How to Help a Child with ADHD Learn to Read: Expert Tips

Children with ADHD often face learning challenges and may suffer from additional learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dysgraphia. However, even without the additional mental health or learning disability, children with ADHD struggle to focus on tasks like reading and writing.

But, not all children with ADHD will struggle to read, and some may only struggle with specific skills like reading comprehension, sounding out words, or focusing long enough to finish a story. Therefore, it is crucial to discover which parts of reading your child is struggling with so that appropriate reading strategies can be implemented.

Parents of children with ADHD may need to elicit extra to help their children work through their reading difficulties. This article contains some strategies that help kids with ADHD improve their reading comprehension skills, working memory, phonemic awareness, and overall reading skills in a fun and creative way.

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Does Having ADHD Make It Harder to Read?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder alone does not make reading harder, but the symptoms commonly present with the condition may cause or contribute to reading problems.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Symptoms that may affect reading skills:

• Inattention to details
• Struggles to focus
• Avoids or is reluctant to participate in tasks they find challenging
• Easily distracted
• Struggles to organize thoughts, tasks, or activities
• Easily feels overwhelmed
• Trouble retaining information
• Require sustained mental effort

Because kids with ADHD struggle to focus, organize thoughts, and often lack attention to details, reading is often seen as an onerous or tedious task. These symptoms are also why ADHD students have difficulty making connections needed to support reading comprehension.

Additionally, students with ADHD often read slower than their non-ADHD counterparts and cannot read for long periods. Therefore, without a proper diagnosis, kids with ADHD may come across as lazy or not-trying by teachers and parents.

It is also possible that a child with ADHD has dyslexia. This disability affects a child's ability to read due to an inability to recognize speech sounds and how they relate to letters or words. Another common condition that affects reading and writing is dysgraphia, a neurological condition affecting a person's ability to form written letters.

Many children with ADHD love stories, are creative, and have fantastic imaginations. However, the difficulties their ADHD symptoms present make reading challenging for these kids.

Reading Comprehension vs. Reading Skills

The ability to read words and reading comprehension are two different sets of skills. Many kids can read the words off the page perfectly but have difficulty retaining and repeating what they read. Other children find it a challenge to read the words, but when listening have no trouble repeating the main ideas, plot, and other essential aspects of the story.

Reading skills include decoding and sounding out words. In comparison, comprehension is about processing and understanding what has been read, recalling information from other stories or life experiences, and applying knowledge.

Reading Skills

• Recognizing sight words
• Knowing and producing letter sounds
• Decoding words and sounds
• Fluency and intonation
• Spelling

Comprehension skills

• Working Memory and retention
• The ability to reason and apply prior knowledge
• Understanding context clues

Tips to Help a Child with ADHD Learn to Read

Try Joon App

Joon is a unique app that can help children with ADHD improve their reading skills. This game-like program provides your child with a virtual pet (called a Doter) to take care of. As your child completes chores or assignments, they earn coins that can be used to purchase items to care for their Doter. The app is designed to make reading fun and engaging, with stories and challenges that are tailored to your child's reading level. By incorporating reading into the game mechanics, Joon can help children with ADHD develop their reading skills in a fun and interactive way. Click here to try a free trial.

Read to your child

Reading to your child is among the best things parents can do to encourage and increase reading ability. Listening to a story allows a child to focus less on the text and more on what is happening. Reading aloud also allows children to hear new words, intonation, and sentence structure. You can start reading right after birth (or even before) and should continue reading aloud even after your child can read themselves. Reading bigger books with chapters, even after your child learns to read, can help expose them to a bigger vocabulary and improves reading comprehension while they keep up with a more in depth plot. 

Engage your child in books

Practice active reading with your child when reading books. Pre-read the reading material and have questions prepared. For example, you can ask your child what they think will happen next, why a character behaved a particular way, or what they would do in the same situation.

You can also point to pictures and ask them to describe what they see or think is happening. Pick books with colorful and detailed illustrations when choosing books to read aloud. You can even use picture books without text and work together to create the story.

Allow children to stop and ask questions or make statements during story time. While it can feel frustrating to have your child interrupting you while reading, their questions and statements show they are engaged in the book and attempting to learn more and understand the story. 

Active reading is one of the best strategies to engage kids in a story and get them to talk and make real-life connections boosting understanding of the text.

Consider alternative delivery methods for reading as well, such as graphic novels or audio books. Both still expose children to words, engage their brains in reading comprehension, and may be more interesting or a preferred way to absorb a story for your child. Engaging with your ADHD child could help them enjoy reading more.

Ask questions

Open-ended questions stimulate the brain and build a wealth of cognitive connections. Kids with attention deficit disorder often possess creative and imaginative minds, so asking open-ended questions allows them to express that creative side while connecting to the story.

Open-ended questions are ones in which they have to provide more than a simple yes or no answer.

• Why do you think...?
• What do you think...?
• How would you...?
• If this happened to you, what would you do?
• How does this make you feel and why?
• Tell me about a time...

Questions prompt a child's brain to think about things from different vantage points. Questions also let children voice opinions and may, in turn, prompt them to ask questions to further their understanding of the text.

Suggest note-taking

Older children with a firm grasp of writing may benefit from note-taking while reading. Since ADHD makes it hard for children to focus, note-taking can assist children who have difficulty remembering details.

If reading for an assignment, students should go over response prompts before reading. Once they know what they are looking for, they can scan for a specific word or phrase instead of paying attention to every word on the page. Once they locate a keyword or phrase, they can take notes.

Speech-to-text is another helpful strategy students with ADHD can use for note-taking.

Create a book group

Create or sign your child up for a book group. Your local library may already have a group dedicated to helping children learn reading or other academic areas. Most children learn well when interacting with peers, and a book group provides extra support in a fun way.

Kids can talk about books, share ideas, and get help with passages they have trouble understanding. A book group also gives you a chance to meet other parents and learn new strategies.

Use Audiobooks

Since ADHD affects a person's ability to focus and pay attention, audiobooks are a useful tool when teaching reading, particularly for understanding a text. Listening to books while looking at them on the page will help kids recognize words, hear and isolate individual sounds and likely provide sustained attention because they don't have to work as hard on deciphering the text.

Recommended reading: The Best Reading Programs for Kids with ADHD

Play Word Games

Word games are fun interactive strategies that work particularly well with younger kids. However, even kids without ADHD can benefit from these games. You can create games on your own or find examples online.

• Word searches
• Rhyming games
• Word Bingo
• Blending Games
• Word Scrambles
• Sound-play or alliteration games

Read books that your child is interested in

Children are more likely to engage with a book that interests them. Take them to the library or allow them to search online for books they find interesting. It doesn't matter what the topic is or the book’s style. The goal is to get a book in their hands.

If your child chooses books that seem too young, that's ok! ADHD often delays a child's social-emotional development, so these books may benefit more than one development area!

Comics, magazines, graphic novels, etc., are all ok if it is what your child considers interesting.

Ask their teachers about their progress

Your child's teacher and the school should be your allies when seeking additional support. Students are typically diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school, and around the same time, reading difficulties emerge. Work closely with the school to develop and implement strategies at home and in the classroom.

If your child has a 504 or IEP at school, there will also be strategies and adaptions. For example, students may receive extra time on standardized exams or use sensory fidgets to help them pay attention.

Move at Their Pace

Society places a lot of pressure on parents and students to hit specific milestones by specific dates. But kids with ADHD learn at a different pace than their peers and may take longer to master the skill of reading.

Allow your child frequent breaks when reading and studying. Offer them movement breaks during which they can exert short bursts of energy and then refocus.

Takeaway

Kids with ADHD may face difficulties when learning to read, but that doesn't mean it is impossible or must be a constant uphill battle. Discovering what types of books interest your child is key, alongside implementing effective reading strategies at home and school.

Once you discover why your child struggles with reading, you can engage in games and activities to increase your child's reading level, comprehension, and overall confidence as a reader.