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Greetings!

Deborah Wuehler and family

When I heard the theme this week, I knew I wanted to share with you an article that was very helpful to many parents of struggling readers. Dianne Craft answers the questions you may have when reading doesn't start easily; specifically, if you wait, will it be too late? Here is her article from our August digital issue:

"My son is 7 � and isn't reading yet.  It was so easy for my other children!  Should I wait and let him grow into it, or is something else going on?" 

--Concerned homeschooling parent

Unpacking the new curriculum for the year can be an exciting time for a homeschooling mom and her family. After having taught three previous children how to read, moms often look forward to teaching this fourth child.  She looks forward to the excitement the child feels when learning to sound out words from letters for the first time, or how fun it is to just "remember" a word when looking at it.

But, what if your child is the same age as your other children were when they were eagerly reading, but is either not interested in learning to read, or is having great difficulty learning to read? Do you panic? Do you have this child tested? Do you wait? Will the reading just "click" at some point, if you wait long enough? How does a mother know if this is a "maturity issue" or if this difficulty is a sign of a learning disability?

As a special education teacher, homeschool educational consultant, and college teacher, this is how I approach the "maturity issue." These are the "red flags" I look for in a seven and a half year old who is either avoiding or struggling with reading: (click here to read the rest)

The most important reason we learn to read is to understand and obey God's Word. That is our goal in learning to read and our goal for all of life as we obediently keep our children Home Where They Belong.

 ". . . and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God . . ." (Deuteronomy 17:19).

~Deborah

TOS Senior Editor

SeniorEditor@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com  

Diana Waring

Relational Homeschooling

www.DianaWaring.com 

Dear Friends,

Boy, is this a hot topic! Particularly, if you happen to have a struggling reader.

So, if you will accompany me for a few moments, I'd like to whisk you up to the clouds to get a bird's-eye-view of what we're actually after when it comes to reading. Ready?

Have you ever met a high school graduate who says, "I will NEVER crack a book again as long as I live!!"? If you have, and if you query them, you will discover (as I did) that for them, reading was an imposed chore, brain-numbingly difficult, utterly boring, and a senseless struggle. For them, there was no delight in a book, no wonder, no adventure, no sense of a wondrous world of words opening magically like Aladdin's mysterious treasure cave.

Hmmm.

The old adage is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

May I modify that slightly? I would say that you can shove children through various phonics and reading programs, but that won't give them a love for reading . . . And if they don't love to read, then all the phonics and decoding in the world will be almost as worthless as yesterday's peanut butter sandwich left overnight on the counter. You could eat it if it was a matter of survival, but you wouldn't want to!

I'm glad that someone shared this concept with me before my second child was old enough to read, because it made a HUGE difference in how we handled his struggle in learning to read.

Mike was an active, very active, never-sit-still, bright-eyed, curious, and delightful boy. I was astonished at his energy level, at the fearlessness he showed in climbing trees, at his constant need to move-move-move. He was so interested in everything; I never dreamed he would struggle to learn to read. But, at that time in my life, I knew so little about how kids actually learn--and I knew nothing about different kinds of learners, eight intelligences, etc. All I had in my mind was the model of school; and, of course, at school, kids to learn to read when they are six. Right??

Wrong.  Some kids do, others don't.

Mike didn't. Fortunately, however, the big picture of having our children love reading was firmly in our hearts and minds. My dear husband, Bill, read stories to our kids every night, and I read poetry (humorous, adventurous, rhyming, delightful) after dinner. We read books of adventure, books of Christian heroes, funny books, fascinating books . . . And Mike loved the stories. Even though he could not read them for himself, he knew there was good stuff in those books.

That made all the difference. Because he had a reason for persevering, he (and I) kept at it, working little by little on phonics, on fluency in reading. When he was ten, he got it. And from that moment, he began to read everything in sight! Within a few months, he was reading Bring 'Em Back Alive by Frank Buck (a collector of wild animals). Within a year, he was reading Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien--a book I could never make it through!

But, most of all, read to your kids! Give them a love for reading--it will be the best gift of all.

Remember, stay relational.

Diana

Raising Real Men

www.RaisingRealMen.com

Hal & Melanie Young

After our first few children learned to read so early and easily, we thought we were some ol' wonderful homeschoolers. Then came our next child--and humility! It was really tough, but we got through it and he's now a very successful high school student. Here are some things that helped:

Don't despair--and don't let them lose hope either! God created us to read or He wouldn't have put His Word into written form and commanded us to study it. You can encourage your struggling reader a lot by telling them the stories of successful people who also struggled with reading like Thomas Edison, General George Patton, Winston Churchill, and Agatha Christie. (Who would think someone who struggled with reading and spelling would become one of the best-selling novelists of all time? Agatha Christie did!)

Keep them up to speed in their other subjects. You or their siblings might have to read their math lesson and story problems to them, but there's no reason they can't keep up if they have that help.  You can also ask if your child's textbooks are available in recorded versions--many are. What a blessing to have our children at home where we can take the time and trouble to do that!

Develop their reading comprehension skills while you wait. Hearing the written word read aloud can help them learn to understand complex sentences and vocabulary. If you read great books to them and buy them audiobooks, when they do learn to read for themselves, their reading ability will just explode! Our son went from sounding out "cat" and "dog" to reading high school and college-level texts in a just a couple of years because he'd been listening to challenging books for years before that.

Get help and encouragement. There are tons of great resources out there. If yours isn't working for you and your student, don't be afraid to sell it and try another. Be persistent. You will both live through this!

This weekend, Melanie and our former struggling reader, Samuel, will be speaking about these things at the Heart for Homeschool Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. We think it will really encourage you to hear their story face-to-face. The two of us are keynoting the conference, too!

Yours in the battle,

Hal & Melanie

P.S. Looking for great audiobooks to develop your child's mind and character? We took Theodore Roosevelt's Hero Tales from American History and turned it into an audiobook with sound effects, because history is much better with cannon fire! We're also the only authorized resellers of these wonderful G.A. Henty audiobooks. They're unabridged and that's important when the goal is increasing reading comprehension. Check 'em out!

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