I Need Help Teaching My Daughter to Read

Every Wednesday our members get to ask Waldorf teacher Diane Power questions about their homeschooling experience, Waldorf education and more. These Q & A sessions are posted on the member blog every week so you have access to all the past Q & A sessions. Become a member of Earthschooling to get your questions answered personally every week.

Question: I need help teaching my daughter to read. She will be 11 at the end of November and struggles greatly. She does have a confidence issue, is a perfectionist, and is melancholic. She does not want to read “baby” first readers or do “baby”, but has come to me and said that she MUST learn to read now, it’s time and she should be able to do it already. I had thought that if she read more, then she would pick it up better, but that has not really been the case this year. From September until now SHE has been reading a few pages of “Among the Meadow People” out loud to me daily. There is no consistency to where she struggles. One day she can read words, and the next day she struggles with them. I’ve been debating if I should purchase a learning to read program. I hesitate because they are all based for younger children and I know that she will balk at doing any of the work or reading their stories. Feeling like such a failure, and so lost  – Sara

Answer from Waldorf Teacher Diane Power: Sara, I’m so sorry to hear of your daughter’yout struggle. She’s determined and ready. The question is what is preventing her from reading. You mentioned that there is no discernable pattern. Are there any signs of dyslexia (see checklist HERE)? Or have you had her eyes tested?

Sara: Hi Diane. No, we haven’t had her eyes tested yet. That’s our next step. Thank you for the link, I printed it out and used it as a checklist. I checked 29 of the 37 points. I would have checked would have checked 4 more, but they are more “in the middle” then a for sure always (if that makes sense).

Diane: I would recommend getting her eyes tested first. If that’s not the solution, I would look into having someone local test her for dyslexia. They would be able to provide resources and support to help her and you. Please keep me posted!

Sara: Oh! While we are waiting for all of that, should we just continue with what we’ve been doing. Or should we just back off and wait for the testing?

Diane: I would have her continue to read as best she could. You could find some phonics games to play with her or create a phonics dictionary so to speak, with a page for each vowel sound. As she reads, she can choose 5-10 words to add to the dictionary. Then for something different, she could play around and create poems and\or stories using certain vowel sounds.

Sara: Great, thanks! I didn’t want to stop. It was such a fight to make it part of our regular daily work. I know that she still dislikes it, very much dislikes it, but it’s no longer a fight.

Diane: It should boost her spirits to know that you will be looking into the issue. Reassure her that it has nothing to do with intelligence. The family, working together, will discover what’s blocking her ability and find solutions to assist her.