When Reading Difficulty Is Worth Raising With School

If reading at home is going badly, the most useful thing you can do is not work out why, but write down exactly what you see and take it to the class teacher. Parents are excellent at noticing and badly placed to interpret. A teacher hears "he stops on more than about one word in ten and then guesses from the picture" and knows what to try next. Nobody can tell from the sofa what is behind it, and nothing on this page is an attempt to. What follows is a practical order of operations.

What this page is not

It is not a checklist for deciding anything about your child. Reading develops at wildly different speeds in Reception and Year 1, children start school up to a year apart in age, and a slow autumn term is frequently followed by an ordinary spring one.

It is also not the place to settle a question about any named condition. If that thought has crossed your mind, it is a common thought and it does not need answering at your kitchen table. The next step is the same either way: describe what you see, to the person who sees your child read every day.

Step 1. Check the book is actually the right fit

Before concluding anything about the reader, look hard at what they are being asked to read. A book that contains sounds a child has not been taught will make any child look stuck.

Find the level label on the book. A colour plus a number such as Pink 1 or Red 2 points to Bug Club. A phase number beside a term points to Little Wandle. Sets and a frog called Fred point to Read Write Inc. Then ask yourself whether the words on the page use only sounds your child has met. Decodable describes the fit between a book and one particular child, not a property of the book.

If you are borrowing extra books from the library or a shop, this is the most likely thing going wrong. A pretty picture book is not a phonics book, and a child who is guessing their way through one will look far worse than they are.

Step 2. Watch one read without helping

Do one session where your only job is to notice. Sit slightly behind your child so they cannot read your face. Wait a full five seconds before you say anything. Most children who are going to get a word get it at around four, and helping at two hides the thing you are trying to see.

You are looking for what happens in the gap, not whether the word comes out. A child who is silently working through the sounds is doing something very different from a child who is scanning the picture, and different again from a child who has simply stopped.

Step 3. Write down what you actually see

Immediately afterwards, write three or four lines. Not conclusions, observations. The more concrete, the more useful.

Two or three dated examples are worth more than a paragraph of worry. They also protect you from the reply that everything seems fine in class, because you are describing events rather than feelings.

Parents are the best witnesses in the building. Bring evidence, not a verdict.

Step 4. Rule out the three things that are usually just habits

Three patterns look alarming and are very often fixable at home within a fortnight.

• Adding "uh" to sounds. A child taught to say "cuh-a-tuh" has to strip three extra noises off before cat can appear. Say the sound cleanly: "mmm" not "muh", and short, crisp sounds for b, d, g, k, p and t.
• Fighting tricky words. Words like the, was and said cannot be sounded out with early sounds. Tell your child the word and move on. Every minute spent battling one teaches nothing.
• Reading when they are done. A tired child at half past six reads several levels below the same child at four o'clock. Move the slot before you conclude anything.

If reading has already become a nightly argument, treat that as its own problem first. The fight is usually fixable, and it is very hard to see clearly through it.

Step 5. Try the same thing without a book

Print adds a whole layer of difficulty. Taking it away for two minutes tells you something the book cannot, and it is the part teachers find most informative when a parent reports it.

With nothing in front of you, say three sounds slowly and ask what the word is: m, a, p. Then try it the other way round, giving a word and asking for the sounds. Then try the oral games that come before letters ever arrive: which two of cat, hat and dog rhyme, and what sound does sun start with.

A child who can do all of that but freezes at the page has a print problem, and print problems are usually about the level of the book or the amount of practice. A child who cannot blend m, a, p aloud with no book at all is telling you something earlier is not yet in place, and that is well worth reporting exactly as you found it.

Do this once, lightly, as a game. It is not a test and repeating it nightly will only make reading feel more like one.

Step 6. Ask for a short conversation, not a meeting

You do not need a formal appointment to raise this. A note in the reading record asking for five minutes at the door, or a short email, is enough and usually faster.

Keep it plain: you have noticed some things at home, you have written them down, and you would like to know whether the same thing shows up in class. That framing invites information rather than defensiveness, and the answer is genuinely useful. Plenty of children read very differently at school and at home.

Step 7. Ask these three questions

Go in with three questions and you will leave with something you can act on.

1. Which sounds has my child been taught so far, and which ones are not secure?
2. What are you already doing about it in class?
3. What should I do at home that matches what you are doing?

The first question is the one parents forget and the one that changes most. Once you know which sounds are shaky, you can stop guessing at the right level of book and start targeting the gap. The third matters because home practice that contradicts the school's method makes things harder, not easier.

Step 8. Agree what happens next, and when

Before the conversation ends, fix a date. Something like: we will both try this for six weeks, and then I will check in. A vague "let us keep an eye on it" quietly turns into a term.

Six to eight weeks is a fair window for most changes to show. If nothing has moved by then, go back and say so, again with examples. Persistence from a parent is not a nuisance; it is usually what moves a child up a list.

Things worth raising sooner rather than later

None of these mean anything on their own. All of them are worth mentioning early rather than waiting for a report.

• Your child cannot blend three sounds into a word even when you say the sounds for them, with no book in front of them.
• The same sounds are forgotten across weeks, not days, despite regular practice.
• Your child reads a word correctly on one line and not on the next line of the same page.
• Reading a single page leaves them visibly exhausted or upset, most nights.
• They are avoiding reading in a way they do not avoid other hard things.
• You have a family history of reading being hard, which is worth the teacher knowing.

Say them as observations. "This is what I see, is it what you see" is a much better opening than a label, and it gets you a straighter answer.

Where to go next

If the book coming home has a colour and a number on the front, the bands are easier to follow than they look, and knowing where your child sits makes every other conversation simpler. Whatever the programme, the aim of extra reading at home is the same: comfortably inside what they already know, short, and finished while they still want more.

Lindo Phonics is not connected to Pearson Bug Club and is not endorsed by them. We match the published progression so a story only uses sounds your child has already been taught.