Making Reading Fun

How many of our kids struggle with reading or just don't like reading? Do they have issues like ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, ADD, poor vision, auditory processing...the list goes on but I think you got the idea. There are several reasons a kid has trouble reading. It can be a struggle itself to determine why they are having trouble. It is very important for us as parents to figure out why they are struggling.

For Emma even before she was school aged I noticed she had auditory issues. This is something that you can notice at a very young age and how they respond to directions. For Emma I noticed that she was not listening very quickly when told to do something. She did eventually get done what I said but it took her longer than expected. I had to figure out whether it was defiance or a hearing issue. I had her hearing checked and her hearing was fine. I was talking to my friend that has 3 special needs kids. She told me about her autistic kids behaviors. After talking with her I figured I should get Emma checked out. She was diagnosed with autism, sensory processing disorder and auditory processing disorder. I never wanted to "label" my child with something like this but knowing this helped me understand how to help her thrive in school. Some kids are in therapy to help with things like this. I started looking up ways to help her before she got to school age level. She needed things written. I would say the alphabet all the time for her to learn it. She wasn't getting it that way. I made her alphabet cards with animals or something with the letter sound on it for her to practice it herself. It worked! She taught herself letter sounds that way. Time to move on to reading. Again I couldn't read to her she was listening but she wasn't really grasping it. I thought maybe she was to young so I didn't really push it cause she had learned her alphabet really quickly and was ahead of her grade level. She kept asking questions and started reading simple reader books all on her own. Before long she was reading way above her grade level. Since she didn't do good with auditory instructions I had to find a self pace homeschool curriculum also. Now she can read the instructions herself and move on at her own pace. This is very important because I tried several curriculums before finding one she thrived at.

With Lily things were a bit harder than that. Lily was diagnosed with severe anxiety. To give you an idea how severe it gets she has a seizure if it gets bad enough. She was also diagnosed with ADHD and sensory processing disorder. Later she was diagnosed with developmental delays and ataxia. Ataxia causes poor coordination. This is causes tons of reading issues. She doesn't have a actual diagnosis for it but I have been told by one of my other kids specialist that she has all the symptoms of dysgraphia and dyslexia. Lily was in a public school for kindergarten while I was pregnant with Lucy. She learned basic things like letters, sounds and some site words. Like Emma she wasn't grasping concepts. When it came time to go into first grade I noticed she had not remembered anything she was taught in kindergarten. The teachers did not notice this because she understood it for the time being while she was in the classroom. Apparently she was not retaining it though. I had to figure out what was going on. It was different than an auditory problem because she would understand it later. I learned later that it was a developmental delay due to some brain atrophy. These things you don't just notice right away. I had to stop teaching her for a while to "reset". I was trying to go to fast so yes I had to stop and give her a break for a few days. When I started again I noticed that I had to add more breaks in the school day to keep her anxiety down and to make sure she was staying focused. With her ADHD she lost focus very quickly. We had to work around that instead of makin her stay focused for hours I noticed when she started losing focus. I would let her stop and take a break. I mean seriously in school they would have to keep going but what did she learn in school doing that? Nothing! I literally had to teach her kindergarten stuff again. Now instead of making her read at a certain time, place, or scheduled time. I let her decide the time, place and schedule. I told her what she needed to read during the day and just let her do it in her own way, place and time she just had to finish before supper time. She started retaining things we were moving on! Finally!

Figuring all these things out took years! So don't try to "fix" something right away. That is the number one thing to remember. First try to understand what is going on like see if they are hearing correctly, if it's a vison problem, if its plain defiance or if they really are not understanding things. there could be several reasons for reading issues. If your child losses focus or has anxiety issues take breaks. They will not learn ANYTHING if you make them do things when their focus is somewhere else. Give them tasks they need to complete during the day. Let them be responsible of getting it done. They love feeling like they are in charge of something it makes them feel big.. If they do not get done what you asked during the day have a conversation about them being responsible. Like I said they love to feel big and being responsible for something it will click. For us I also had to learn that somethings were to big of a task for the day. I had to think about things to make them be learning but not so much they "shut down." There was a huge difference between defiance and shutting down. When they were being defiant they were mad, fidgety ,throwing fits. When they were shutting down they would begin to cry and be still. Lily started tensing up her hands like if they were getting tired. Emma would read something then blankly stare off. These are very difficult to distinguish though but very important to. You have to know what your child is telling you. I was told at a training one time when I was a preschool teacher "You have to teach the child they way they learn not the way you want them to learn." That is extremely important with any kids especially with special needs kids. Observing the way your child learns or in this case reads is very important for them to thrive. I didn't know this till later but if I had continued to push Lily with her ADHD it would have hurt her brain. Focusing on something like reading can cause headaches for someone with ADHD. This is why breaks are very important. There is so much I can say about teaching a special needs child to read. I think the biggest thing to start with is to observe your child. Figure out if its defiance or any learning issue. Like I said there are several issues kids can have reading that I didn't even mention myself. Figure out what is going on to help your kid(s) thrive.

Keeping them engaged

Here are a few things that helped my kids learn to read and a few things to keep them engaged. With Emma I started her with the ABC cards first.

You can choose which cards are best for your kids. For Emma I got animal ones, Lily was ok with any cards, for Seth I had to get vehicle ABC cards. I didn't have to get the certain ones but I wanted to help them any way I could. Once they learned the alphabet and sounds it was time to move on to site words. There are also site words flash cards. They have these flash cards with a picture on the back and the word on the other side.

After learning site words move on to some

Now after these books move on to books with more sentences. By this stage the child has a pretty good understanding what kind of books they need too. So start letting them chose. One of Lily's favorite was

These books have beginner stages and advance stages. These are very good for a struggling reader. Another one of my favorites for all my kids was the

This is very good also because it starts out slow and simple then gradually gets harder. This was really good for Lily especially because it let her go at her own pace and also encouraged her to move up. She got excited every time she completed a book. They also have other library sets also.

Hands on Reading Fun

So I have mentioned before that my kids learn better hands on. So do a lot of other kids. This includes reading. Here are some cool hands on activities to make reading fun and engaging. You can use

to learn ABC's or site words. There are several puzzles you can use for learning to read, site words, ABC's, sentence building.

You can also use playdough to form letters or short words. One thing we used was craft

. These are fun to use for letters.

Books we wrote/designed

To help Lily read better I decided to let her help me write a book. She came up with an with an idea, she wanted to encourage kids and adults that have to use a wheelchair. I had to make it simple and short enough for her to want to read it. We made our first book

She was so excited with this book. She wanted me to make another one to help her read better. Later we decided to make our next book

This book is a silly book about a dancing pickle. Lily loves dancing and being silly so that I how we came up with that book. Emma wanted to make a silly book too. She said she wanted to make it a pickle and about hats so we made our

book. These are all the books we have at the moment. Right now we are in the process of making a silly family comic. This will be published on Amazon also when completed.