Learning to read is no easy feat.

And for parents whose children are struggling to find momentum, it can be difficult to know how to help.

Differing brain structures and functions can make learning to read seem like an uphill battle, but there is hope, say two Brock University experts in the field.

Professor of Child and Youth Studies John McNamara says learning disabilities should be thought of as a difficulty in processing information arising out of small, but important, differences in brain structures that are present at birth.

He also notes that researchers exploring the genetics of learning disabilities have found a few genes associated with learning disabilities, including those affecting reading.

“The good news is that our brains are malleable and even though a child may have a genetic-based learning disability, with effective instruction we can shape the brain in ways that can compensate for and reduce these processing difficulties,” says McNamara, an educational psychologist who studies young children with learning and reading disabilities.

Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies Erin Panda studies how the brain enables people to understand language, read and control attention. Panda’s educational neuroscience research seeks to know how these processes differ between individuals and change with development, learning and effective intervention.

Panda says different parts of the brain are involved in the various tasks of learning to read. One part recognizes letters and letter combinations, another stores words and their meanings in our internal ‘dictionary,’ while other parts hear and interpret the sounds of letters and words.

“The brain is not naturally wired for reading,” says Panda, the co-director of Brock’s Developmental Neuroscience Lab. “To be able to learn how to read and decode words, children must be able to link the activity of those different brain areas together, which is challenging for some children.”

Panda and McNamara have several tips to guide parents and educators in helping children learn to read.

They agree that systematic, explicit instruction in the reading process is the most effective way to support children’s reading.

Panda says a new emphasis in Ontario schools on “structured literacy” has potential to improve reading outcomes for children who find learning to read challenging. This approach teaches children foundational reading skills, such as how to sound out combinations of letters, so they can form representations of letter patterns in their minds to draw upon in other situations.

As children learn more combinations of letters and their corresponding sounds, they can put these together to build words, she says.

She points to Bob Books as an example of a “decodable book” that facilitates this process.

“These are books children can use to develop their sounding-out skills, so that they read on their own and not rely on memorization,” she says.

Parents and tutors can help, too.

“We’ve seen that when supported with a strong tutor, even once or twice a week, children with learning disabilities can succeed with reading,” McNamara says. “We’ve even seen changes in the way children’s brains process information as a result of effective tutoring in the reading process.”

In addition to seeking tutoring support “as early as possible,” McNamara encourages caregivers to look out for biologically based tendencies, such as temperament, and create “an environment that complements or supports these tendencies.”

“For example, provide quiet spaces for a more reserved child as they’re learning to read, and also give opportunities for this child to practise being outgoing in situations that call for this,” he says.