Reading Help for Children - Teaching Reading Strategies to Help a Child with Learning Disabilities

November 19, 2011  | Posted in Parenting/Child Development, Education/Learning/Activities |  2 Comment(s)  |   Share Article |

by Darin Browne

 

Reading help for children with learning disabilities can be a time absorbing and expensive exercise. With an assortment of tutors and teachers teaching reading strategies that differ in method and usefulness, the child with learning disabilities may find themselves perplexed and aggravated by the complete experience.

For the child with learning disabilities teaching reading strategies of varying kinds may help in their reading. Some children are auditory based, some are visually centered, the reading help for children involves how to imitate the differing styles of learning.

As a Behavioural Optometrist, my emphasis is obviously the visual side of things when considering reading help for children. I imagine that all the best teaching reading strategies available will still not permit a child with learning disabilities to achieve their full potential if their visual skill development is lacking.

Reading help for children does not merely mean making the child with learning disabilities to read more and more. This is not genuine reading help for children; it is agony for both the child with learning disabilities and the poor parents who are teaching these reading strategies! The effect is unhappy, anxious, frustrated and discouraged parents, and children who feel the same way about reading.

To give real reading help for children we require to step back and, instead of forcing the child with learning disabilities go through the distress of repetitive reading tasks, we should take time out to train them the visual skills essential for their success. These involve things like focus, eye coordination, eye movement control and tracking, visualization for learning spelling, sequencing, left right recognition and a number of other skills.

Training these fundamental visual skills can provide reading help for children by giving them the raw skills to do the tasks they require to do when reading. 

If you wanted to educate your child in playing the piano, the solution is not to make them sit at the piano again and again, is it? The answer is to get training for them, so that they can advance the skills they need to play. 

It is the same thing with reading. Merely making them do the job over and over is not the remedy. To present true and significant reading help for children, whether a child with learning disabilities or even a normal reader, it is far better to educate them the basic visual skills they need rather than teaching reading strategies that help them to cope with the lack of visual skills they are grappling with!

Teaching reading strategies to help them cope is a band aid, attempting to cover the subject rather than solve it. Making the child to read with a ruler under the words, or their finger under the words may progress their reading, but how much more will we help that child if we train their eye movements so they can read fluently without artificial aids!

Does this mean that I imagine there is no place for teaching reading strategies? Not at all, since if we take a little time out to sharpen the visual skills of a child with learning disabilities, it is then time to employ the reading strategies, and they will cope with magnificent success since the child has the skills to do the task!

So, there is genuine reading help for children available, and my program “Learning @ Lightspeed” can provide the basis upon which teachers and tutors can build. With the right skills developed, and the correct teaching reading strategies in place, there is hope for the child with learning disabilities to reach their full potential in school.

 

About the Author

 

Darin Browne is a Behavioural Optometrist who lives in Queensland, Australia. He has recently developed an incredible Home Based Vision Therapy Course, which offers over 180 pages of teaching and therapies, empowering parents to train their own children's visual skills and see positive, sustainable enhancement in their reading, writing and spelling. For a FREE Ecourse which includes some of these therapies, check out Reading Help For Children (http://childrenlearningdisabilities.com/reading-help-for-children/)

Tags: parenting, special needs

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