Reading Difficulties in Children: How Parents Can Impact Illiteracy

Each day, thousands of grade school children struggle to read in class. While many reading complications can be well detected before the child enters gradeschool, it is a fact that reading deficiencies, most often, are first noticed by your child's teacher. As parents, understanding the dynamics of reading difficulties in children, and when the reading deficiency is a development delay or a more severe reading complication, such as dyslexia, will provide for a more effective process in grade school.

Once part of a significant public awareness campaign, reading deficiencies and illiteracy have become more identifiable in early childhood. Even still, it is estimated the United States has one of the highest illiteracy populations with nearly 25 percent of the adult population considered to be functionally illiterate. Because risk factors, at home, can influence a child's ability to read, it is important to capture children, in high risk groups, early in their grade school education. Such risk groups might include children of single parent homes, children of incarcerated parents and even children who live in and among social welfare programs.

One area of concern lies in the historically view point that boys will commonly struggle with reading moreso than girls. While, statistically, this does not appear to be the case. However, based on this belief, boys are more likely to be referred for reading assistance and assessment over their female counterparts. This, unfortunately, leaves many female students without the proper assessment and reading education needed to remedy complications early in childhood.

While development occurs at different rates for different children, there are some who struggle with simply delay and other who struggle with a more profound reading deficiency. However, in research, it has been shown that children who experience an untreated and undiagnosed reading deficiency in first grade are more than likely to experience that same deficiency into fourth grade, lending notion to the fact that developmental delay may not always be the culprit.