Children with reading problems in first grade were significantly more likely to display poor task engagement, poor self-control, externalizing behavior problems, and internalizing behavior problems in third grade. ~ Morgan, Farkas, Tufis & Sperling

Are you secretly afraid of taking your child out in public because you dread his unexpected outbursts or tantrums?

Your child is struggling at school in reading and other areas, and at home, he seems to ignore your directions and refuse to do homework.

When you correct or reprimand him, he either throws a tantrum or ignores you totally.

You may have tried everything you know but still cannot get him to change his behavior.

And, on the other hand, you’re too embarrassed to ask someone for help because you think they will see your child’s behavior as poor parenting on your behalf.

You stay awake at night thinking you’re a failure and beating yourself up with one negative statement after another.

Let me share with you some reasons why your child may be demonstrating behaviors that are upsetting you.

It is natural to enjoy learning.

As you observe children, you can see their innate exuberance in learning new things.

So, why doesn’t your child want to learn to read or do homework?

There may be a few things going on, but first, let’s look at what’s involved in learning to read.

While your child can learn to listen and speak from the people around him, reading must be taught.

There are 5 stages of reading development. I will highlight the first 2 stages.

1. In Pre-Reading, your child builds early literacy skills and develops a positive relationship with books.
   • Learning how sound in their spoken language work (playing rhyming games, reading rhyming books like Dr. Seuss’ books, and making up nonsense words)
   • Recognizing the letters of the alphabet (alphabet song)
   • Becoming aware of the relationship between print and speech.
2. Learning to Read – For most children, they begin learning to read in kindergarten
   • Here, the child begins to understand the link between letters and sounds and learn how to sound out individual words. In other words, they learn phonics.
   • As part of this learning, they must put their skills into practice.

This is the stage where parents and teachers begin to see children struggle to read.

The reason is that the brains of those children are wired differently from how they are being taught, so they do not adequately process the reading directions.

Our brains operate on 2 systems:

1. The sympathetic – the Fight & Flight system
   • Fight, flight, or freeze
   • When your child goes into any of these stages, parts of their brain shut down.
   • The parts that shut down are the thinking parts that use a tremendous amount of energy
   • To conserve energy, the brain shuts these areas down and reroutes the energy to the muscles
   • They are not thinking—just reacting in emotional ways
2. The para-sympathetic – the rest and digest system
   • It maintains balance in the body
   • It aims to bring the body to a state of calm.
   • It reduces heartbeat, relaxes the muscles, and improves digestion.

When your child is constantly struggling, his/her brain is always in fight or flight mode.

Here are 3 things you can do to help your child:

1. Look for your child’s strong points and gifts
2. Encourage him/her
3. Teach him/her the skills they are not learning at school

Confidence is essential to develop the willingness to try new things and for learning success.

To ease your challenges and empower you to help your children, I created a program for parents of children who have been identified with dyslexia and those who have not been given any special testing but are struggling to read. In it, I show you how to help your children at home and make reading easier and faster and help them succeed in life.

So, if you have a child who has difficulty reading and is acting out, click here to schedule a Learning Assessment chat at your convenience. https://letsmeet.io/florencecallender/learning-assessment-call