Reading is an important part of school and learning, whether or not a child has ADHD. If a child is able to comprehend reading material and retain that information. This involves not only understanding words, but remembering, organizing, analyzing and constructing meaning from those words. If students are unable to read well, every area of academics is impacted. It is important that children with ADHD receive the right resources to improve their reading skills.

Inattention and Reading Problems

When your child with ADHD can read fluently with you, but has trouble understanding or remembering what he just read, it may be that he has problems with sustained attention. Students with ADHD can often fall behind while reading, missing phrases in the text, or skipping over words or sentence etc. This may be especially true when passages are long and complex. Boredom and fatigue can take over and attention can quickly wander elsewhere.

Working Memory Deficit

In addition to remaining alert and resisting distractions, reading comprehension requires a student to be able to recall what has been read in preceding sentences and paragraphs. This way, they can develop and modify an adequate working understanding of the message of each section of the text and how those components are related to one another. Processing and integrating all this information is complex. A student must be able to sort through the concepts in the text, select the most pertinent information, hold that information in mind and then analyze it.

A child should also be able to retrieve, relate and apply relevant prior knowledge quickly and effectively in order to draw inferences. Keeping track of multiple concepts at once and continuously self-monitoring to make sure what they are reading makes sense, can be very difficult for a student with impaired working memory, often a problem for children with ADHD.

Reading Problems and ADHD

If you’re concerned about your child’s reading comprehension, talk to her pediatrician. They may be able to suggest if the challenges are related to other reading disabilities such as dyslexia. As a parent, you may try some of these steps:

1. Read to your child, even if they know how to read. Their listening skills are often stronger than their reading skills.
2. Engage their imagination and encourage them to visualize the events in the story being narrated to them.
3. Show them how books are organized. Helping them understand the structure, paying attention to caption, charts, section headings etc. can all be very valuable in reading.
4. When reading a book, stop occasionally to ask your child what they think might happen next. This requires them to integrate what she has learnt so far about characters and storyline.
5. Show interest in what your child is reading. Ask them to narrate the story or plot, or about characters.

There are so many strategies that you can adopt to improve reading comprehension in ADHD kids. With proper guidance, you can help your child gain proper reading skills and confidence.