When Reading is Hard

I guess I was lucky before this. My other boys learned to read pretty quickly in kindergarten. By March, they could form sentences, albeit with multiple spelling erros. Still, they sounded the words out and made an attempt.

My five-year-old is struggling. Really, truly struggling. We do his homework together every night. I have definitely seen improvements. But if you ask his teacher, there have been none at all, even though he's handing in decent work from home.

He was evaluated in preschool and was receiving services for language processing issues. Sometimes we would say something to him, and it was clear that he had no idea what we'd said. Sometimes we would ask him a question, and he would answer a completely different one. Since he was born in October and was the youngest of four at the time, we chalked it up to "youngest child syndrome." Still, we had a speech and language therapist working with him twice a week.

Now in kindergarten, his teacher is ill-equipped to work with him to ensure that he understands the classroom directions. He is pulled out for speech & language once or twice a week with a specialist; still, he has trouble with his classwork, and his teacher doesn't seem to be spending the extra time explaining what she wants from him. The first time I had any idea he was having trouble with sentences was when she sent home a page of classword with words written on it, and on the bottom, in red ink, she had written: "Did not follow instructions and write sentences. Copied words from the board." When I asked him to say a sentence, he had no idea what I was talking about. Hello?? I realize she can't perform miracles, and that he's not as quick as many of the others, but did you at least explain what you were looking for?

Now it's March, and Houston, we have a problem: He can't complete his classwork to his teacher's satisfaction. Worse, he is having trouble with certain words. We do homework together, and he reads a word or two ("is," "no," "the"), then I teach him a new one ("this"). Two seconds later, he cannot remember the new word, so we review it again. I have him write it ten times in a row. We say it, then we spell it, then we say it again. Then, we go back to his homework, and guess what? He has no clue what that word is.

I'm so frustrated. And his teacher isn't helping matters. She has nothing good to say about him at all and offers no encouragement. I have shed many tears over this, and I just can't bear the thought of him being in a "special" classroom at such a young age. I just feel like I'm failing him.

My husband and I are tag-teaming, but it's getting down to the wire, and he still doesn't seem to understand how to make a sentence. We are now trying the "Hooked on Phonics" books thanks to his Aunt, but we seem to have the same problem: Some words he gets, some he just doesn't. Ugh.

God, I love this little boy. I just don't know what to do to help him learn to read.