For some children, learning to read can be difficult. As a parent, you may become concerned if your child has not mastered the names and sounds of the letters of the alphabet by the first half of first grade. It may be helpful to discuss these concerns with your child's teacher. Keep in mind that just as children learn to walk and talk at different ages, they also learn to read at different ages.
Children also learn to read in different ways.
Some children, for example, seem to pay more attention to how language sounds and the differences created by different letters and letter combinations. Others seem to remember the whole word or phrase all at once, as if they took a mental picture of the word. Some children have great difficulty isolating the various sounds in words or blending the sounds of letters together to form a word. As a parent, you are in a good position to help your child learn to read. With some children, the process requires extreme patience.