My 6 year old can't read 😢😢

[Kales29]

Dd is just turned 6 (august) and just gone into year 2. She is the youngest in her class, she's also considerably speech delayed. Her speech wasn't good at all when she started shcool but had improved vastly but still young for her age. She has an EHCP due to her speech delay. My oldest is autistic, Dd isn't believed to be autistic though.

She enjoys school, teacher last year said she's below expectations but improving. She's a confident, popular member of the class etc. Very artistic but struggled with both maths and English. She seems to love school.

But she cannot read at all. She recognises odd words but she cannot read any sentences or anything. We are always reading to her etc.

Her writing is improving but again it's just writing odd words.

I feel like a complete failure.

It hasn't helped she's had her first 2 years of school affected by covid.

I'm worried about the lack of support at the school. There's a fair few in her clsss bedding extra support both with EHCP's and not with ehcps. Ranging from learning difficulties, behavioural issues etc.

Despite having an EHCP I don't think the school are providing enough support.

I'm worried sick.

My son goes to the same school and has been well supported because his EHCP states he needs 1:1. DD isn't entitled to 1:1 support. Her EHCP is mainly about her speech and language needs.

But I have spoken to other parents who's children are not being given any support and I feel Dd is going the same way. Some parents have even taken their children out the school due to lack of support.

How can I help her improve at home? She's always writing, drawing etc. It's the reading I am most concerned about. She struggles with maths but we always do maths things at home. Teaching her to read is hard!!

Advice??

Dyslexia?

My dd couldn’t read until he was 7. He’s a journalist now.

Our 5 year old was quite far behind although not speech delayed. We found the reading eggs app really good at making the learning process a bit more fun for her. She has now well caught up from just 10 mins a day over the summer. No harm in trying?

OP, I have huge sympathy for your position. However I don't know if you're doing everything you could be doing.

You have said you're always reading. Lovely. That is not teaching reading though. It's the fun bit for both of you. Essential for literacy but you're not supporting her with the issue you're asking for help with by doing only that. I wonder if you're flapping rather than taking a deep breath and actually getting stuck in.

You've been asked more specific questions and you haven't answered them. Is that because you aren't involving yourself enough to know specifically what your DD is struggling with? Do you know how children learn to read-the phonics process of recognising the different sounds, making them and associating them with letters/groups of letters? Do you know that exception words must be learned separately, often through endless repetition? Are you doing these things?

There is endless help available if you would like to know how to go on.

If you really are doing everything and nothing is working, I would be thinking about a private assessment for dyslexia and one to one with a specialist coach-invest now, not later.

I didn't read all the replies but in many countries it is not normal for children to even start learning to read until 6. So I don't think you have to worry about anything. At 4, 5 they don't read and recognise the letters they just repeat what they have seen before.

I'd post privately for a full developmental assessment. You need to understand the barriers and potential learning styles that will suit her.

Pay, not post!

@cloudacious

OP, I have huge sympathy for your position. However I don't know if you're doing everything you could be doing.

You have said you're always reading. Lovely. That is not teaching reading though. It's the fun bit for both of you. Essential for literacy but you're not supporting her with the issue you're asking for help with by doing only that. I wonder if you're flapping rather than taking a deep breath and actually getting stuck in.

You've been asked more specific questions and you haven't answered them. Is that because you aren't involving yourself enough to know specifically what your DD is struggling with? Do you know how children learn to read-the phonics process of recognising the different sounds, making them and associating them with letters/groups of letters? Do you know that exception words must be learned separately, often through endless repetition? Are you doing these things?

There is endless help available if you would like to know how to go on.

If you really are doing everything and nothing is working, I would be thinking about a private assessment for dyslexia and one to one with a specialist coach-invest now, not later.

Isn't that why children go to school though? Why should she have to teach her daughter how to read? Are the other parents doing that?

Endless repetition and drilling phonics after a long day at school sounds like the way to alienate a child and foster a hatred of learning.

Endless repetition and drilling phonics after a long day at school sounds like the way to alienate a child and foster a hatred of learning.

I did 10 minutes dancing bears before school and watched my DS especially get it and his confidence grow. A lot of the on-line stuff they did later they actaully enjoyed.

As for everyone else doing it - depends.

A school with good phonics program or lots of additional support or a child who works out code themselves then no clearly less support outside school is needed.

Though once you start talking to parents IME you may find that many are doing additional stuff these days.

DD1 was kept in a lowish maths set for couple of years in primary - which is I understand is poor practise - when they tested ablity it was all changed top set was suddenly all girls. A chance talk on the playground every single one had had additional help - one from teacher parent, one form TA parent, couple outside tutor and one from DGP and us with on-line site. The teachers said girls had just clicked later with maths and ignored the at home support.

Same at secondary - my kids must just have maths brains which ignores fact they all struggled and did mathsfactor for 4 years most days and many other maths activties/support at home.

Someone has said this upthread, but Reading Eggs was a big help with my DD and she enjoyed doing it.

Mine are all older now so I can’t advise any programs or schemes to help.
However my eldest didn’t ‘get’ phonics. They were just unable to grasp the whole concept. It looked like they couldn’t do maths because they couldn’t read any of the words. The school provided regular one to one sessions with a TA to learn to read in a different way. We just continued to read books and have subtitles on TV etc. They’ve now graduated from a RG uni with a first class masters so don’t fear that your child won’t get there. Sometimes they’re slower to grasp concepts and your child will have suffered disruption from school lockdowns.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Dyslexia?

My dd couldn’t read until he was 7. He’s a journalist now.

Wow! Was your son dyslexic, @ArseInTheCoOpWindow? That's great to hear he went on to be a journo.

Ps love the username

Yes, absolutely. Didn’t read until he was 7 or 8. Couldn’t write much either😂

And now he works on the national press! So it can be overcome!

Endless repetition and drilling phonics after a long day at school sounds like the way to alienate a child and foster a hatred of learning.

If that's your attitude, quite possibly.

Giving extra support needn't be like that and failing to give it will foster all kinds of other things if you're leaving them to languish in the school system.

I'd start by speaking to the SENCO at school. It could be an underlying problem such as sight or hearing problems or dyslexia. It could be that she's young in the year and a bit behind but will catch up. You need a plan of action with the school about how to get her learning to progress.

With my kids I would put 10 sight words (words they need to know by sight) on their bedroom cupboard door and each night before bed I would say a word and ask them to point it out to me.

nanbread

Children go to school to learn, yes. But surely you must know there isn't time and resources to help every struggling child in exactly the way they require. There should be but there isn't. Add to that, as any teacher will tell you, supporting the child's learning at home defines the success of learning for some children. You must have had a very easy time not to know that. Parents don't entirely sign over their educational responsibilities to the school you know. You don't just sit back and watch them flounder because school exists. That doesn't foster a love of learning no matter how convenient you might find the thought. It's not drilling, either. It is songs, rhymes, dances, funny pictures with a bit of hard work thrown in.

Lazy parents who refuse to get involved or don't follow the school's basic direction in supporting their child to read make life so much harder for children and teachers. I'm not saying this is the OP but "we read to her" will not go anywhere near the guidance offered to parents by schools.

My dd is just 6 as well, yr 2. She can’t read either and is below age expected in everything. I am not worried though as my older dd was exactly the same! It ‘clicks’ for them at different times - once my older picked up the basics she flew through the reading levels and although she still doesn’t enjoy reading she can read chapter books at school. It sounds like you are doing all the right things at home to support her so carry on as you are along with keeping in touch with her teacher with what you need to work on. I find it important to praise my daughters for what they are good at and enjoy - for example the are both incredibly creative, love nature and the outdoors. Remember they’ve had such a disrupted start to school life that some are bound to fall behind and the school will know the ones that need extra help.

Also I haven’t rtft so may have been mentioned already but rather than trying to get her to sit and read, play games with her or try to incorporate phonics/CVC words into play that she enjoys. Five minute mum on insta is excellent for this!

Check about dyslexic. Also label your house- bed, cupboard, door etc and say the word together every time you see it.

@cloudacious

nanbread

Children go to school to learn, yes. But surely you must know there isn't time and resources to help every struggling child in exactly the way they require. There should be but there isn't. Add to that, as any teacher will tell you, supporting the child's learning at home defines the success of learning for some children. You must have had a very easy time not to know that. Parents don't entirely sign over their educational responsibilities to the school you know. You don't just sit back and watch them flounder because school exists. That doesn't foster a love of learning no matter how convenient you might find the thought. It's not drilling, either. It is songs, rhymes, dances, funny pictures with a bit of hard work thrown in.

Lazy parents who refuse to get involved or don't follow the school's basic direction in supporting their child to read make life so much harder for children and teachers. I'm not saying this is the OP but "we read to her" will not go anywhere near the guidance offered to parents by schools.

@cloudacious you lost me at "You must have had a very easy time not to know that."

I have two children with additional needs.

Actually I think it's YOU who has had the easy time, thinking that it's straightforward to get a child to engage with phonics and reading at home and that parents who can't do that are lazy.

Try having a child that has violent rages when you try to engage them in what the school has asked you to do to support their learning and begs not to go to school daily.

The OP has a child with additional needs too and "standard" ways of teaching may never work with her as they would for 90% of children.

I don't really care where I lost you, nan. I don't send my children to school if they prefer to learn at home.

Meeting every need is not what teachers are there for however much they love what they do. Your having a child with additional needs doesn't really justify the idea that parents don't need to be helping because they do. I am the parent of different children with abilities ranging from gifted to a plethora of diagnoses that have made supporting incredibly difficult, not that our individual circumstances actually alter the facts or strengthen any argument against the value of parental involvement.

Children need support and it is indeed up to us to help foster a love of learning which will never have a chance to get off the ground if they sit at the bottom with no parental involvement of the kind schools find most helpful. If reading a bedtime story was all it took, there would be no need to teach parents the basics of phonics, something that time and resources have been poured into because it's so important.

I don't judge a parent who doesn't help because they can't for whatever reason, and have been there, but it is very very difficult to see a child struggling because no one is going over their sight words and phonics sounds from one week to the next, who doesn't glance at homework despite being highly educated, on the basis that they're above it 'that's what teachers are there for' (like the gardener is there to garden, one presumes) or it doesn't fit in with their philosophy of learning. Generally it's beneficial to sit down and get on with it little and often if you possibly can, it can only be helpful provided you can keep smiling.

If you don't like the school system and aren't working to do your part in the collaboration between school and parent, take your child out of school and weave rafts made from the tears of less lucky school children. Don't throw them in the rapids of a structured learning system and fail to help them keep pace. Paddling their canoe as their parent is indeed what you're there for and so am I. If it is very hard or impossible, teachers get that. I'm not talking to the parent up against the wall, but to the kind who doesn't turn up to phonics information evening when they could easily be there because it sounds a bore and they've hastily recast themselves as a Steiner enthusiast for the day and because after all, the school has 'someone' for that. You have to pitch in if it's possible.

Standard methods of support haven't always worked for my children either but teachers don't have a magic time tree. Divide up their teaching time into twenty pieces and see how long your child has.

Schools are on their knees partly because parents feel entitled to offload their responsibilities entirely into teachers in a way that school can never and should never have to honour.

My children are currently home educated at their request. Very hard work. But we haven't gone from nothing to this level of effort, we were always heavily involved with blood, sweat and tears along the way. Would have liked the chance to say teaching them was someone else's job but I have taught for long enough to know it doesn't work that way in any possible world unless you're very lucky.

I've just skimmed through and seen things like dancing bears already recommended already.
I wanted to add another suggestion - audiobooks. Listening to audiobooks helps a lot with them grasping the structure of stories and language when they can't access it through reading. Both of my DS are dyslexic and audiobooks helped a lot until reading finally clicked in yr 3 (they continued to enjoy them afterwards).

Mine also did Toe by Toe which is effective but bloody dull for a young child so I would start with the other suggestions.

Both of mine struggled until Yr3 / 4 but picked up in secondary with support and extra time in exams and the eldest is now in a good uni doing a science course.