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Trauma and Reading
Posted December 3, 2019
By Dr. Steven Dykstra, reprinted with permissionDon Meichenbaum, one of the world’s leading experts on trauma and violence, and one of the most influential mental health professionals of the last century, said one thing is more important to traumatized children than anything else. More important than therapy, more important than social programs, more important than anything else. The research shows that the single most powerful predictor of their ability to overcome the trauma and survive their circumstances is the ability to read. If they can read, they have a chance to find success in school and overcome all those terrible things in their lives. If they can’t, school will only be another source of pain and failure added to all the other sources of pain and failure. If they can read, they can benefit from therapy and everything else we may try to do for them. If they can’t read, all of that is a waste of time.
I work with severely traumatized children everyday. I work with victims of torture, abuse, and every kind of crime and trauma you can’t imagine. I see places and go places everyday that many of you will never see. My advice to all of you who teach is to resist your good, natural, maternal, parental, protective impulse to save these children from what surrounds them. Do what you can to clothe and comfort them, but know it will never be enough. You will not save them. Instead, understand that teaching them, and especially teaching them to read is the salvation you have to offer and the salvation they most need. Don’t let their poverty, stories, and circumstances distract you from that, not for a minute.
Most of these children have figured out ways to live with the tragedies in their lives. As terrible as it is, they’ve reached some kind of balance with much of it. What they can never learn to live with is illiteracy and ignorance. They know how to get through their neighborhood without being killed, and they’ve learned to fall back asleep after the nightmares wake them up. You couldn’t do it. I can’t do it. But they can. Necessity has forced it upon them. But there is no way around it if they can’t read.
As a girl told me, she could live with the rapes. She could get over the years sleeping on the floor, or a couch, and being homeless and hungry. In time, all of that would get further and further behind her. But not being able to read was “everyday, forever.” It never went away. It would be there again, tomorrow, “f*****g with my life” in a way all the trauma never could.
Contrary to what we imagine, most victims of trauma, even those with PTSD manage to live with it fairly well, even without therapy. We can’t say the same of illiteracy and academic failure.
Yes, all those other problems make teaching them to read harder, sometimes much harder. Climb that mountain. Don’t waste time trying to tear it down.
About the Author
Dr. Steven Dykstra is a psychologist, advocate, and troublemaker in the reading world. He has worked with the most severely traumatized and mentally ill children for more than 25 years. His passion for reading comes from the recognition that the thousands of children he has served often pay the highest price for our failures and mistakes. Dr. Dykstra is part of the Advisory Group for the International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction.
22 responses to “Trauma and Reading”
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© 2021 Consortium on Reaching Excellence in Education®
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By Dr. Steven Dykstra, reprinted with permission
Wow. This is exactly one issue/concern that was raised by a group of teachers and school principal. What a powerful reminder of our most important focus and responsibility that will have a lasting, positive impact. Thank you.
great article….believe it to be so true…..you can read wonderful things and get “lost” in the story….Is this why Dolly Parton gave books away monthly to children….I am sure she knew something about how a book/ability to read can create some very special places in ones life
Thank you. I work with children like this daily. I said this today. “If we give our kids any skill when we leave this place (foster care out of home placement) the most important will be the ability to read”
For some kids while language approach will never work. It’s how their brains process. Sight words are torture. School curriculum insist we offer that method. True phonics is denied except in speech therapy. So, please break from the expected and the system to teach in a way these few can learn when other methods have failed. Kids bright in math but failing in reading need a pure phonics option.
Children who cannot read are tortured every day in school, and far too often give up. And by giving up I mean self destructive behaviors all the way to suicide. These children are the walking wounded that our school systems are creating in abundance. They will not be contributors to our society, and will be lost to their families and friends. Thanks for a great but hard to read article.
It’d be great to have the specific research backing up the claims in the blog.
I am sorry for your district’s insistence that whole language be used to teach students to read. In our state I also would not define 40% as “these few” students who cannot read at proficiency — 40% is a very large group of students who are not proficient readers.
Dr. Dykstra, As a Reading Specialist at a school for traumatized children, I would like to know where I can access this research in order to present it to administration. We use direct sequential explicit phonological/phonic instruction in the primary grades but the upper grades could use some evidence based instruction as well. Please advise. Thank you. Amckearin@hotmail.com Or readingspecialist@st.annshome.org.
These are the students teachers work with each and every day. We may not know the problems students may bring to school with them. Reading is fundamental. The students can escape to a different world if they know how to read. Sit down and read to and with the little and big students. The conversations you have with them will help them escape their problems. You’ll have a friend for life.🥰
Yes, learning to read changes lives. It is the road out of the housing project, food insecurity, and lack of appropriate clothing to opportunities for good jobs and self sufficiency. More importantly, it changes how a student feels, from embarrassed and worthless to self-confident and hopeful.
Thank you so much for this article! It is so timely. Teaching children to read should be at the top of our lists. Be a literate person is essential to making it I today’s world.
Personal experience with Reading Trauma led me to become a researcher, reading teacher, and literacy professor so others would not experience what I did in the 1950’s
This article is great and so true.
As a trauma specialist with an education background, I’m chuffed to read a post like this from someone so adamant about how important reading is, and how this skill is neglected in the crisis of the child’s state. The state needs to be dealt with. Absolutely. AND the child needs whatever help support is required to learn to read well.
I use Samuel Blumenfeld learn-to-read program for the Littles and the older illiterate students. For those that have basic reading skills but very poor comprehension, we do paired reading. I get two books of the student’s choice and I read while they follow. We do this for 3-5 books, then we begin to trade. Me a paragraph, the student a paragraph with me immediately providing any word the reader stumbles over (the goal being comprehension) and we do this every day for weeks. We discuss the books’ content, intent, and meaning, and these discussions get ever better as we continue this practice. It works. As an aside, we do this together in whatever way the student feels safe – sometimes in the classroom, sometimes in my office, sometimes sitting on the floor together behind the utility box where we can’t be seen. The child’s trauma informs the safety-making and the paired reading creates success in literacy.
Dr. Dykstra,
I’m a structured literacy teacher who works with students who have experienced trauma and I was eager to share this with my district leaders as we embark on an effort to incorporate SEL practices. I’m advocating that reading is integral to this effort and have been asked for the studies referenced here. Could you point me in the right direction?
Thank you!
Joelle Nappi
Jnappi4@gmail.com
Hi Joelle. Here is Dr. Dykstra’s reply.
There is isn’t one study or even two. This information is from hundreds of studies and decades of Meichenbaum’s experience. You can’t do a study like we do with kids, give one group X, give the other group Y and see how it works out. You can’t do that with trauma. What we know is traumatized kids struggle at school. We know poor reading makes those struggles a lot worse. We know failure at school for a traumatized child is nearly a death sentence (all those kids in prison) but success gives them a chance to recover. Understanding where Don Meichenbaum was coming from requires a mastery of several different bodies of literature, and a lifetime of experience. It isn’t like saying X is better than Y. Don was saying teaching traumatized kids to read is very often the difference between giving them a fighting chance, and giving them no chance at all. Here is a link to Dr. Meichenbaum’s research, Understanding Resilience of Children and Adults: Implications for Prevention and Interventions. http://www.hostinguc.com/core/understanding-resilience-of-children-and-adults.pdf.
I have just read the Meichenbaum article you cited for Joelle. I have found a reference to reading comprehension as a resilience factor – but no statement that failure in reading is in some sense worse than the other kinds of trauma listed for example or the ACE questions. I would like to find such a statement – or some research that would directly support the (very powerful) anecdotal evidence you provide. I know there is no one definitive study – but does one stand out in your mind – either a study or a statement by a trauma expert like Meichenbaum?
Dr. Dykstra has provided some clarification.
Meichebaum never said, and I never said, reading failure is worse than other traumas. He said (at a conference in Egg Harbor, WI) that learning to read is the most important thing to a child who has been traumatized, more important than therapy or any other single thing we can do for that child who is trying to recover from trauma.
The comment is not about trauma, it is about what we do after trauma. It is not about the worst trauma, or failure to read as a trauma. Neither Don nor I ever suggested failing to read was the worst possible trauma. I know children who have been tortured, sold, abducted, made to eat their pets as a punishment… Trust me, all of those are worse than not being able to read. But once we plucked those kids out of their nightmares, nothing was more important than giving them some success in school, and that means learning to read.
Dr. Dykstra,
I agree with you 100%. Illiteracy is a form of child neglect and even child abuse. Some say that children that can’t read have emotional and psychological problems; teach them how to read and they won’t act so crazy…
Adults that can’t read are suspended in their childhood in various ways and degrees: emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, academically, and spiritually. The only cure for America’s illiteracy epidemic is literacy. The key to teach a child, teen, or adult how to read is proper instruction. Proper instruction is delivered by properly trained teachers. Do not blame teachers, TRAIN THEM.
Thank you very much for your passion and work, it helps validate my experience,
John Corcoran, Author of The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read
As a clinical psychologist who has worked with trauma victims including children, one of the most important things to help them establish is some sense of control and predictability in their lives. Not knowing how to read like the other students in the class and not knowing when the teacher may call you out by asking you to do something that exposes your “reading stupidity” in an ongoing chronic stressor for these children. Being able to read, being good at your schoolwork, knowing that you are capable of dealing with a new school or academic problem many times a day gives the student a sense of control – an internal locus of control that reinforces their confidence to think “I can do this!” The opposite adds to the believe there is no use in trying to do better. It is not within your control. Knowing how to read in school leads to a sense of competence that helps the student believe they can exercise control over other aspects of their life – that they are not just be a product of the zip code lottery that exists in our country. This knowledge coupled with the relationship with a teacher they know truly cares about them is in fact therapy. Therapy of the most important kind. Remember, nothing improves self-esteem more than success.
Thank you for your insightful op-ed. I am a reading specialist and I had a conversation with a colleague who has a MS in Clinical Social Work and years of experience working with children in trauma. This is her researched-base response: “When children are exposed to chronic or complex-recurrent trauma, the brain’s capacity to think critically and retain information is altered. While this isn’t necessarily permanent, those neuropathways have to be repaired before any real “learning” can occur. Students who have been truly traumatized are unable to put these events “behind them”, as the brain has developed to perceive the majority of interactions as a direct threat to their safety. In order to turn off the brain’s stress response, children need to feel comfortable in their environment- and with adults and authority figures as a whole- which is why things like therapy, coping strategies, and mentorship have to be in place before an academic focus. Literacy is truly a liferaft in a sea of poverty and adversity for traumatized students, however to say that “even those with PTSD manage to live with it fairly well, even without therapy” is a farce. Resilience comes from knowing you have significance and really matter to someone, not from scholastic achievement. “
Exactly this.