A little OT: Phonics and emotional breakdowns

[MelInKansas]

Here's the background: My 4.5 year old (she will be 5 in a month) has been doing phonics lessons using "Teach your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons." She normally does very well with this, we do 1/2 a lesson on each school day. It seems clear to me that she is quite capable of the incremental lessons and is learning to read, though she still reads very haltingly. For those who are familiar with 100 Easy Lessons we are on lesson 47, about 1/2 way through.

However occasionally she comes up against a word that she has difficulty sounding out. If she can't get it right away, or at least after 2-3 times of sounding it out, she becomes very emotional and things go downhill from there. Of course since she's emotional, she finds it difficult to focus and keep trying. She keeps saying "I can't do it." I keep trying to tell her that she can, it's hard, but she needs to keep trying and she will get it. I will add that I often notice this is worse if she is hungry, we usually have a snack right before her reading time but today for example she didn't really eat her snack so I suppose she was still hungry.

So I am trying to decide if this is a problem with the method I am using (the book 100 Easy Lessons itself), with my DD's attitude or character, or if I'm just trying to push her too hard and I need to back off and let her mature before we go forward with it again. I have been approaching it up until now as the 2nd problem - because we have seen this with her in other areas of life. If something is hard she just doesn't want to try, and gets very upset and gives up. But on the other hand, I don't want to keep pushing her and making learning a bad experience for her, or somehow hurt her when she just needs more time to grow into it.

She gets tripped up on "tricky" words. Today it was "old." Which she has read successfully in the past. I do try to help her, at least guiding her in what she's supposed to do, but of course I don't want to just tell it to her and therefore take away from her figuring it out which is the whole point of learning phonics and decoding skills.

Thanks for reading all this and any input.

[blessedmomof4]

Just thinking out loud, so you can take this with a grain of salt but maybe it would be okay to back off on reading instruction for a little while? She is pretty young, and maybe a break for a while where you just let her pick out library books and read out loud to her would give her tiime to grow into being more ready for formal instruction? Whereas two of my dc were more than ready for formal phonics instruction at age 4, two of them were not-one was ready at 6, and one at 8. It's okay to wait, if that is what she needs.

[countrymom]

Although the character traits of perseverance, keep trying, finishing a project, and so on are traits I would definitely work on with a 4 1/2 yr old, I would not apply that to reading. She is very young and reading is quite tedious. Even bright children are often just not ready for something like reading. One also needs to be careful of their eyes at that age. My son did start very slowly on a phonics program at about 5, but I limited it to 10 minutes a day and went very slowly. If I had it to do over I would have just waited. My younger, now 5 year old wants to learn to read like his brother, but I am just doing fun games with him that are helping him learn to sound out 3 letter words and recognize letter combinations and so forth. I would just follow her lead on reading for now and pick up the serious phonics again 6-12 months down the road.

[MelInKansas]

Hmmm thanks for the thoughts. I know that I have seen other posts of a similar nature and I have always thought the right move is to wait. So... maybe that's the right move. It went much more smoothly with my oldest, I had waited until she was older because she didn't really show any interest anyway.

Will definitely be discussing and praying with DH about what we should do.

[KristinBeth]

I haven't used 100 EZ Lessons, so I can't comment on that. But I would agree that readiness is a factor. And if the text is tedious, it may be adding to the problem. I did enjoy using The Reading Lesson with my then-4 year old. It seems geared toward young readers. Lessons take 5 minutes if you do two pages at a time. The font is large in the beginning of the book, and very gradually gets smaller toward the end. The page is uncluttered so the eye can keep tracking where it is supposed to. Maybe if the reading break doesn't work, a change in text will. Though during the last two chapters even my motivated daughter wanted it to be over and get to the real books. Also, my daughter enjoyed readers that matched her reading stage while she was learning from the text. Maybe you can get something from the library that will be fun and motivating. Best of luck!

[LovingJesus]

Just seconding the thoughts of her being very young. If they show extreme interest I have found light ways to give a little more information here and there, but I don't start formal phonic instruction until age 6. We use Rod & Staff phonics and it is written for 1st grade/age 6. So far they actually start reading some before it on their own; yet the program still teaches them plenty they need to know even if they are reading some. Just coming from a different perspective than the 'new educational ideas of younger is better'. I don't like to become too structured before 6 due to emotional maturity. They catch up quickly enough and then move beyond grade level.

[Kims]

Here are my thoughts after teaching 4 to read now and seeing all the mistakes I made with my older ones. I used to try to have them sound it out over and over and it would bring tears and breakdowns.
Now I just give the word. If I have to give it in ever sentence then I do. I do try to gently tell them to notice it is the same as the sentence before. They do eventually get the word. And in a good moment I will have them try to sound it out. Try it next lesson. When they come to a word they don't know then just say it's _________ and move on. It really does take the stress out of reading.
My daughter still remembers a word that I kept trying and trying to make her sound out and it was a word she knew when finally my dh said put the book away, she is 16. I want the memories of my younger ones to be more gentle of their learning to read. My 17yos who is dyslexic I am sure has some memories the same as her and probably more.

So try it. Cheerfully just give the word and see how your lesson goes.

[LovingJesus]

So try it. Cheerfully just give the word and see how your lesson goes.

I just wanted to add that I give the word too when they are stuck. When I do I sound it out with phonics, running my finger under the word, and then say it again and then we move on. For example, cat becomes c (k) - a (a as in apple sound) - t (t).

[MelInKansas]

So try it. Cheerfully just give the word and see how your lesson goes.

Hmmmm....

I did that with my oldest daughter and then I decided that I had somehow hampered her decoding skills by always giving her the answer when she struggled. But, my oldest daughter is a very good reader now. Sometimes I lament over the fact that when she comes to a word she can't read quickly (which at this point are multisyllable words) she just kind of fudges it, says some of the sounds and goes on. Since she loves to read to herself, I assume when she encounters words she doesn't know in her personal reading time she just skips over them. Anyway, I feel like she has very good reading skills even though I "gave" her the answers a lot when she was first starting. So maybe I will try that too

I don't want to quit all phonics, but I was considering backing down to something simpler and shorter. I was thinking about getting The Reading Lesson just thinking that might go more slowly, since it has a lot of different activities in each lesson and each lesson is around one main thing they are learning. Anyway.... thanks again ladies, this is helpful. I do feel like I need to back off, again I need to make sure DH agrees on that, but where to go from here is always difficult...

[my3sons]

...occasionally she comes up against a word that she has difficulty sounding out. If she can't get it right away, or at least after 2-3 times of sounding it out, she becomes very emotional and things go downhill from there...

I have a markerboard and a black dry erase marker to help Emmett in these instances. I simply set the book aside. Pull out the markerboard and jot the word he's struggling with one sound/chunk at a time, having him say them for me. For example, if the word was "glass", I'd write...
gl (pause for him to say it) a (pause) ss (pause)

Then, I slide my finger under the whole word to signify it's time to blend it all together. He loves this, and it works like a charm! The other day I forgot the markerboard, and he came to a word he was stuck on, after a few tries, he said, "MOM - where's the markerboard? I'm waiting." toe-tapping, arms crossed on chest. Wow, is that what I do?!? Anyway, it's easy, it works, and he needs it only occasionally. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[deltagal]

Great tip, Julie!

[tiffanieh]

Just wanted to 2nd what others were saying about waiting. I too had a very ambitious and smart 5 year old that I was teaching to read. We did Reading Made Easy. We got a month or two into it, as it was getting harder, and he would have very similar breakdowns. At one point he was saying things like, "I'm just no good. I'm not smart!" That was it for me. I closed the book, hugged him tight and told him we would come back to this later and of course corrected his thoughts.

We put the book away for 2 months, came back in January of that year, and he soared. He needed the time to mature a bit more, and needed to know mommy had his back!

[Tansy]

I'd like to chime in on What I've learned about the brain structure at age 4, at age 4 a average brain can hold only 3-4 pieces of information. So "cat" can be learned even "Shot" maybe learned because in ez lessons it is seen as 3 sounds, (sh always seen together). Words that are longer than 3-4 sounds like "finding"they just will not be able to hold all the pieces together long enough to parse them. When it gets stored as a "whole word" as in Dick and Jane books they can read words like "something" right away but as you saw with your older daughter they are not learning to parse the words.

I'd totally move over to books like Hop on Pop, for a while and you read the big words and she reads the little ones while you wait for her brain to grow into the 4-5 stage. At 5 she should be able to hold 4-5 pieces of information, and so on up to 10 pieces of information at age 10. (think why are phone numbers not longer?)
Tho most american adults only have the capacity to hold 7 pieces of information because we use alternative methods of recall for example computer, electronics and etc.

[MelInKansas]

This is a really old post! My DD is now 5 1/2 and she is reading VERY well I think. She has started to gain confidence and will read easy reader books on her own, or with a little help. We've been doing The Reading Lesson and she usually breezes right through it. I think about lesson 13 it's started getting a little harder - there are so many different vowel sounds mixed together in one reading she finds it difficult to remember all the different rules. But she has a lot of the phonics down, a lot of the important sight words, overall it's been going great.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts though!

[raindrops]

Oops! It is an old post. LOL.

So what do you think helped your daughter then? Did you end up waiting or just switch to The Reading Lesson?