I recently sat down with two powerhouse guests who have devoted their careers to struggling readers: Laura Stewart, Chief Academic Officer at 95 Percent Group, and Brett Tingley, founder and president of Parents for Reading Justice. All three of us share something beyond our work. We are moms of struggling readers.
Laura spends her days working with teachers across the country, and she hears the same thing over and over: “Our kids can’t comprehend the text.” But when she digs deeper, it usually isn’t a comprehension problem at all.
Think of it as an iceberg. Comprehension is the part above the water. Below the surface are the foundational skills that were never fully developed. And Laura was very clear that foundational skills mean more than phonemic awareness and phonics. They include:
This is why the “wait and see” approach fails our kids, especially if they are struggling readers. All three of us have heard it, and all three of us were shaking our heads. Your child cannot afford to wait and see. Early identification, accurate assessment, and getting to the root issue matter at every age. It’s never too late.
Brett raised something that I think every parent of a teenage struggling reader needs to hear. By the time struggling readers reach junior high or high school, they haven’t experienced one bad moment. They have experienced failure every day, all day, for ten or more years. And too often they’ve been shamed for it. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not paying attention. Your parents didn’t read to you enough.
That is chronic, and it erodes something precious: the cognitive bandwidth to persevere at hard things. Laura put it beautifully. When failure is all a child has known, we have to engineer early wins. Small, incremental steps of success that rebuild their willingness to try.
Brett shared a story from her podcast co-host, Kareem Weaver, who taught in Oakland. He worked with students nobody else wanted, and he would tell them, “I will help you, but you’ve got to trust me this one last time.” Every adult says that. But when those students began to see real success, the bond was sealed. I can validate that teaching an older child to read is more than an academic win. It can save a life. That is not an exaggeration! The stakes for our kids’ futures, their mental health, and their sense of self-worth are real.
So what can you do? Brett’s answer might surprise you, because it isn’t about flashcards. It’s about showing up.
Brett started out as what she calls “the cupcake mom.” The mom who brought cupcakes. The one who started asking questions about how reading was being taught. She admits that things went a little sideways. But she kept going. She organized a grassroots parent group, helped flip her district to the Science of Reading, then helped bring it to the state of Ohio. Now she does this work nationally. Today she works shoulder to shoulder with her district, bringing them new ideas from the conferences she attends.
Her advice for parents of struggling readers: form a parent group, even if your district is getting it right. Professionalize it. Run it like a business. Get involved with your school board and leadership. Start looking at what is being taught and how. Parents are not a nuisance to the system. We are a huge asset.
As a certified Orton-Gillingham Tutor, I specialize in exactly the kids we talked about in this episode: the middle school, and high school struggling readers who slipped through the cracks. What this conversation confirmed for me is that the path forward for older kids has two lanes that must run together. The skill work (rebuilding foundational pieces) and the heart work (rebuilding trust and confidence). You cannot do one without the other.
You don’t need a degree in education to start helping your child. Here are three things you can do:
Laura closed our conversation with a message I want every parent to hear. Your child is abundant with gifts to the world. Dyslexia is a neurological difference, not a character flaw, and it is never too late to learn to read. Share the stories of people who are thriving with dyslexia. Make sure your child knows they are not a failure.
Imagine if somebody says to you, 'You're not broken. Your brain just works differently.
For more from Laura, check out 95 Percent Group and the book Science of Reading 3.0, which includes Brett’s piece on parents as advocates. We aren’t just teaching our teens to read. We are giving them back their futures.
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