How my youngest daughter learned to love reading | THE MOM STOP

I specifically remember the moment that it “clicked” for me and I learned to read. I don’t know my age, exactly, but I remember I was sitting at my grandparents’ breakfast table, looking at the back of a cereal box, and I realized I understood the words in print.

Apparently, I was not an early reader. As the youngest in my grade with a late summer birthday, I struggled.

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By the end of first grade, my teacher told my parents that I either needed to repeat first grade or I could go to summer school to see if I could catch up to where I needed to be. Thankfully, my parents chose the second option and I spent a summer in an intensive reading course. By the time I got to second grade that fall, I was reading above grade level.

I don’t think my parents had any inkling at the time that I would have a career as a journalist or in communications, or the importance that reading and writing would have on my life. But I can’t help but wonder what the repercussions would have been, or what I would be doing now, if I had continued to struggle in reading. Would I have discovered a love of writing as a result? Perhaps not.

My two oldest children had no issues with reading. My oldest even started to read as a 4-year-old in pre-kindergarten. But when it came to our third child, our youngest daughter, she was seemingly more like me.

It was a bit of a perfect storm. The pandemic hit during her last year of preschool, which meant she started kindergarten virtually, from home on a computer. Starting school is hard enough for any child at 5 years old, especially in terms of attention. But attempting to learn the most important basics in terms of reading from a laptop computer is a challenge, to say the least. By first grade, she was behind her peers, and was put on “reading intervention.”

We attempted to help her as much as we could at home, and continued our nightly reading at bedtime, as we’ve always done with each of our children at that age. Just like I attended summer school the summer after first grade, so did our youngest child.

By the end of that summer, she could often be found with a book in hand. On a vacation to Europe in July that year, she discovered a love of graphic novels, in particular the “Dog Man” series, which she took with her everywhere. On a train from London under the channel to Paris, I tried to get her to look up and see the French countryside once we arrived on the other side of the English Channel. But instead, she had her nose in her book.

Although she continued her “reading intervention” at the beginning of second grade, it was as though a light switch had been turned on. She had caught up, and even surpassed her grade level in reading. Today, it’s not uncommon to see her backpack is filled with library books. The desk in her room and her bedside table are always stacked with her favorite graphic novels. The kid loves to read.

This year, third-graders across Alabama will be part of the first year of students who must be reading on grade level in order to move on to the fourth grade, according to the Alabama Literacy Act, which was passed in 2019 by the state Legislature.

Recently, when preparing to take the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program standardized test, my youngest daughter worried over whether she would score high enough or if she might have to do third grade all over again. I assured her to do her best, and that she would be fine ― she’s now reading above her grade level.

But it made me even more thankful that her school invested in interventionists and getting her and other students like her the extra help they need to read. Just like my parents got the additional support I needed at that age.

Who knows where we’d be without it.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: How my daughter overcame her struggle to read | THE MOM STOP