Children Learn To Read In Their Own Ways

Becoming a competent reader is forced upon children in school by third grade in order for them to keep pace with the curriculum goals of the later grades that involve reading. But there is no biological imperative that we learn to read at a particular age and learning to read later than occurs in school is a common occurrence among homeschoolers, particularly unschoolers. Nonetheless, the natural ways we can learn to read are overshadowed by the methods and teaching schedules of school, and when one’s job performance is based on how you make children read on schedule it becomes difficult to accommodate late or early readers.

The issue gets more confused when the solution becomes a medical or psychological intervention, which may be necessary in some cases, but to default so easily to blaming a child’s body or psyche for a failure to read on schedule has become a common burden and cost for children and their families to bear. Further, the failure of the scientifically designed and tested reading and math methods that schools have implemented hit a nadir this year. The Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research notes in May, 2026:

Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.

Some parents homeschool a child who is“behind” in school reading so they can try other methods than what school uses or give the reading process more time than school will, but more than one parent has told me that they decided to homeschool because their child could already read but was bored in school because the teacher had to spend so much time working with those struggling to read. I wonder why these teachers do not use the good readers to take turns to read aloud to the class and help the nonreaders, which is what happens in many homes where learning is part of life instead of being a task to accomplish to receive a grade. In my own experience, my daughters learned to read by adults, their sisters, and friends reading books aloud to them, seeing their parents and others read for pleasure and information, and asking questions about books and phonics in the process. Here’s a good description of the process from Growing Without Schooling 42.

LEARNING TO READ AT 9

A reader writes:

... Rose, 9, is learning to read. It is very exciting watching her discover this world of reading and writing at her own pace, with a little help when she needs it. This last summer I asked our neighbor friend, who is 9, to teach Rose to read. I gave her one dollar for half an hour. She did this three times, taught Rose to read three books, and now Rose is off and rolling on her own. Since then she has been spending more time writing and has learned all her letters by heart with only one lesson from me (I do not pressure the children to learn things they do not want to, knowing that when they are ready they will pick it up rapidly, and it’s true). Last week she asked a friend to teach her some new words and now she’s been writing them by heart on many of her pictures ...

Rose taught herself math with only two questions to me. Two questions and two answers, and now she adds, subtracts, multiplies, and counts by 3, 5, 10, etc. When she was seven she asked, “Mom, how many months till my birthday?” I said, “Five.” She said, “How many months in a year?” I said 12 and then she thought a little and replied, “Then my birthday was 7 months ago.” And ever since she’s been accumulating more and more math facts, through playing with and spending money, talking to friends, listening, and playing with a Speak & Math occasionally.

...The children spend most of their time singing, playing, preparing many of their own meals, doing beautiful art projects, pondering self-initiated questions about God, planning for peace, weaving, sewing, and just learning through doing. It is so amusing to come upon Rose and her younger sister discussing numbers or how to spell cat, so serious they are.

Recently my 11-year-old told my parents that he wanted to improve his spelling, learn handwriting, improve his math and have more structure. When my mother told me this was proof that I was failing, at first I did feel like a failure until I realized that this is what self-direction is all about. He knew what he needed and was asking for it—fine, now we know what his program is. For him to know what he needed is to me a success story ...