Teaching My Son How to Read

Your son (John*) has Asperger's syndrome, the psychologist said. No, that can't be right, I said. Sorry, but based on my observations it looks like he does.

The diagnosis came after the school principal threatened me. Unless, I got John evaluated there was going to be trouble. We were (and still are) living in Switzerland, and trouble meant fines. I had to jump when the school said jump. At least it helped me to find a psychologist. That took months, and the eventual evaluation took several more months to play out. So it took about a year before we finally got the evaluation. By then, John had already been sentenced to repeat an additional year of kindergarten. Kindergarten is already two years in Switzerland. John landed a third.

John actually got a lot better in the second year because he learned German. We live in the German speaking section of Switzerland. Schooling is in German. Now one would think that the school gets the whole language thing for immigrants. Misbehaving students might improve with some language help. What about a referral to language teachers for kids, or classes for kid? Nope. It doesn't work like that. Too bad. Older students get some help but not enough. The foreign language training program out of Zürich is designed to take students to level B2 (intermediate level), but the schools in my district just don't do it. Instead, they go to level A2 (beginner level.) Those in kindergarten get no help.

John picked up a lot of German during his first year of Kindergarten, but he didn't speak it. Then one day I sat him on my knee as we did a lesson of Rosetta Stone. The lesson was for him, and Rosetta Stone made him speak. It was like the flood gates opened. John began rattling off German like no tomorrow. After that his German was pretty good.

Overall, what I learned is that the public schools do what is best for themselves. Student are lower on the priority list. If the school does something that doesn't make sense, just ask who benefits? Then things become clear. In the case of John, getting his behavior under control was important. Language didn't seem to be important. The fact that John had Asperger's meant that federal help was available to pay for an assistant to provide more help in class, but the help didn't start until first grade.

When John finally hit his third year of kindergarten, eventually I realized that in the next year he would be learning how to read. That was going to be a nightmare. How do I know? Because John is like me, and I couldn't learn how to read. I was behind for years. Remember when the psychologist told me that John had Asperger's? She said I probably had it too. I never knew.

I began looking for reading help in the community. The problem was that the help had a British accent, and John is American with an American accent. Getting local help for reading was not going to work out. Oh great, I said. I'm really stuck doing it. I eventually learned to read and went on to university. Now I was going to be a reading teacher.

As John's teacher, I had one advantage. I knew how his brain worked. I had to be very logical and apply lots of repetition. Logic meant phonics. Repetition meant daily work. I pulled up Amazon.com and an interesting book popped up: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I like to think of it as, how to start world war 3 in 100 easy lessons. I didn't learn that until later. Unfortunately, I was already running out of time. It was April. I had to get going.

Here is a quick summary of how the book teaches reading:

The book uses the Distar method, now called Reading Mastery, which was developed by Siegfried Engelmann and his colleagues in the late 1960s. The method uses a scripted model which tells you everything to say and do. Each lesson has just enough material to finish in one sitting. Each lesson teaches new letter sounds (phonics), word practice using the new letters and general reading. The reading section acts as a test of everything the child has studied up to that point. More is expected as you progress through the book.

The lessons in the book are definitely not slick. Lots of text for the teacher (me) and no colored pictures. I could see a lot of people not using the book because of that, but I didn't have time for options. I was stuck. I had to make it work. I needed to get John from zero to second grade in 100 days. One lesson every day of the week. But John had other plans.

John and I walked into a room, and I closed the door. We wouldn't emerge until we finished the lesson, or at least that was the plan. Except, John wouldn't cooperate and told me he didn't want to learn to read. This exact scenario unfolded every day for 100 days. We would sit down to start a lesson. He would have none of it. I sent him to his room. He was grounded until he agreed to cooperate. Like clockwork, exactly 30 minutes later he emerged from his room and said he would cooperate. Then we could actually start the lesson for the day.

Only 20 minutes a day, the book said. Well, not exactly. At first, it was only 10 minutes a day but eventually got to 90 minutes a day. Each lesson would start with a few new letters, some new words using those new letters and finally a reading section. The problem was that this ramps up pretty quickly. So the lessons quickly go past 20 minutes, and the aggression built up in John. By about 30 minutes we would stop for war. Nerf gun bullets and Nerf balls were flying. That was when we wasn't running and jumping on me. It was 15 minutes of war. John needed revenge for the misery I was causing him. I let him have it. After war, we continued with the lesson.

Another reason for the daily lessons was that I was afraid of the school. It was so annoying and quick to threaten. What would happen if John had trouble reading? I didn't want to find out. I figured that if John could read English then learning how to read German would be a piece of cake.

John and I were moving at a fast pace. Surely he would forget stuff. Except, there was no time to forget. He was getting hammered with reading every day. If he did forget a word or encountered a new hard word, then I would put it on a flash card and drill him later in the evening. Before he went to sleep at night, he knew how to read every word from the day's lesson, and he had reviewed prior hard words.

On the flash cards I would group words by sounds. I would even add new similar sounding words. Usually, we might spend 5 or 10 minutes on the cards in a review session. I would review the cards with him every day but sometimes there might be two, three, four or five review sessions if the words were particularly hard. Generally, he went along with this just fine. I would retire cards once he really knew the words. New cards got added for forgotten words or new difficult words.

The book initially introduces a slightly modified alphabet. For example, th is tied together and so is sh. It's like they are one letter representing one sound. Somewhere around chapter 75, the regular alphabet is switched in place of the modified one. I thought this would be a crisis, but it wasn't even a speed bump. However, by then the lessons were getting up to an hour. John needed another break for war. More attacks and more bullets were coming fast and furious. That added another 15 minutes. After that there was more reading.

John told me almost every day that he didn't want to learn how to read. By the time we finished lesson 100 on day 100, he was definitely reading at the second grade level. Note that our entire world revolved around reading for those 100 days. At the end of the book, it gives a list of books to keep going. So John and I did that every day. He read the books on the list for about 30 minutes a day. I sat next to him and listened as he read aloud. I made cards for problem words. I drilled him with the cards every day. Then one day he just stopped making mistakes. It was kind of weird. I just noticed that I didn't have to correct him anymore. Anyway, by the time 1st grade rolled around he was reading at the third grade level in English with no problem. Although, he never liked reading and didn't like any of the books he was reading.

It turns out that buying the book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, was the best decision I made. While it doesn't look slick, it really works. I just can't praise it enough. You just have to get started and don't stop.

The school principal wanted a meeting with us and John's teachers about a month after 1st grade started. He was literally stunned to find that John was doing well in all his subjects. In particular, he had no problems with reading in German. John knew what they were trying to do. He was really good at sounding out words. Given where he started in 1st year Kindergarten, it was like he was a different kid.

John continued to get additional support from the school through the fourth grade. Plus, I would literally get in the trenches to support him. Oh, you have a test coming up where you have to know 200 German verbs and their conjugation. I would put them in Quizlet.com and drill him. But after the fourth grade that kind of intense help was no longer needed. John was able to handle his school work by himself for the most part.

Much later John decided that he wanted to go to Gymnasium. Gymnasium is like high school for the top 25% who plan to go to college. You have to pass a really hard to test to get in. One big stumbling block was going to be writing a story on a topic provided on the test. How do you write when you can't think of anything to write about? Answer: Who, what, where, when, why and how. We drilled on those when he got stuck. He got the hang of it.

John is now entering his junior year (year 3 as they say here) at Gymnasium.

So it all worked out, but I can never forget the trauma of teaching my son how to read.

* John is not his real name.