When Reading Gets Hard: What to Look for and How to Help

As a new school year gets underway, you may begin to notice that reading seems harder for your child or student than you expected. Maybe they avoid reading aloud. Perhaps they guess at words, read very slowly, or finish a passage but cannot tell you what it was about. It can be tempting to simply say, “They’re struggling with reading,” but that does not tell us enough.

Reading is not one single skill. The Science of Reading, a large body of research about how we learn to read, helps us understand that successful reading depends on several skills working together. When we can identify where reading is breaking down, we can provide support that actually addresses what the reader needs.

Here are four areas to pay attention to:

1. Listen to How They Work With Sounds and Words

For beginning readers, learning to read starts with understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds and that those sounds can be connected to letters.

What you might notice:

Your child may have difficulty identifying the first or last sound in a word, blending sounds together, or sounding out an unfamiliar word. You might also notice frequent guessing. For example, the word map may be read as man instead of the child looking carefully at each part of the word.

What you can do:

Instead of saying, “Look at the picture. What word would make sense?” direct attention to the letters.

Example: If the word is ship, try:

“Look at the word.”

“What sound does sh make?”

“Now let's say each sound: /sh/ /i/ /p/.”

“Blend those sounds together. What word?”

This helps children learn to use the print to figure out words rather than relying on pictures or guessing.

2. Pay Attention to Fluency

Sometimes a child can decode the words but reading still requires a great deal of effort. Fluent reading is accurate, appropriately paced, and expressive. More importantly, fluency helps free up a child's attention so they can focus on understanding what they are reading.

What you might notice:

Your child reads one word at a time, pauses frequently, ignores punctuation, or reads the same words differently each time they encounter them. By the end of a paragraph, they may not remember what they read because so much effort went into reading the individual words.

What you can do:

Choose a short passage your child can already read with reasonable accuracy. Read a sentence aloud first and have your child read the same sentence after you. Then reread the passage together.

The goal isn't to race or see how fast your child can finish. The goal is to make reading increasingly accurate, smooth, and meaningful.

Try saying:

“Let's read that sentence again so it sounds like talking.”

or

“There's a period there. Let's read it again and let our voice stop at the period.”

3. Don't Overlook Vocabulary and Background Knowledge

A child can pronounce every word correctly and still have no idea what the text means.

Imagine reading, “The animal adapted to its habitat by becoming nocturnal.” A child might successfully read adapted, habitat, and nocturnal without understanding any of them.

Vocabulary and background knowledge are important parts of language comprehension. The more children know about words and the world, the more they have to connect to what they read.

What you can do:

When you encounter an unfamiliar word, don't just tell your child to “use context clues.” Talk about the word.

For nocturnal, you might say:

“Nocturnal means being active at night. A bat is a nocturnal animal because it is usually active at night.”

Then ask:

“What other animal might be nocturnal?”

Use the new word again later. Children need multiple meaningful encounters with words—not just definitions—to build strong vocabulary.

4. Check for Understanding

Finally, pay attention to what happens after the words have been read.

What you might notice:

Your child reads a paragraph accurately but cannot explain what happened, identify an important idea, make a reasonable inference, or connect information across the text.

Instead of asking only, “Did you understand it?”, ask questions that reveal what your child understood.

For a story, try:

• “What happened in this part?”

• “Why did the character do that?”

• “What in the story makes you think that?”

For informational text, try:

• “What did you learn?”

• “What is this section mostly teaching us?”

• “Show me the part that helped you figure that out.”

If your child cannot answer, go back to a small section of the text and reread it together. Comprehension develops through language, vocabulary, knowledge, attention to text, and purposeful conversation.

Find the Need Before Choosing the Strategy

When reading gets hard, more reading practice alone may not solve the problem. A child who has difficulty decoding needs different support from a child who reads words accurately but does not understand them.

Pay attention to what your child does while reading.

Do they have difficulty hearing and working with sounds? Are they guessing instead of decoding? Is their reading accurate but laborious? Are unfamiliar words getting in the way of understanding? Can they read the words but not explain the text?

Those observations give us much more useful information than simply labeling a child a “struggling reader.”

The goal is to identify the skill that needs more instruction, practice, or support. This helps us become more intentional about helping developing readers move forward.

Literacy Terms to Know:
Background Knowledge: What your child already knows about a topic before reading about it.

Blend: To put individual sounds together to make a word. For example, /m/ /a/ /p/ becomes map.

Comprehension: Understanding and making meaning from what is read.

Decode: To use the letters and their sounds to figure out a written word.

Fluency: Reading words accurately and smoothly with appropriate expression.

Inference: An idea a reader figures out by combining clues from the text with what they already know.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. For example, hearing that hat has three sounds: /h/ /a/ /t/.

Vocabulary: The words your child knows and understands.