The Dangers of Waiting To Get Reading Help for Struggling Students

When do you get reading help for your child who is struggling, and when do you give it more time?

This is a question that comes up often in our conversations with families. You don’t want to rush your child into a skill they aren’t mature enough to master, but you also don’t want to put off getting help and leave them struggling more than necessary… So what do you do?

When it comes to helping struggling readers, time is an important factor. Reading struggles aren’t something you’ll just outgrow; instead, targeted intervention is critical for breaking the cycle and helping your child become successful!

What Do Reading Struggles Look Like?

Reading is a broad skill area that requires many specific skills to work together. Your child needs to see the letters correctly, blend them accurately, identify patterns or common words, and derive meaning (among other things). Hangups in any of these areas can make reading harder, but the important part is that you are pinpointing their unique struggle.

Our cognitive skills assessment can tell you this WHY. It will show you which part of the process of reading is hardest for your child’s brain so you can know where to focus your efforts to help them succeed.

Should You Just “Give It Another Year”?

If your child is under 5 or 6, maybe. For all other kids, waiting is not the answer. Kids develop their cognitive skills from the moment they are born. Their brains continue to grow and develop capacity to learn new things (like reading) at different paces, but if your child is significantly behind in elementary school or later, it is a sign that something else is going on.

The Dangers of Waiting

So what really is the danger of waiting it out? Here’s what’s at stake for your struggling reader if you put off the choice to get reading help:

• Your child will become frustrated and embarrassed. Does your child get angry or frustrated when it’s time to try to read? Are they embarrassed to read in front of people? If it hasn’t happened yet, waiting to get reading help may make this problem pop up unexpectedly.

• He or she will become resistant to even trying. Maybe instead of anger or frustration your child begins to respond by shutting down. This is another coping mechanism that their brain is using to try to communicate that there are skills they are lacking!

• The skill gap will get larger the longer you wait. Kids who struggle with reading in kindergarten or first grade often do not improve without proper intervention. In fact, research shows that the gap of where they are to where they should be gets larger as time goes on—unless you do something about it.

• Low reading confidence translates into poor self-esteem. Kids who struggle with reading (and know that they are behind) tend to be less confident in all areas of life. Imagine knowing that most of your day is going to be spent doing something you know you’re not good at… This is the level of stress many of our kids face daily heading into their classes.

• When “learning to read” becomes “reading to learn,” all other subject areas will be affected. Many parents put off getting reading help because it is the only subject that is hard. Their kids do ok in math, social studies, and science, so reading will catch on, right? The fact is that most learning in school happens through reading. By mid-elementary school, kids are expected to be able to read something and understand it. If your child is still struggling through the basics of decoding, this transition is going to be filled with stress for everyone.

Reading Help That Addresses the Root Cause

Proper reading intervention addresses the root cause of WHY your child struggles in school. Instead of bandaid “quick tips,” our approach to reading help targets weak cognitive skills that make learning harder for your child’s brain.

This kind of targeted approach is a game-changer. Of the thousands of students who have completed our reading skills training, their average gain is over 3.5 years in reading skills. That is HUGE.

If your 4th grader is reading at a 1st grade level, that is the gap to help them get back “on level.” If the gap isn’t that large, your struggling reader could even get ahead of their peers. 

These are results of past clients and we don’t guarantee the same outcomes for everyone, but if your child is struggling, don’t leave them in that place. Call us today to learn how you can get reading help that will help them become more successful this year.