Does Your Child Struggle with Reading Comprehension?

Children will be expected to read to learn very early in their academic careers. Most children learn to read in the first and second grades, and beginning in the third grade, their work will center around finding facts and identifying important points in reading passages. This can pose a problem if the child has difficulties in reading comprehension. Reading comprehension skills and strategies can be improved upon, but the first step is to identify a problem. Here are four signs that your child may be struggling with reading comprehension.

Here are 4 signs that they do and 3 tips to help build stronger reading skills!

1. Showing no interest in reading.

It’s not uncommon for a child to have a disinterest in reading, but if they avoid reading and writing, they may have a deeper issue. Most of the time, this avoidance behavior is because of a lack of self-confidence in children that struggle with these skills. These skills make reading and writing difficult, so they tend to avoid doing both altogether.

2. Struggling to understand what was read.

The purpose of reading comprehension is to understand what you’re reading. If someone has a problem with comprehension, they may not be able to process what they have read. If a child does not score well on reading comprehension assessments, they may have an issue here.

3. Taking a long time to solve basic tasks.

Another way to spot reading comprehension issues is by seeing how long it takes your child to solve basic tasks. If your child has problems following written instructions or they tend to make mistakes in the process, they could be having trouble with their comprehension.

4. Poor penmanship.

Lastly, another sign of a potential reading comprehension disorder is poor penmanship. Some people have bad handwriting naturally, but dysgraphia is special because it usually is connected with other learning disabilities, especially those that deal with the comprehension of words and letters.

If you find that your child has a reading comprehension disorder, counseling or therapy can help your child make great strides in this area of learning, but there are also things you can do at home to promote and improve reading comprehension.

1. Read to your child.

The first and most obvious way to improve your child’s comprehension skills is to read with them more often. Even if your child can read independently, a child’s listening skills are usually stronger, so they can comprehend better if they read along silently as you read aloud.

2. Ask them to predict what happens next.

An important part of reading comprehension is being able to guess what might happen next. This requires your child to process what is already happened, think about the characters and their personalities, and anticipate the rest of the plot. Even if the child is wrong about what happens next, this forces them to pay close attention to what they’re reading.

3. Show how information is organized.

Finally, showing how information is organized can help your child pick out the important parts faster. When your child is reading fiction, teach them to look for the 5 W’s: who, where, when, what, and why.

If your child needs more help with reading comprehension, don’t hesitate to hire an occupational therapist. An occupational therapist, such as those at Connect Teletherapy, can work on a myriad of skills with your child, including how to manage information better and learn new skills for processing it.