For children struggling with literacy, pediatric speech and language therapy is a fantastic way to support their success. In therapy, literacy isn’t just about reading and writing—it encompasses comprehension and communication through writing. Literacy is not only about decoding and encoding skills, but about the capacity to understand, interpret, and critically analyze information. 

Understanding Literacy Skills in Children

When it comes to working with children, therapy often focuses on decoding and encoding skills, alongside early comprehension abilities. “Encoding” involves turning sounds into letters, which is what we would refer to as “spelling” in literacy work. For example, if we hear the word “bat” aloud, we will translate those sounds into the letter formation: “B,” “A,” “T.”  Comparatively, “decoding” is about making sense of letters and their sounds, especially when sounding out words.

The 10 Most Common Concerns of Parents Regarding Their Child’s Literacy

When parents reach out to Dynamic Therapy Specialists with concerns for their child’s literacy skills, these are the ten most common worries they express: 

1. Dislike for reading or writing, with avoidance behaviors. A child may act distressed or lie about having done their assigned reading and writing when they have not.
2. Spelling struggles, especially during free writing tasks. Parents and teachers may notice that the child is relying on “sounding out” versus phonics and memorization.
3. Skipping or guessing words while reading, indicating comprehension issues. When reading aloud, a child may look at the first two letters and “guess” the rest of the word. 
4. Older kids preferring picture books, signaling comprehension challenges. If a child is in the third grade (or older) and only wants to read picture books, this is a cause for concern. However, we never want to discourage a child from their interests! A child may have a particular interest in graphic novels and that’s wonderful! However, when the child only wants to read those books, that may indicate there is an underlying difficulty in comprehension.
5. Reading slowly, affecting understanding. Sometimes children will slow down when reading aloud to read each word accurately; however, we know that reading at a very slow pace affects their ability to comprehend and engage with the text. 
6. Difficulty summarizing or discussing what they’ve read. A child may have trouble recalling the context of what they just read, indicating a lack of comprehension.
7. Lack of interest in rhyming or alphabet activities at a young age.
8. Concerns about family history of learning disabilities. 
9. Handwriting that’s hard to read, possibly masking literacy difficulties. This may be a concern best addressed by our occupational therapists, however if your child does not feel confident with spelling patterns, they may be compensating for early literacy difficulties. 
10. Ear infections impacting auditory processing and speech sounds. Impacted hearing, over a significant amount of time in the child’s life, may impact their articulation, speech sounds, and eventually their literacy skills. 

How Dynamic Therapy Specialists Can Support Your Child’s Literacy

After sharing your concerns with our team, families will go through an intake process. This includes many screenings to pinpoint specific issues and branch to further, specific evaluations. These screenings give us the chance to deep dive into what underlying difficulty may be causing these concerns. 

Following the screenings, our expert team will:

1. Review the information and compile a list of recommendations. 
2. Prioritize the best course of action and discuss theses with the families. Recommendations may include auditory processing evaluations, speech and language evaluations, occupational therapy assessments, and so on. It’s important that we rule our auditory-based issues that may be impacting the child’s ability to build a strong literacy foundation. Comparatively a speech and language evaluation addresses language-based areas that may be causing literacy concerns.
3. Finally, an occupational therapist will perform an evaluation to address any fine motor skills that are impacting the child’s ability to perform at their fullest potential.

Dynamic Therapy Specialists use a holistic approach to address auditory, language, and fine motor deficits that hinder literacy. Our therapists focus on phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, comprehension strategies, decoding skills, encoding skills, handwriting skills, and the primitive reflex integration in order to best help your child. These methods are backed by research and aim to empower children and foster a love for reading and writing!

Contact Us for More Information on Pediatric Therapy

If you’re interested in learning more about how therapy can help your child’s literacy skills, their literacy journey, or if you’re interested in chatting about literacy, please contact us at Dynamic Therapy Specialists and we’d be happy to talk with you about your concerns.