Being a psychologist, I'm sure I am involved with more severe problems than most parents see. Still, I'll bet there are many children out there who have problems with reading and parents don't know what to do about it. Maybe this chapter will give you some help if this describes you.

Many years ago, I had a good friend who was talking to me about a problem his little daughter was having in school. She was having many problems, but the main one seemed to be with reading. It seems she not only was a poor reader, but she actually hated reading and felt extremely anxious and threatened by reading. She had some very bad experiences in school at the hands of a teacher who made her read aloud and humiliated her when she made mistakes. Naturally, she made many mistakes. I expect you don't need to be a psychologist to see why she hated reading.

Since I was a psychologist, and he was my friend, I couldn't let this go by. I offered to evaluate his daughter and see if there was something I could do to help her. I think he was glad about the offer because he accepted it readily. His daughter was a very sweet girl who was feeling extremely inadequate and partly because of that she was being inadequate. She had some very traumatic experiences from her educational system.

Right off I could see the act of reading or anything associated with reading would produce a strong anxiety response in my little patient. Even picking up a book or talking about picking up a book would cause an anxiety reaction. This poor little girl had suffered a lot because of reading.

My first job was to be sure my attention would be a reward for her. All I needed to do was to treat her kindly and be nice to her. That was very easy to do because she was a very likable person and she warmed up to me immediately. First, I associated times with me, which she enjoyed, with a book and reading. I would read to her for a bit as well as talk and visit with her. This helped to reduce her anxiety about books and reading very quickly. Now, books were associated with a pleasant time and they were no longer anxiety provoking for her.

Next, she and I outlined a behavior modification program to help her learn to read. Mostly I was the one outlining the program, but she was in on the idea and felt it was hers as well as mine.

Our arrangement at first was for her to take her beginning reader and read to me from it. We sat together on the couch and looked at the book together. As we decided at the beginning, I would simply count the number of correct words she read. I would not count or even comment on the incorrect words. The way I counted the words was to click a golf counter (the same one that helped my daughter stop biting her nails) each time she said a word correctly.

This arrangement caused the click of the counter to be a reward for her. Also, I heaped on the approval when I made the count. Soon, she would look at me questioningly when she didn't know a word, but I would just be silent. She would then try to sound out the word from the spelling of it. Sometimes she would get it right and get a click on the counter. She was having a very good time doing this. Actually, we both were.

With this process she started getting more words correct, but mainly she was no longer afraid of reading. She actually was enjoying the whole thing. My primary purpose was not to teach her to read, but to teach her to enjoy reading instead of to fear it.

That was early in my career and I believed things the psychology books said more than I do now. The books said the ubiquitous M & M candies were a powerful reinforcer for children and recommended them partly because they melt in the child's mouth rather than the psychologist's hand. Because of this I decided to bring some M & M's to our sessions and give her one whenever she would get a certain number of words right. I would keep increasing the number required to merit an M & M. She liked this fine and it worked very well. Today, I don't think the M & M reward is all it's cracked up to be. I think the attention was the real thing that was working. Anyway, it worked extremely well. She was learning to read as well as to like reading.

Now, I don't claim to be a reading teacher so I didn't try actually to teach reading. I hoped after she learned to like the reading process her regular teachers could make better progress in teaching her to read.

She actually improved her reading skills greatly by this process and no longer avoided books. As a matter of fact, my wife and I were at my friend's house one evening for a social call and my little friend ran and got her Little Bear book and jumped in my lap and read it to me voluntarily. That was a real treat for me.

I was still concerned that she would discriminate between me and other people and like to read to me but still be afraid to read to other people. Behavior modification rule 9 says that children will discriminate between people who treat them differently and behave differently for each.

I wanted her to generalize the feelings about reading she had learned to associate with me to other people. To help with this, I asked her parents to do the same things with her I was doing, only they didn't need to use the counter and such. At that point she was reading for the fun of it and her parents could also make it fun for her. I also encouraged her parents to get as many different people as possible to read with her in the same manner. Then, I also asked her parents to have a conference with her teacher when school started again and inform her of what we had been doing. Most of all we wanted the fun of reading to generalize to the schoolroom.

This little girl is now a woman with a son of her own. She is still my dear friend and she still has problems like we all do--maybe more than we all do. She had a very difficult beginning. I'm afraid some things do damage children permanently and she had some very difficult emotional problems during her early years in school. One reason I am directing this book to teachers as well as parents is because teachers can have a profound effect on children and they can permanently damage a child. A damaged child is a sad thing to happen. They grow up to be damaged adults, and I see many of them in my own practice. I hope I have been able to help them overcome the early damage that was done. It sure would have been easier to prevent the damage at the outset.

If your child is having a problem with reading, you can help, using a process similar to the one I've described. This is not the same as doing the child's homework for her. Your goal in this case is to help your child enjoy and feel more comfortable with the act of reading. You are not trying to teach your child to read--that is the teacher's job. You are providing a rewarding atmosphere which will increase the likelihood your child will learn to enjoy reading. The extra practice is good--practice helps when one is trying to learn a new skill, particularly one as complex as reading. But the important thing is the reward. Remember, your job is not to teach reading, but to make the process rewarding. So, no criticizing or scolding, only praise when she gets something right. Criticism and scolding are worse in this case than doing nothing at all.