Ask Squiggles: Is My Child a "Late Bloomer?"
Oct 05, 2022YokyWorks students know him as Squiggles. Now he's here to answer your burning questions about reading development!
Dear Squiggles,
My daughter just turned seven. While she knows her letter sounds and has some sight words, I noticed that she is very reluctant to read out loud. When I can convince her to read to me, she reads very slowly and makes lots of mistakes. Sometimes she guesses at words and when she realizes what she’s reading doesn’t make sense, she gets stuck in the middle of the sentence and can’t sound out the words.
The other day, she was reading one of her favorite books by herself. When I asked her questions about what happened in the story, she got quiet for a moment then started telling me about something else that had happened to her that day.
When I asked her teacher about her reading during our parent teacher conference, he said that my daughter was a “late bloomer” but would likely catch up if just given more time to develop her skills. I really value her teacher’s opinion, but I hate seeing my daughter struggle to keep up with her peers. Do you think that if given more time the delays in my daughter’s reading development might resolve themselves?
Sincerely,
Confused Parent
Dear Confused Parent,
We often get questions from parents and teachers alike about whether they might be able to take a “wait and see” approach with a struggling reader. Until fairly recently, it was widely believed that so-called “late bloomers” would just “bloom” into their reading if given more time to mature.
In fact, trusted research on reading failure proposes a different line of thought - students who’s reading development lags behind their peers’ have deficits in the foundational skills required for reading. Since, according to the "skill deficit" theory, struggling readers will only improve with targeted interventions, taking a “wait and see” approach will be actively detrimental to their reading development (Juel, 1988; Francis et al. 1996; Shaywitz et al.,1999). Within this framework, a child with an identified deficit in their phonemic awareness that impacts their decoding skills (the ability to “sound-out” words) will not improve in this area without a targeted intervention.
You shared that your daughter “guesses at words” and “gets stuck in the middle of the sentence and can’t sound out the words.” This tells me she is already encountering decoding problems, which will only make it harder to comprehend what she is reading as passages become more difficult. As Keith Stanovich demonstrated, in reading “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” (Stanovich, 1986). Within this framework, not only do the slow starters decline in their reading abilities over time but the skills gap between the slow starters and the fast starters continues to widen.
The good news is that early screening, which allows us to identify and remediate specific skill deficits in children struggling to read before they fall deeply behind their peers, these effects are preventable. As Dr. Maryanne Wolf articulated in a recent article EdSource article, "Screening is not a diagnosis or a ramp to special education. Rather, it gives teachers information on the strengths and weaknesses of every child so that early targeted instruction can give children their best shot at becoming literate."
Your daughter is still at the beginning of her reading journey. If her skill deficits are identified and addressed with targeted interventions, you can feel confident that reading acts as a gateway to her learning rather than a barrier.
Warmly,
Squiggles
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