Adults Learn to Empathize with Struggling Readers

Parents of children who struggle with reading were encouraged to understand what their children are going through at a seminar this week in Kennesaw.

The first step is empathy, said Jennifer Hasser, director of . Hasser spoke at in Kennesaw to Cobb parents of special needs children, teachers and advocates.

“(Parents) are frustrated because they don’t understand where it’s coming from,” Hasser said of the struggles. “They want to fix it, but they don’t know how.”

The first exercise Hasser had attendees do was read sentences from backwards type. The adults struggled to read the words and had to work on sounding them out. “This is designed to make it hard on you because you know how to read, but (the children) don’t see it any differently,” Hasser said.

Intelligence and reading are not the same thing, and reading isn’t developmental, Hasser said. “People think you’re going to grow into it,” she said. “You don’t just grow into things that are skills like that.”

A reading comprehension exercise involved nursery rhymes that were rewritten using complex words, and then parents answered questions about what they had read.

Another exercise illustrated dysgraphia, which is where someone lacks the fine motor skills to write. Participants had to trace a star by looking at its reflection in a mirror while someone else covered their hand.

People drew shaky lines and couldn’t seem to move their pens left and right. Some even closed their eyes, which Hasser said was a way of trying to use their motor memory to compensate for not being able to see their hands.

Writing is the hardest thing for a person with dysgraphia to do, Hasser said. “You can have every intention of doing it like other people are, but you don’t know how,” she said.

Acworth resident Deborah Fotsch attended the seminar to find ways to help her daughter, who has autism. She said the workshop "just kind of tips the surface."

“We just need our own education or to take (Hasser) home with us," she said. Every parent of a special needs child needs to know what helps their child, Fotsch said. “Every parent here, they’re all good parents," she said. "But there’s so much to learn."