with ASD might be awesome at decoding, they have been “reading well” for a while but they don’t quite “get” what they read. This might be because they have trouble understanding the characters in the story or because other aspects of language (structure, vocabulary, etc) are difficult.
Know your child is struggling with reading but still confused?! I don’t blame you! That’s why professionals like me exist and why your child might benefit from a thorough evaluation. Life’s most precious resource is time so make sure you get a thorough evaluation so you know what your child needs to focus on. That way, precious time will be spent on the types of tasks that can actually help them.
Reading is complex and I’m trying to balance being thorough with being readable and I might not have hit the mark for you in this post. Send me your clarifying questions so I can make my posts more accessible to all. Thank you for reading!
Is Engaged & Motivated:
Skilled readers are active, strategic, engaged, and use executive functioning skills while reading in order to understand what they read.
Executive functioning
Executive functioning (EF) is a hot topic right now. Don’t know what executive functioning is or would like a refresher? Take a look at some of my EF-focused blog posts, like what is executive functioning, executive functioning profiles, why executive functioning is important, and how teens with executive functioning challenges struggle with writing.
How do executive functioning skills relate to reading?
In order to understand what you read, you need to pay attention to what you are reading, sometimes needing to focus on something very specific to be able to infer deeper meaning, like with metaphors.
You also need to have strong enough working memory (ability to hold things in your mind) to build an image in your mind of what you are reading while you read the words.
You have to not get distracted (inhibition) by irrelevant information while monitoring your understanding to know if you understood what you read or if you need to read it again.
Motivation
”Do I care?”
“Does this relate to my real life?”
“Do I connect to what I am reading?”
Students who find what they are reading to be relevant to be their lives, have some choice in what they read, experience success while reading, and find that reading is important are more motivated and engaged with what they are reading.
Not only does being motivated and engaged just seem “nice” for reading, it has also been shown to be important for success with reading.
Strategy Use
Students are also more successful with reading when they are able to remember to use strategies. They can use strategies for reading words, like chunking long words into parts. Students can also use strategies for understanding what they read, like asking themselves questions while they read and making mental images while reading.
One of the reasons why I made this lamp analogy visual was because I loved having the option of the lamp itself being fully functional, except when it isn’t plugged in. This is the case for the student in middle school who may have ADHD with pretty strong skills in reading words and language but still struggles to understand what they read. Working on decoding (sounding out words) won’t help them unless they also struggle with reading individual words, because they need to learn ways to “plug in” using increased EF, motivation, and strategies.
Know your child is struggling with reading but still confused?! I don’t blame you! That’s why professionals like me exist and why your child might benefit from a thorough evaluation. Life’s most precious resource is time so make sure you get a thorough evaluation so you know what your child needs to focus on. That way, precious time will be spent on the types of tasks that can actually help them.
Reading is complex and I’m trying to balance being thorough with being readable and I might not have hit the mark for you in this post. Send me your clarifying questions so I can make my posts more accessible to all.
Oh me oh my! You read (or skimmed - no shame in that!) the whole blog post and you might be thinking…now what?!
If you know your child is struggling to read, I highly recommend scheduling an evaluation with a professional who specializes in reading and writing, like a speech-language pathologist, neuropsychologist, or another reading specialist.
Next steps to take if your child is struggling with reading:
✅ Notice (or be told by a teacher) that your child is struggling.
✅ Educate yourself on why they might be struggling.
Have a consultation with a professional or two. Find someone who seems to “fit” you and your family. You can share with them what stood out to you from this blog post. Did you read about executive functioning and think, “THAT’S MY KID!” Or did the section on difficulty reading longer sentences stick out to you? The more you share in an (often free!) consultation the better the professional can steer you in the right direction. Feel free to schedule a consultation with me to discuss your child.
Get an evaluation that looks at all of the areas your child might be struggling in.
Start therapy to help with reading, writing, and language skills.
Be delighted that reading has become less of a chore for you and your child.
Is your child or adolescent struggling to read?
Let’s talk about it!
I’d love to help you figure out if a speech-language evaluation and/or therapy would be good for your child.
Schedule a free consultation today!
Hi, I’m Hollis, the owner of Mindful Speech.
I’m a speech-language pathologist licensed in Illinois and Colorado.
I specialize in providing speech therapy to help children, teens, and young adults to improve language, reading, writing, and executive functioning skills. Now offering in-person sessions in Chicago!
Learn more about me on my About Hollis page.