Parents: how to understand your child’s reading challenges, and what to do about them – a step-by-step guide
A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a worried dad about his son’s reading progress at school.
The school had administered a standardised reading assessment, and then emailed dad a one-page, automated report.
The report was full of standard scores, graphs, percentile ranks, confidence intervals, and age equivalents. It was clear that the son had reading comprehension problems. Unfortunately, the report said nothing about:
- how to interpret the scores; or
- what should happen next.
No wonder dad was stressed! He knew his son was struggling with reading. But he didn’t understand why. Nor did he know how to get the right help.
I’d like to think this kind of thing isn’t common. But I suspect it isn’t rare.
I had a good chat with dad about the report. Then I sent him some information to help him understand what might be going on, and – more importantly, what should be done about it.
For any parent or carer in the same situation, here’s what I shared to help dad get up to speed, step-by-step:
Step 1: Understand how reading skills typically develop from preschool to adulthood (The Reading is Language Model)
Source: Snowling & Hulme (2025). The Reading Is Language Model: A Theoretical Framework for Language and Reading Development and Intervention (open access)
Among other things, this model tells us that early oral language skills form the foundation for reading comprehension skills.
I always want to check the oral language skills of any child (or adult) who is struggling with reading comprehension. What do I look at? I explain this here.
Step 2: Understand the two main things that can interfere with reading comprehension (The Simple View of Reading)
This model is useful for lots of reasons. A key takeaway is that different students can have the same reading comprehension score on a test, but for very different reasons:
- One student might struggle with reading because she can’t read the words on the page.
- Another might struggle because he can’t understand what the words or sentences mean.
- Yet another student might struggle because they can neither read the words nor understand them.
I explain this in more detail here.
Step 3: Understand that struggling readers may have different short-term needs than stronger readers (The Narrow View of Reading)
Reading is biologically unnatural. The brain needs to rewire itself to become good at reading. Rewiring the brain to read can take lots of time and effort, and it comes more easily to some than others. We explain this in more detail here.
If you can’t read words, you won’t understand what you’re reading – even if you have good language skills. For students (of any age) who can’t read words properly, my initial short-term priority is often to help the child master foundational word-reading skills because even small word-reading improvements can have a big positive impact on reading comprehension.
What do I mean by foundational word-reading skills? I discuss this here.
A word-reading ‘bootcamp’ approach is sometimes called the Narrow View of reading, which I explain here.
Step 4: Understand what your child’s standardised test results mean
I explain how to understand norm-referenced, standardised test scores in one of our more popular articles here.
Once you understand the scores, think about what they might mean for your child. The Simple View of Reading helps here. Look, first, at whether the child can read words accurately. Then, look at whether they can read words efficiently (e.g. by looking at reading rate and accuracy). Then, look at reading comprehension scores, remembering that reading comprehension is the product of word-reading and oral language comprehension.
Ask yourself:
- Does word-reading seem to be the most immediate bottleneck?
- Do you have any information on your child’s oral language skills? (If not, I recommend a language assessment.)
Step 5: Get the right help
Not all reading programs are evidence-based, including some programs with very glossy marketing materials and fancy equipment.
The wrong intervention can waste your time or even make things worse. Thanks to decades of peer-reviewed research, we know:
- what works;
- that some approaches are more effective than others; and
- a bunch of evidence-aligned strategies and practices that help struggling readers.
Sure, lots of gaps remain in the science of reading. But we know enough right now to know what to do in reading intervention, and how to do it.
You don’t need to wait for a dyslexia, dysgraphia, language disorder, ADHD, autism, or other neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosis or label, IQ test – or anything else – to get help! If your child is struggling to read, start a good reading intervention as soon as possible.
Reading interventions should be tailored to meet the student where they are. For example, students who have acquired foundational word-reading skills may benefit from working on other skills related to reading comprehension, such as reading fluency, building world knowledge, increasing basic language skills, increasing language skills related to sentence and text comprehension, increasing higher level language skills and – one of my main interests – improving writing skills.
I’ve written more about oral language therapy here; and highlighted some language therapy goals for older students here.
Step 6: Go Deeper
For families that want more information, I send them my free ebook and invite them to explore our website.
Any questions?
I hope this information is helpful!
We love using what we know to help struggling readers improve their skills, academic success, and confidence. If you would like to chat with us, please get in touch!
