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7 Iyar 5764 - April 28, 2004 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family


Can Your Child Read?
by Raffles

Well, of course. He or she goes to school happily, the rebbes or teachers are pleased with their progress. They know the parsha well on Shabbos, and the Chumosh. So well, in fact, that they don't even need to look in.

We know the children with reading problems. They started having problems right at the beginning, and they have always needed endless support and extra practice. "My child learned easily enough and no one ever mentioned difficulties."

In the course of my work I see plenty of children with reading difficulties. As mentioned above, they usually have a history of struggle. Then I see other children who are brought to me for `other concerns' like lack of or reduced concentration and comprehension. Of course, I always check the reading, despite being told by the parents that this is not the problem. And in fact, when I put sight unseen text in front of them, they manage quite well. However, I have rarely come across a child who does not mix up something, like, for instance, ayin and alef, chof and ches or sin, samach and sof.

These are `same sound' errors and they are even more common than confusing resh and daled or other `look alike' mistakes. Perhaps the ones that disturb me the most are the `almost sound the same' mistakes. The best examples are tzaddi and zayin, gimmel and koof or kof or fey and veis.

There are four questions parents might have with regard to this. 1) How do these errors occur? 2) Does my child do this, and how can I tell? 3) Why does it matter if it still sounds good, especially in the case of real `sound alike' mistakes, when they really do sound the same? And 4) What do we do about it?

The answer to Question One is: When children learn alef- beis, they are usually very young. Often, too young to make some of the fine distinctions that we expect from them. The visual mistakes are so obviously possible that there is usually some emphasis on making sure that children get the differences between these letters clear. However, it is not as obvious that the child cannot make fine auditory distinctions at this age, either. An overriding problem exists, however, that once a child moves to vowels and making syllables, they are thought of as being `past' alef- beis, and the names and sounds of the letters are not reinforced. The child simply forgets, or needs some level of effort to recall the name, thus all these errors creep in unchecked.

How can we tell this is happening? Simple. Take a random alef-beis series, including final letters (recall on this is often very weak), and ask the child to repeat it as fast as possible. The `race' makes the child say the first thing that comes to their mind rather than thinking out each letter. If the child cannot or refuses to go quickly, but labors along, checking or self-correcting, then this should give you an indication that the alef-beis is not well ingrained.

How much it matters depends on the problem. If the child is only confusing `same sound' letters, then their reading will not suffer. However, when they get older and start to read for meaning, they need to draw on banks of words used and translated in the past. Many words in Hebrew can sound the same, but have greatly different spellings and meanings. They may see a word spelled pay sof ches and translate it as Pesach, the festival, instead of `doorway.' When you consider this further, you will see that this child will have a very confused and useless memory bank to call on, which cannot be relied upon and learning will become difficult.

This will then be the cause for falling behind, or for behavioral problems. This problem is compounded further when there are the other sorts of confusions. The child may well be davening complete rubbish. I have seen this continue into adulthood.

So what do we do about this? Prevention is ultimately better than cure. Teach reading as late as possible.

Unfortunately, no matter how much is said about this subject, and the numerous reports presented about the benefit of learning later, it seems the system will not change. However, at home, even when the cheder or kindergarten moves off to start vowels, keep going over the alef-beis again and again, and LISTEN carefully to what the child says. Besides stopping these sort of errors, it will make letter recognition completely `second nature.' This frees up some of the brain power used for letter recognition, allowing the next stage of the reading process to be that bit easier.

If an older child is found with these problems, then go back to basics and go over and over these confusions. However, you are working against a strong habit now, and the going will not be easy.

Any child whose reading is below par should be seen by an expert to determine if there are other underlying causes for these difficulties. This is especially so in cases where practice makes frustration, rather than perfection.

 

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