Learning to Read
As homeschool parents I think teaching our kids to read is the most stressful thing we do. We think that others will judge us and our ability to teach our children if they aren’t reading at the “appropriate” level. I didn’t teach our four older kids to read because they all attended public school for at least a few years. Yes, we worked on sight words and reading at home but the bulk of it was taught by their teachers at school. Kinzie, our 7-year-old, is the only one who has never attended public school so I felt some pressure to make sure she was reading by the time the world said she should be.
I knew from experience that some kids take a little longer to take off in their reading. It wasn’t until the end of second grade while home because of covid, that Colton started reading independently and enjoying it. It also took Cody a little longer to start reading as well and while he’s never really enjoyed reading an actual book he does like audiobooks. So I wasn’t worried when Kinzie was taking a little longer to start reading. We are a family of readers though so I wanted her to enjoy reading.
I knew that there was research showing that kids really weren’t ready to read until age 7 and had started school slowly with Kinzie. Kindergarten was spent playing, reading to her, spending time outside, and occasionally working on letters, sounds, and numbers. First grade was more formal but I still wasn’t worried that her progress seemed slow when it came to reading. Math was easier for her so she preferred to spend more time on it. She is smart and has a fantastic memory. I noticed that Kinzie could memorize prayers and books quickly, and with accuracy but if I singled out a word, she wouldn’t know what it was.
We started second grade in August and she was still barely reading. I didn’t think much of it at first but noticed that Kinzie would rub her eyes while reading and couldn't work on it very long before she became fatigued. We were working on reading every day but she wasn’t really making any progress. Our homeschool co-op has a Mom Huddle almost every week which is a continuing education time. The month of October was spent on dyslexia. I knew she didn’t have dyslexia but it was enough of a push for me to call our eye doctor to see if she needed glasses. Kinzie had also started commenting that everyone else her age could read and she couldn’t. It was beginning to bother her that she wasn’t reading as well as others her age. She knew all of the spelling and reading rules we had worked on so far but couldn’t apply them.
We went to our eye doctor in November expecting her to need glasses. However, we discovered that she had visual alignment and tracking issues. Essentially, each eye was looking at what she was reading at different levels. This explains why she was always losing her place, rereading, and mixing up words that looked similar such as these, the, this. A couple of the other things she was doing that the doctor said were common with this issue were tilting her head while reading and tilting her paper or book (something I was always correcting her for).
Our doctor sent us home with a tracking exercise to do. It was amazing how much progress she made within a couple of weeks. After a few weeks, Kinzie began to notice that it was getting easier to read and her confidence went up. At our follow-up appointment, our doctor was happy with her progress and added another exercise to work on her eyes focusing when she is switching from near to far vision. This was much harder for her and she would often lose her place.
We recently went back for our 2-month check with our eye doctor. Her vision alignment and tracking have improved but aren’t quite where they should be yet. We are hoping that a couple of more months of vision exercises at home and appointments with our doctor will be what she needs to “graduate” from therapy. It has been neat to see her progress, she is no longer losing her place constantly when reading, she isn’t mixing up similar-looking words all the time, and her confidence has greatly increased. A few days before our appointment, she even said she liked reading. This was the first time that she has ever said she even kind of likes reading! She still has a ways to go before she is “caught up” but her improvement has been great.
Having the privilege of being not only her primary teacher of life but also her education, allows me to notice little things that might go unnoticed otherwise. Please don’t take this as it never would have been caught if she attended public school. Our oldest two attended public schools all the way through and the younger two boys both attended for a while as well. They had wonderful teachers. I am confident she would have received reading assistance. However, this issue was not something that a routine vision screening at school would have picked up. I’m sure that at some point I would have taken her to have her vision checked. However, when you are the one sitting with them every day teaching them in every subject, you notice the little things sooner such as rubbing their eyes, losing their place frequently, and mixing up words. I also believe that there is something to be said for a mother’s intuition that something wasn’t quite right and it was time to check into it further.
If your child is struggling with something, don’t be afraid to seek help. It is okay to ask for referrals and keep digging if you need to. When we are entrusted with these children, we are tasked with the responsibility to provide for them as best we can with the resources we have. What a blessing to have a front-row seat to watch these children grow and learn!
