Early Literacy Warning Signs Parents Should Never Ignore

By: Becca Phillips, Advocate

As a prior special education teacher myself who has worked with and taught many students with dyslexia over the years and am Orton Gillingham trained myself, here are some really important and key early literacy warning signs that parents should not ignore in their children. If you’re wondering whether your child’s reading development is on track, or if something doesn’t quite feel right, take some time to read through this blog and don’t ignore that gut feeling you have. 

Early literacy struggles do not mean that your child isn’t smart, motivated, or capable, but it does mean your child may need explicit, structured support earlier rather than later. The earlier we can act and intervene, the easier it is to close the gap. Dyslexia is a neurobiological condition, thus it stems from differences in brain structure and function, particularly affecting language processing regions. It does not have any reflection on a child’s intelligence.

Signs that can be frequently dismissed but are important to know are:

• A family history of reading difficulties or dyslexia

• Significant gaps between verbal intelligence and reading skills

• Strong listening comprehension but weak independent reading

• Difficulty learning sight words despite repetition

• Behavioral issues that appear primarily during literacy tasks

Reading is not a skill or process that comes naturally to children like speaking does. The brain has to be explicitly taught how to connect sounds to letters (phonics) and how to blend those sounds into words (phoneme blending). The process of learning to read encompasses mastering five core components: Phonemic Awareness (individual sounds in words), Phonics (letters and sounds), Fluency (reading speed & expression), Vocabulary (word meaning), and Comprehension (understanding text). All of these skills build upon each other and ultimately it starts with recognizing sounds and letters before progressing to reading fluently, and finally understanding the text's meaning.

When there is a breakdown in this process, children often compensate in ways that hide the problem, until reading demands increase in later grades. Starting in third grade, children are transitioning from learning how to read to reading to learn. If students who are still struggling in learning to read as they transition into intermediate grades, frustration, anxiety, and academic struggles often follow.

Let’s talk about early warning signs that you may see in Preschool or Kindergarten age children. Common signs of early literacy struggles or “red flags” can include:

• Difficulty learning or retaining letter names

• Trouble identifying or producing rhyming words

• Struggling to clap syllables or break words into parts

• Struggling to clap the number of words in a sentence

• Limited interest in books or avoiding read-alouds

• Difficulty learning songs, nursery rhymes, or the alphabet

• Speech delays or difficulty pronouncing words clearly

• Difficulty in identifying beginning or ending sounds in a word

All of these skills fall under a skill called phonological awareness, which is a critical foundational skill for reading. Weaknesses in phonological awareness are one of the earliest indicators of dyslexia.

Common signs of literacy struggles in Kindergarten - 2nd grade can include:

• Difficulty matching letters to their sounds

• Guessing words instead of sounding them out by their individual sounds 

• Trouble blending sounds to read simple words (ie. /c/ /a/ /t/ to read the word ‘cat’ OR /u/ /p/ to read the word ‘up’)

• Inconsistent reading of the same word

• Reading very slowly or with extreme effort

• Avoidance of reading tasks

• Difficulty spelling simple, phonetically regular words

If your child is receiving consistent literacy instruction and they are showing any of these signs, it is not something to just “wait out” and hope that it improves, it is something you want to raise concern about. 

As children transition into older grades like 2nd - 4th, those who struggle in literacy are often working hard to mask their difficulties, which can look like:

• Reading accuracy improves but remains very slow

• Poor spelling despite memorization efforts

• Difficulty decoding unfamiliar or multi-syllable words

• Weak reading comprehension due to mental fatigue

• Strong oral vocabulary but weak written output

• Emotional responses to reading (tears, anger, avoidance)

This is often when parents may hear things from the school team like, “They’re just not trying or putting a lot of effort into reading,” or “They need to be reading more at home.” As a prior teacher, who as I mentioned work with a lot of students with reading difficulties and diagnoses of dyslexia, and spent several years on my schools Multi Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS/RTI team), I can tell you: practice or increasing time spent reading books does not fix a decoding problem. Direct, systematic, and explicit instruction does.

If you notice any of the above warning signs:

1. Trust your instincts. Parents are often right long before test scores show a problem.

2. Ask for data. Request information on phonics, decoding, and fluency from the school team, not just reading levels or computer based reading scores.

3. Request a formal, comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation. You do not need to wait for the school to suggest one, you have the right as a parent to request an evaluation at any point. 

4. Look for structured literacy instruction. Programs should be explicit, systematic, and phonics based.

5. Avoid the “wait and see” trap. Time does not fix reading difficulties. Schools may try to dismiss you or push you off, wanting to “wait and see”, but continue to push for an evaluation and ensure the school is implementing evidence based reading interventions as well. 

Early intervention can truly change the entire trajectory of a child’s academic life and it’s important to intervene the minute you start having concerns.