Well, of course. He or she goes to school happily, the rebbes
or teachers are pleased with their progress. They know the
parsha well on Shabbos, and the Chumosh. So
well, in fact, that they don't even need to look in.
We know the children with reading problems. They started
having problems right at the beginning, and they have always
needed endless support and extra practice. "My child learned
easily enough and no one ever mentioned difficulties."
In the course of my work I see plenty of children with
reading difficulties. As mentioned above, they usually have a
history of struggle. Then I see other children who are
brought to me for `other concerns' like lack of or reduced
concentration and comprehension. Of course, I always check
the reading, despite being told by the parents that this is
not the problem. And in fact, when I put sight unseen text in
front of them, they manage quite well. However, I have rarely
come across a child who does not mix up something, like, for
instance, ayin and alef, chof and ches
or sin, samach and sof.
These are `same sound' errors and they are even more common
than confusing resh and daled or other `look
alike' mistakes. Perhaps the ones that disturb me the most
are the `almost sound the same' mistakes. The best examples
are tzaddi and zayin, gimmel and koof or
kof or fey and veis.
There are four questions parents might have with regard to
this. 1) How do these errors occur? 2) Does my child do this,
and how can I tell? 3) Why does it matter if it still sounds
good, especially in the case of real `sound alike' mistakes,
when they really do sound the same? And 4) What do we do
about it?
The answer to Question One is: When children learn alef-
beis, they are usually very young. Often, too young to
make some of the fine distinctions that we expect from them.
The visual mistakes are so obviously possible that there is
usually some emphasis on making sure that children get the
differences between these letters clear. However, it is not
as obvious that the child cannot make fine auditory
distinctions at this age, either. An overriding problem
exists, however, that once a child moves to vowels and making
syllables, they are thought of as being `past' alef-
beis, and the names and sounds of the letters are not
reinforced. The child simply forgets, or needs some level of
effort to recall the name, thus all these errors creep in
unchecked.
How can we tell this is happening? Simple. Take a random
alef-beis series, including final letters (recall on
this is often very weak), and ask the child to repeat it as
fast as possible. The `race' makes the child say the first
thing that comes to their mind rather than thinking out each
letter. If the child cannot or refuses to go quickly, but
labors along, checking or self-correcting, then this should
give you an indication that the alef-beis is not well
ingrained.
How much it matters depends on the problem. If the child is
only confusing `same sound' letters, then their reading will
not suffer. However, when they get older and start to read
for meaning, they need to draw on banks of words used and
translated in the past. Many words in Hebrew can sound the
same, but have greatly different spellings and meanings. They
may see a word spelled pay sof ches and translate it
as Pesach, the festival, instead of `doorway.' When
you consider this further, you will see that this child will
have a very confused and useless memory bank to call on,
which cannot be relied upon and learning will become
difficult.
This will then be the cause for falling behind, or for
behavioral problems. This problem is compounded further when
there are the other sorts of confusions. The child may well
be davening complete rubbish. I have seen this
continue into adulthood.
So what do we do about this? Prevention is ultimately better
than cure. Teach reading as late as possible.
Unfortunately, no matter how much is said about this subject,
and the numerous reports presented about the benefit of
learning later, it seems the system will not change. However,
at home, even when the cheder or kindergarten moves
off to start vowels, keep going over the alef-beis
again and again, and LISTEN carefully to what the child says.
Besides stopping these sort of errors, it will make letter
recognition completely `second nature.' This frees up some of
the brain power used for letter recognition, allowing the
next stage of the reading process to be that bit easier.
If an older child is found with these problems, then go back
to basics and go over and over these confusions. However, you
are working against a strong habit now, and the going will
not be easy.
Any child whose reading is below par should be seen by an
expert to determine if there are other underlying causes for
these difficulties. This is especially so in cases where
practice makes frustration, rather than perfection.
