7 year old unable to read

[Longsleepneeded]

I wonder if I could get some perspective/advice please. My friend homeschools her ds7 and he can't read yet. She has expressed surprise at how well my 7 year old can read and says she doesn't know how to teach her ds to read. He is very bright, full of questions and interested in lots of things. They went to several homeschooling groups before lock down. Is it usual to be a late reader and has anyone any advice on the best way to teach him please?

www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/the-pirls-reading-result-better-than-you-may-realize

Scroll down to see a chart which puts various European languages in order of "orthographic depth" (the extent to which each phoneme is consistently represented with a single letter). Finnish is the shallowest. English is the deepest.

The thing about "unschooling" is that loads of parents start off doing it, and a very high percentage of them quietly shift to a more structured approach (or put their kid in school) once it becomes obvious that their child is not doing a very good job of learning to read or spell. Parents are likely to persist with unschooling only for the minority of kids who are lucky enough to "figure out" how to read and spell with hardly any instruction. It's a self-selecting group.

OP's friend sounds like a bit of a twit, frankly. She admits openly that she doesn't know how to teach reading yet has chosen to homeschool (and apparently by choice, rather than having her hand forced by COVID19)? Completely irresponsible. Homeschooling done properly is absolutely fine but parents should actually be teaching their kids.

it is totally unfair to compare him with a child who is taking longer to acquire this skill.

He hasn't been taught! There is no evidence in this case that the boy has any kind of language or learning disorder or is a slow learner.

I can recommend resources by Ruth Miskin - flash card phonics followed by her books. And then as many picture books as possible.

Does your friend use the internet? If you point her in the direction of this forum, there are many experienced home educators who will be happy to chip in with suggestions and see what works for this particular child. Or she may feel reassured that there is no rush, and if the boy isn't particularly eager to read then it is fine to wait.

I find it very odd that you've asked for advice for your friend, who wants to know how to teach her child to read, and she's received nothing but condemnation from so many posters here. Parents don't know how to do everything. We ask for help and we learn, and that's how we become better parents. There's no shame in that.

If she doesn't use the internet then perhaps her problem is that due to lockdown she is currently cut off from her previous sources of support and information at local home ed groups.

Surely what OP@Longsleepneeded wants is to be able to help her friend to teach him.

I have a four year old and we are starting to learn to read. He is going to school in September. He vaguely knows his letter sounds from starting to write. It is hard because you start sounding something out and find it's sight word ( cant be sounded) or has grouping or blends of letters like boat . So I've basically been using a combination of learning the words by repetition ( by sight) like how I learned to read in ye olden days. Plus sounding out some words like cat or to start with just asking DS to sound the first letter of a each word. We are using very short books with characters familiar to him which are early reader phonics type books with about 10 pages. So whilst he's not really into the cars movie now, he's familiar with it and one book is about the characters from cars. If your friend is anti tech/ tv this might not help. I've been surprised how hard some the the learn to read books are. I have no idea how to teach kids to read either, but this is what I am doing.

@user1477391263

The thing about "unschooling" is that loads of parents start off doing it, and a very high percentage of them quietly shift to a more structured approach (or put their kid in school) once it becomes obvious that their child is not doing a very good job of learning to read or spell. Parents are likely to persist with unschooling only for the minority of kids who are lucky enough to "figure out" how to read and spell with hardly any instruction. It's a self-selecting group.

You do have a good point about the profile of unschoolers, but I don't go along with your implication that it's irresponsible of us if we don't teach our children to read by seven. I would say instead that in our society, where there's such a strong assumption that reading must be taught and that earlier is better, it's very difficult to go against the grain. The longer it takes before a child becomes ready to read, the greater the pressure on the parent. Many do give up on waiting for their child's interest to come, but that doesn't mean their approach was wrong.

One of mine started learning to read at 6.5 and worked hard at it but only found it easy at 9. After that there were no problems, and last year they got an excellent IGCSE result in English Language after almost no preparation. My younger one just turned 14 and started reading a few months ago. She does have a learning disability, but IMO could have mastered reading around the age of 10 if she'd wanted to. If she'd gone to school she would have been under extreme and inappropriate pressure to read before she was ready and willing. Her "late" reading certainly would have been a problem in a school setting, but she at home she has the opportunity to access information in many other ways, so it hasn't held her back. She learns through discussions, being read to, audiobooks, documentaries and hands-on learning.

This survey of unschooled children's parents may interest you: www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

I've met hundreds of unschooling families. In these circles I have never met or even heard of anyone reaching adulthood functionally illiterate, except in the case of very severe learning disability. (And it isn't because we're too embarrassed to discuss such things; we are very open amongst ourselves about potential problems.)

BTW I am not saying the OP's friend ought to unschool if she prefers to require her child to learn to read now. I am only saying that waiting until the age of seven or even far later is not a great problem outside of the school system.

All this persistent emphasis on learning to read by a certain age is quite mad. The struggle to get children to read is only a struggle because that particular child does not fit the mould when it comes to reading. In Germany children are not formally taught to read at the ridiculously young age that they are here. Do they all finish up illiterate?

So much of what children are forced to learn at specific ages is counter-productive. Ramming reading or any other subject down their necks results in failure for many, because they are not ready. That failure sets them up for the rest of their education as they absorb the idea that they are not good at learning and carry that with them.

Bloody Gove has a lot to answer for with his highly proscriptive rules for when and what is learned.

For god's sake - who needs to know what a fronted adverbial is, let alone to know this at primary school? It is all madness.

The "I don't know" is concerning, but not SS level or even Education Welfare Services (which is who one actually contacts for educational concerns). It isn't that rare, even in school setting, for a child not to be able to read at that age. One of mine was in this position so I'll give recommendations based on what helped her, a child who could copy penmanship beautifully, but couldn't get letter sounds to stick.

One of the things that really helped was a Webster Speller reading outline created by a contributor on the Well Trained Mind forums to pass on to those struggling and I'm happy to send along the PDF if someone wants it (it is American so some words may nee to be changed). It recommends Leapfrog for learning sounds, their Letter Factory video can be found online and alongside Preschool Prep's phonics (which my then-7 year old enjoyed), it really helped them stick for her. After that, it takes 10-20 minutes a day with the whiteboard working on syllables and words & this phonics concentration game. The PDF also recommends online games and apps for break days, but they're not required and we mostly skipped those.

After that, we used Ultimate Phonics word list for reading and copywork alongside Piper Books. With my oldest, Piper Books were the clicking point because we could finish one book and discuss it, it gave him and his siblings that followed great momentum. My DD that struggled needed more of the above to get the groundwork and feel ready to move forward.

I disagree that home educators are generally very open about problems. I've home educated for over ten years, worked with several groups, helped teens coming out of school into home education and home educated teens going into schools/colleges. There is a lot of bravado 'they pick it up themselves, I don't need to do anything' and articles like the above are part of that. Yes, some kids will just pick it up, but far more parents I hear saying do far more and this attitude has been put on all children for all subjects & left my DD feeling pretty shite, like she was somehow not motivated enough for it to click for her and she'd just have to wait to be magic like her friends.

I do see what you mean, @BiBabbles, and it can be tough for kids who read later than their friends. My eldest had a best friend who had been a proficient reader since she was a toddler. She had parents who could read well, no siblings at the time, and it just looked like reading was this easy thing which everyone should be able to do. For all that I dislike the competitive nature of school classrooms, kids at school will at least see that there are some others who don't find it easy, and I think she missed out on seeing that.

I believe this is why she felt the need to try to read when she was 6.5, despite it still being so hard for her: peer pressure, society's expectations. She worked and worked and made very slow progress until it fell into place around her ninth birthday. Perhaps it would have been much easier for her if she had felt able to wait and start at the age of nine, by which time she may have been developmentally ready, and she could have missed out the hard discouraging slog.

The trouble is, because she was unwilling to wait, we'll never know whether that hard slog was a necessary part of the process or whether she'd have found reading easy if she had only waited long enough to start. Likewise with parents who run out of patience when their child is seven or ten and decide that interventions are necessary - we'll never know whether that was the case or whether they just didn't wait long enough. The prospect of your child never achieving literacy at all is a scary one. And the kids feel it too.

No doubt there are children who have specific learning difficulties who do need interventions, but I think it's far fewer than we believe. The longer we wait, the easier it is to identify which kids probably really do need help.

Even kids with learning difficulties which make learning to read harder will sometimes read spontaneously. An acquaintance's dyslexic child was taken out of school aged 13 unable even to recognise her own name, and so traumatised by having reading forced on her unsuccessfully for all those years that her parents decided to put reading instruction off completely for the time being while she recovered her mental health. With the pressure off, within a couple of years she began to recognise words, to everyone's surprise.

And my youngest - her working memory has been exceptionally poor, well down in the first centile. She couldn't make phone calls because she didn't know which number she'd just dialled, even with someone reading them to her one at a time. As recently as age nine she couldn't manage I Spy because if I said, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with rrrr" she would guess "sky?" She couldn't rhyme. But she believed my assurances that she would read when the time was right, though some people have to work harder at it than others. And she was lucky enough not to care much what anybody else thought, so that unlike her sibling she didn't feel embarrassed about being unable to read yet.

Now here she is at fourteen, making great progress painlessly, well on her way to being a good reader. And I really don't think it would have been so smooth for her if she or I had decided when she was seven or ten that waiting was no good and she just had to get on with it.

There is a great phonics card game with 3 levels to teach kids to reach using phonics it's called Blah Blah Blah.
You could buy this for your friend, it's better played with a few players than in a 2, but can be done with just 2 players. Take it round and play it and leave it for them! It is £20 but starts with 3 letter words, then next level is 4 letter words then 5. You sound the letters and match. My non reader picked it up so quick. You do need to know your letter sounds ( phonics)

My DC hated me trying to 'teach' them to do anything. They learnt to read aroud 7/8 in the end, Completely self-led initially by using subtitles when they watching TV, bu their next birthday they were reading Harry Potter. Inever taught them in any formal format. I just made sure the resources were available for them. Got subscriptions to reading eggs etc that they could access if they wished to (but rarely did!) They've never been to school and are looking towards taking qualifications in the next few years and perhaps going to college to get them (and it's all their decision, we support them whatever they decide)

She may find home ed groups useful :)

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Sorry for typos.

I'd definitely not go to SS, but depending on how close you are, maybe help her see that the home schooling can be tough and that DS should by now be able to read to a certain standard.

@cautiouscovidity

To be honest lots of countries don't teach reading until age 7. If he's naturally bright and inquisitive then he'll probably pick it up soon enough.

Exactly.. What would you do if your friend's child was at school and wasn't able to read? Would you report the school to SS?

@user1477391263

it is totally unfair to compare him with a child who is taking longer to acquire this skill.

He hasn't been taught! There is no evidence in this case that the boy has any kind of language or learning disorder or is a slow learner.

We don't know that. This is OP posting about her friend's child. OP doesn't neccessarily know what actually goes on her friend's house.

@Hodan85

I'd definitely not go to SS, but depending on how close you are, maybe help her see that the home schooling can be tough and that DS should by now be able to read to a certain standard.

Why should he be able to read to a certain standard? What standard would that be? Home educators do not have to follow the National Curriculum.

Eye test - excellent starting point.

Start with something like 'Teach My Monster to Read' and programmes like Alphablocks if he doesn't mind watching them.

Nessy is also great (paid for).

We have done Home Ed. Anything we were not confident with we learned how or found a tutor to come in/go to.

Lots of online tutors around she could pay for (I'm thinking about being a tutor in the future).

I would say 7 is a good time to learn. He may well be at a stage he can pick it up quite quickly. Do you think he's frustrated to not be able to read?

I wouldn't panic yet, but she does in my opinion need to start making steps in the right direction. Its really great to be able to read stories to yourself or look up and read about your interests as a HE child (or any child!)

Oxford Owl has free e books from beginner level.

Can she write and read herself OK? Sometimes that's a problem but people feel ashamed to admit it. Even though there's nowt to be ashamed of.

I've taught DS all through primary (before we discovered dyslexia age 8 and went home ed age 10).

Happy to talk her through the basics by phone or email/Facebook or whatever works etc.

PM me if you want.

I don't hold with the notion of reading levels for certain ages, we are all different.

I do think that reading is such an important skill that a child should be given some decent teaching of it and progress at their own speed - not all can pick it up as if by magic.

It depends. I know children who read when they were ready to read (8-10), then became massive readers and took GCSEs early. So reading late is absolutely fine. However that was a planned approach by parents who were child led and able to step up and offer support to read at the drop of a hat. Your friend doesn't sound in that position.

It does concern me that there are parents like your friend who are home educating and really don't realise what is required in terms of academic support because they only see the 'competent' parents when they're roasting marshmallows and hunting for seaweed.

ZOMBIE THREAD FFS

As has been said some countries start school later than we do others formal lessons come later.
When I went into hospital aged 8 I could hardly read came out after 4 or 5 days as a fluent reader. An older boys comics did the trick for me.

By 11+ was well ahead.

Yes, my dd was the same when h.ed as were her siblings. The older ones all have A levels and H.ed qualifications and good jobs.
Youngest doing A levels now and unconditional offers at 3 of her preferred uni's.
That's the joy of H.ed has no relevance to school and what is the norm in that particualar building and system
HTH

Bugger, missed the ZOMBIE alert

I would have thought if you read with and to a child, showing them words and pictures, etc, they will pick up reading naturally. I'm surprised your friend's child hasn't and wonder how clued up she is about home schooling. Does she do it alone or are other children and their parents involved?

If he is bright he will pick it up, she just has to facilitate it.

Most home schooled children are part of a group and are more advanced than that so it is worrying but I'm not sure you can do much about it.