A Reading Journey

As a parent, I have realized that the journey my children made when learning to read and write was completely new to me. I knew very little about the individual process of reading each child goes through.

The Journey Begins

My first encounter with this process was when my oldest son started reading and writing at school. Parents were invited to a workshop and explained the stages of reading, how children see letters and words for the first time and how to support them at home. My son’s reading and writing process was completely seamless. I was amazed by how quickly he learned to read.

The Journey Continued

A few years later, I went through the reading journey again with my daughter. Her experience was different, slower, self-conscious, a little anxious and, at the beginning, with very little retention. I started to research and inform myself more about this process, as I only had my son to compare this with.  As this process can be overwhelming for parents at times, gathering information is important. Researching, learning and informing yourself is something I recommend when children are starting to read and write.

We as parents know very little about the reading process. It is important to be informed to understand what it is they go through, what to do at home to support them, how to identify concerns and mostly understanding that this is a developmental process unique and individual to each child and not dependent on age. Here I share some helpful resources to understand how children learn to read:

• Is Your Child Struggling to Learn to Read?
• The Reading Process: Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle together
• Knowing your child’s reading stage and how to help them
• Stages of development
• How do children learn to read?
• Improve Reading Skills

The Journey Ends

As my second child continued her reading journey,  I noticed that she had some consistent difficulties. I knew I wanted to give her structured support before she continued on to the next grade at school. This is how I came to RITES, where they assessed her individually and created a support program that met her specific learning style and filled in her “gaps”, using the Orton Gillingham method of multisensory teaching. She achieved success through the weeks she was there in the summer and I appreciate the advantage and confidence she obtained as an individual through the security of a one-to-one setting.

Thank you RITES!

E. C.

Does your child need help learning to read and write? Contact Us. We can help!