Reading Just Isn’t Clicking? Here’s Why and How to Fix It

If your child is bright and capable but reading just isn’t clicking, you’re not alone. Many children struggle with reading, not because they aren’t trying, but because they haven’t been given the right kind of instruction that they need to learn with success. In this episode, Kristy breaks down the common reasons why reading can feel so difficult for kids and what you, as a parent, can do to help.

You’ll learn:
✅ Why some kids struggle with reading despite their intelligence and effort
✅ The common misconceptions about how children learn to read
✅ The key elements of effective reading instruction (and what’s missing in many classrooms)
✅ Practical steps you can take at home to support your child’s reading journey

At the end of the episode, I’ll also share a possible solution for families looking for structured support to help their child gain confidence in reading.

Resources & Links:
📖 Phonics Club – A structured solution for building reading confidence
Get your first month 50% off by entering POD at checkout!
Http:/www.allkidscan.com.au/collective

📩 Email Kristy – Have questions or need support? Reach out anytime
info@allkidscan.com.au

📲 Follow along on Instagram: @AllKidsCanEducation

Does you child need literacy support? 

Our Phonics Club is for families who want to access high quality structured phonics lessons at home in their own time, with additional 1:1 email support and live monthly online kids classes.

Enrolments are by application only so that we can make sure that this is the right fit for your family. 💖

Click below if you'd like to learn more.

 www.allkidscan.com.au/apply

Transcript

0:00:09 - (Christy Howarth): Welcome to the All Kids Can Podcast, dedicated to supporting parents on their journey to nurture happy, successful children in every facet of life, particularly their journey through their education. Whether you're navigating the complexities of a recent diagnosis or you're finding that your child is struggling to have success with their learning, this podcast is for you. As a parent, you have incredible power and influence in your child's life.

0:00:37 - (Christy Howarth): And with the right knowledge and strategies, you will be empowered to guide your child towards their best life. I'm your host, Christy Howarth, accredited dyslexia therapist, special education teacher, family coach, and mum of two brilliantly neuro spicy kids of my own. Are you ready? Let's dive in.

0:01:09 - (B): Welcome back to the podcast. So I'm here today solo. I want to tell you a little bit of a story. When we moved to Queensland, we made friends with a local couple and one time we went around to their house for dinner. And when I went around to their house for dinner, we saw all of these like little cut out words in different colors stuck all over the house. So I'm talking like on the fridge, in the bathroom, on the walls. It was everywhere.

0:01:46 - (B): And I recognized them. Being a teacher, I recognize them instantly as these words that we give kids that are in stages in classrooms. So I won't name what type of program that it is, but if you know, you know. So, so much effort had gone into what this parent was doing with cutting out all of those words and sticking them up everywhere. So his thoughts, and this is what he was asked to do by the teacher, is expose your child to those words as much as you possibly can, like put them up everywhere.

0:02:27 - (B): So he put them on the fridge, he put them in the toilet, he put them on the wall next to their rooms, he'd put them next to the bed. Like he was doing everything that he thought was the right thing to do because that's how he had been guided by the teacher, the well meaning teacher, just like me, that didn't know that that wasn't the best way of teaching kids how to read. Of course, the dinner conversation, I slipped into my teacher role, my dyslexia therapist role, and I gave them the download on how their child needs to learn to read. And it wasn't by sticking words up all over the house that wasn't effective.

0:03:10 - (B): And they knew it wasn't effective, it wasn't working. So they pulled all of those words down and we started teach. Teaching his kids through letter to sound correspondence, teaching them that letters make specific sounds and teaching Them, how to blend those sounds together, and also, very importantly, separating the words that we can decode or sound out and the words that have irregular spelling patterns in them. Because we need to teach kids that they are different types of words and that we read them differently.

0:03:42 - (B): It kind of takes me back to when I was in the classroom. This family was on the same trajectory as the pattern that I saw repeating over and over and over again when I was in the classroom. And that pattern was that we would have kids in the first year of school, whether you call that prep foundation, the kids in that first year of school, we saw those kids trying to read. We saw them trying to memorize.

0:04:14 - (B): We gave them books that they used the pictures for to be able to guess what the words were. And, you know, they kind of just floated through. That year. You had the kids that would excel, and then you had the other kids that just wouldn't progress. But we just kept on going with that same sort of style of teaching, hoping that it's all going to click in the end. And then that child gets to grade one or the second year of school, and what happens then is that the reading still doesn't progress very much. You're seeing a tiny bit of progress, but it's nothing like what you would have expected.

0:04:58 - (B): And then we get into the third year of school. Now, let's just take a little minute to think about the emotional, social and emotional health or the mental health of that child in the first year of school. They're happy go lucky, right? Most of the time they. They're still positive about literacy, still positive about reading. Not all of them, but the majority of kids will still be like, yeah, that's cool. I don't care. I'm here to play with my friends what's in my lunchbox.

0:05:24 - (B): And then in the second year of school, we have kids that are still pretty cruisy. Like, they're not starting to connect. The fact that learning to read is going to be a really big deal, and I'm not kind of getting it right now. However we get into the third year of schooling, kids start to look around them. They start to become not as insular in the way that they're viewing the world. And they're starting to look around them at their peers, maybe comparing themselves to siblings or cousins, and they're starting to recognize that a reading is kind of a big deal. And I'm expected to do it all the time. And it's kind of hard, and I don't get it, and I'm not Progressing, and B, why is everyone else getting it and I'm not?

0:06:11 - (B): So then we start to see kids that move from being happy go lucky in those first few years of school, not really recognizing that reading is going to be a big deal and I can't really do it yet, and everyone else around me can. And that's when we start to have kids. Generally, it's the end of grade two, grade three, possibly for some kids, grade four might be a little bit of a realization that I'm dumb. That's what they're thinking, I'm dumb, I'm stupid, it must be me.

0:06:46 - (B): And then this is the pattern that I would see over and over again. And to add fuel to the fire at that time, what happens with what we're expected kids to read is different type of text. So instead of having a book with pictures there, instead of having a book that may have had some of those words that we've memorized, you know, from those lists that whether it was the colored. The colored words or whether it's a different type of list, the text or the vocabulary is extending beyond what they have memorized.

0:07:20 - (B): And the pictures are disappearing. So no longer are we able to look to a picture and make a guess about what a word says. No longer are we able to recognize all of those words within the text as words that we've tried to memorize. And so you can see that this is just a compounded issue of an awareness of other kids around them, an awareness of, hey, reading's a big deal and I can't do it and I'm not progressing, and that the text that they're expected to read is going way beyond their skill level.

0:07:58 - (B): It's not that these kids aren't smart or that they aren't trying. They just haven't been given the right instruction. If these stories sound all too familiar to you and you're looking for a solution on how to teach, teach your child how to really read and spell. Let me just take a little bit of a minute to let you know about our Phonics Club. The Phonics Club is a monthly membership resource for parents to be able to help their kids at home.

0:08:26 - (B): It has three main parts to the Phonics Club. The first part are structured literacy lessons. So these are lessons that your child does in order. It starts at the very beginning with the foundations, and then fills in all of the gaps. We start at stage one, lesson one for the first week, and then your child does that lesson. And there's resources for them to practice game Links to do on the computer and things like that.

0:08:52 - (B): And then the next week you do lesson two, and then the next week you do lesson three, et cetera, et cetera. And then you systematically build those skills through those recorded lessons. Those recorded lessons are taught to a live group so your child feels like they're part of the group. The benefit of watching those recorded lessons is that you can pause throughout that lesson and have breaks or have movement or just process.

0:09:21 - (B): Because we know that our kids that have difficulties with reading and spelling do need a little bit more time to process information and to work at their own pace. The second part of the Phonics Club is the live monthly masterclasses. So this is where your child has the opportunity to join live. The link is sent to you, and all you have to do is click on the link once a month and come in and your child can participate in learning something specific about literacy.

0:09:51 - (B): So, for example, our last masterclass was on sound spelling, and we worked on segmenting words into individual sounds so that we can then say those sounds again and match them with letters, which gives kids so much more accuracy with their spelling and gives them a structure to follow. The next one's going to be the one one one rule where we are focusing on when to double letters when we're adding endings like ing or ed.

0:10:18 - (B): The third part of the Phonics Club is the parent community. We've got a private Facebook group, and within the Facebook group, you can get support for your child's learning journey. You've got direct access to message me, to message other parents. We run challenges in there, all kinds of things. So it's a really great space to feel supported on your own individual journey. The other thing that we've got when you join to be part of the Phonics Club are some bonuses.

0:10:50 - (B): The first bonus is a phonological and phonemic awareness checklist. So phonological and phonemic awareness is the underpinning and the pre skills that we need for successful and confident reading and spelling. So identifying your child's gaps in these skills is really important so that we can go in and strengthen those so that we can give them a really good foundation on how to read and spell. The second bonus that we've got is teaching irregular words, the my booklet. It's a complete system with word cards, lists, and tracking tools to really boost your child's ability to be able to spell those words that aren't spelled the same way as they sound.

0:11:32 - (B): And the third bonus that we've got is how to advocate for your child at school. So I've put together some essential tips on how to confidently communicate with your child's learning needs and to get them what they need within the school system to level that playing field. Reading isn't about just trying harder. It's not about reading more books. It's about teaching kids how words actually work. So if you're a parent wondering how can I help my child because they have been learning through memorizing, through guessing, through looking at pictures, well, I've got a solution for you now. The Phonics Club is only open until Monday 3rd March.

0:12:19 - (B): So for my listeners I'm going to give you a 50% off your first month. So if you want to jump into the Phonics Club, do it before Monday. Got to be quick and use the code Podcast pod at the checkout and you'll be able to access that 50% off that first month and I hope to see you on the inside. If you have any questions about anything that I've talked about today, feel free to get in contact with me. I'd love to have a chat with you.

0:12:51 - (B): I'm happy to help anyone that reaches out to me@infoalkidscan.com have a beautiful day and thanks for listening.

0:13:00 - (Christy Howarth): Thanks for hanging out on the All Kids Can Podcast today with me. Did you know that if you're looking for support for your child's literacy, we offer lots of different options to suit lots of different families and budgets. We have availability to teach your child online in one to one sessions. We have a course called Step Into Literacy for parents wanting to know how to teach their kids how to read at home.

0:13:23 - (Christy Howarth): And our newest offering a low cost membership with recorded phonics lessons and monthly Live Kids masterclasses and resources. Visit allkidscan.com for more details and make sure to follow us on Instagram at All Kids Can Education for tips and updates to help us get this pod in the ears of parents who need it. Please subscribe, review and share this podcast with just one parent that you think might like it.

0:13:51 - (Christy Howarth): Until next time, friend. Remember, as Matthew L. Jacobson said so well, behind every young child who believes in himself is a parent who believed first.