Don't Wait -- Get Help Now Here's what three experts say:
Susan Hall, coauthor of Straight Talk About Reading
Question: How do parents know if their child's reading delay is a real problem or simply a "developmental lag?" How long should parents wait before seeking help in their child is struggling with reading?
Answer:Beware of the developmental lag excuse for several reasons.First, I have listened to parent after parent tell me about feeling there was a problem early on, yet being persuaded to discount their intuition and wait to seek help for their child. Later, when they learned time is of the essence in developing reading skills, the parents regretted the lost months or years.
Second, research shows that the crucial window of opportunity to deliver help is during the first couple of years of school. So if your child is having trouble learning to read, the best approach is to take immediate action. Knowing how soon to act is easy if you know the conclusions of recent research.
Reading researchers say the ideal window of opportunity for addressing reading difficulties is during kindergarten and first grade. The National Institutes of Health state that 95 percent of poor readers can be brought up to grade level if they receive effective help early.
While it is still possible to help an older child with reading, those beyond third grade require much more intensive help.The longer you wait to get help for a child with reading difficulties, the harder it will be for that child to catch up. If help is given in fourth grade (rather than in late kindergarten), it takes four times as long to improve the same skills by the same amount.
To see what else Susan Hall has to say, go to www.schwablearning.org
Patricia Vail, author of 9 books on Learning Disabilities
If your child has trouble in the early levels of school, get help immediately! Do not wait to see if the child will grow out of it.
Prevention is always easier than remediation.
Learning differences don't disappear spontaneously.
If you worry that receiving extra help will make your child feel different, forget it. Your child already feels different by virtue of
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