Can Speech Therapists Help my Child with Reading?

Reading Difficulties

Maybe you took to reading like a fish in water.  It was so easy to jump from The Cat in the Hat, to Beezus and Ramona, and then Where The Red Fern Grows.  So when your wonderful child is struggling to read, it’s worrisome for you.  And it’s not as if you haven’t tried diligently to teach her. In fact you’ve spent hours, daily, side by side, doing your best to teach her to read.  And it doesn’t seem to be working.

Luckily, you’re not too proud to ask for help.  You’ll do anything to help your child make progress no matter the situation.  So what should you do?  

Reading Foundation

First, let’s talk about how you acquire the skill of reading.  Reading requires foundational skills. The earliest skill to be developed is listening to and understanding language.  Learning how to read literally starts from birth, when you start listening to your parents and others speak. The second skill is speaking, taking what you’ve been listening to and making the attempt to communicate.  The next skill is reading itself. Finally, the last step is being able to communicate through writing.

Reading at its most basic is the melding of phonics with reading comprehension (understand what the written word means).  So what do you do when there is a disconnect between the two? Who can you turn to? Or more importantly, who should you turn to?

Speech Therapists and Reading

Speech therapists are uniquely suited to help children with reading difficulties.  They have the knowledge, understanding and education to be able to deal with phonetic and reading comprehension issues.  Still, they are most effective when operating with a team of professionals.  

Other Professionals

For example, your child’s vision might be affecting her reading, in which case you would want a vision specialist.  After all, letters are just symbols; is she able to discriminate between them or is your child’s vision impaired? Or if your child is having hearing problems, she should see an audiologist.  

Reading Tutor vs. Speech Therapist

You can also seek the aid of a reading teacher or tutor.  But speech therapists have skills that are uniquely suited to helping kids who have difficulty reading.  However, the best solution would be a combination of the two.  

Finally, some speech therapists also use different teaching methods to teach reading, such as kinesthetic, auditory and tactile.  That’s something you could also look into. There’s just no such thing as “too much” out of the box thinking when it comes to teaching your child the amazing, invaluable and life-changing skill of reading.