Reading Comprehension Issues

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I am trying to put together a summer schedule for things to work on. I have some scenario/role play work planned to help with emotional awareness and theory of mind etc.

The thing I am concerned about is right now my son does very well with reading comprehension, but the questions are limited to rote facts. In the next couple of years they will be expected to infer motives, characters' emotions etc. We will be in the weeds. Right now, I have enough trouble getting him to understand that the "main point" of a reading is what the author intends to convey, not what is my son's favorite part. He just turned 7, if that helps.

Does anyone have helpful strategies to work on this or links to (hopefully, free) materials. It seems like a "light bulb" thing where I have to wait for him to get that other people have different feelings than him, so I wonder if that is the main thing I should focus on. Maybe make a social story about it with a lot of examples of how people might have different feelings about the same thing?

Any help will be very appreciated.

I don't have a child, but I'm on the spectrum, and I used to find that difficult. Not just for books, but for films.

I was a very smart kid, and my favourite film was The Lion King. When asked what the point of The Lion King is, or the main message of the story... my reply would probably have been something along the lines of '... It's about Lions. They sing.', especially at seven, and all the way up until 12-13 actually.

However, now I do very, very well at that, especially for films. Books I still have to mentally squint to see it. The way I learnt it was the way that you purposed, through 'social stories'. Especially through reading 'Tragic Life' stories. Because they're very plainly written, and explore authorial emotions in a very direct manner, it allowed me to understand it better without the distraction of description, metaphors and similes.

Although I don't necessarily suggest 'Tragic Life' stories as a valid method. I didn't really have any parental input, emotional, physical or supervisory, so I was just left to 'free-range'. *Shrugs*

It's nice to see your concern for your son. He will naturally improve at these things.

Another spectrumite here. I grew up undiagnosed (1960s) and severely hyperlexic. When I was your son's age, I could have listed all the major shipwrecks off the New England coast, when they took place, and how many people died - because I was already reading Edward Rowe Snow. But I couldn't have comprehended motives, except the obvious ones: "the people wanted to get off the ship so they wouldn't drown."

Now, I'm a writer. I play with motives, I get into characters' heads. Of course, some of that comes with age, and with growing up. But in my case, a lot of it came from reading. A lot of reading. I've tried to think about the characteristics that seemed to help me, and I have a few thoughts. I'm not sure "lessons" would work; in my experience, things meant to teach a certain point only work if they're written in a way that makes sense to the reader. And even though I could read Readers Digest by the time I entered first grade, and college textbooks at some point before I got into fourth grade (when a teacher informally tested me on that very thing), "reading lessons" drove me nuts. They seemed so utterly pointless, if I hadn't been so devoted to reading already, they would have made me hate it.

Likewise, forcing your son to read anything he really doesn't want to is not likely to work out well. Coaxing him, maybe, but not forcing him. He'll resent it, and he won't learn anything. Or he'll learn to "fake it" and that may be worse. (Been there, done that. Sooner or later, when you're faking something, it all falls apart.) So I hope you don't take any of my suggestions so seriously that you shove things down his throat he isn't ready for. (Edited to add: I did have a teacher in fourth grade who, gently, pushed me toward reading a broader range of fiction than I'd been willing to consider. Because it was gentle, and because she was wise enough to choose examples she knew I'd have some chance of liking, it worked.

That said, I think three categories of reading helped me most. One, speculative fiction. It deals with strange worlds and alien minds, and the reader has to try to understand what's going on. In the process, it makes you think about what it might be like to see things from another perspective. (Although, at seven, I wasn't really ready for this. But you could try at least "priming the pump" a bit.) Two, historical fiction. Different times, different ways of thought - and a good writer of historical fiction shows you those differences, painlessly. Again, you're being exposed to other viewpoints. Three - and I was an odd kid who did a lot of this, simply because I couldn't get my hands on enough books without grabbing whatever came in reach - stories written in a time different enough from our own that things were obviously different and forced me to think about those differences. There is, of course, a common thread in those three areas, but at seven, many of those things would have soared so far above my head I wouldn't even have noticed they were there. Still, even if you can't help him with this much yet, it won't hurt to be thinking along these lines, for later.

Finally, it might help to understand why I think reading is an ideal medium for those of us on the spectrum to learn many things. The writer filters out the meaningless details, and presents only the ones necessary for the story. (At least, that's what we're supposed to do.) No sensory distractions, no random garbage to add confusion. The trick lies, first, in finding writers and stories good enough to be especially useful in this way, and second, in finding just the right stories to present the ideas we need to understand, but do so in a context which will interest us enough that we'll bother to make the effort to figure it out. (In other words, there is no one reading list. My interests drew me to different fiction than your son's might draw him. That's also why I think lessons often fail with us - if we aren't interested, we won't make the effort to learn what we need to. So every story in a lesson has to be one that can engage us. In my case, I read a lot of stories I might not have chosen if I'd had a wider selection available - but I did choose to read them, and once I was reading them of my own free will, I did want to figure out whatever I was 'missing'. So that worked for me. But I read very fast; at your son's age, I'd already gone through entire shelves in the grown up section of the library, and was growing desperate for more to read. Without that factor, I would have stuck to stories that interested me, or else, if forced, skimmed as lightly as I could get away with.)

I totally agree with what you said. They reflect my experiences as well. Thank you for the responses. My son is hyperlexic also, but does not like to read much fiction because it is too social. His non fiction does not take him into the social sciences. That is why I think this is a readiness issue. He can't really learn about people and their motivations when he doesn't want to read about them because it is uninteresting or frustratingly confusing.

Unfortunately, school isn't at a work at your own pace kind of thing, and I don't want him to be discouraged at school when he has trouble with this. Right now his grades are very good, and it is a good self esteem thing for him. He does read some books with people in them, so I think maybe I will try asking him motivation/emotion questions from those in the course of conversation, and see if I can get the light to come on a little. I don't force him to read material he does not like. School does, and he is getting used to that, though, naturally he does not like it.

My brother was also not interested in fiction, but he had a lot more social skills to draw on than my son does. I read a lot and had way fewer social skills, but used reading to bridge some of the gap. My son has my brother's reading habits, but even fewer social skills than I had, which is part of the reason I think it is important because aside from school, I also agree with you that it is a good way to acquire useful social knowledge.

I'm afraid I can't add too much. I came from a family of readers with my parents having a home library of many hundreds of volumes on all topics. With my mainly NT daughter (with a touch of ASD) at about seven she started with Harry Potter and she was off. She just loves to read and this has undoubtedly been very beneficial for her.

My dx ASD son is seventeen and he has been just the opposite. I have literally tried every sort of book with him but he just does not want to read. Some books he did show a smallish amount of interest in were the Captain Underpants series when he was little, and the books by Andy Griffiths (an Australia author) which i would recommend if you can get them. He was also read a book by the wife of martial arts person Bruce Lee as he was interested in Bruce Lee. But .... that's about it (except for Mad Magazines which he used to enjoy).

This is not because he had difficulty learning to read (he didn't) but he just can't seem to lose himself in a book. It was the same with films - especially when younger he just liked the slapstick parts of movies and didn't seem to have an idea about the plot. I think he has gotten better with movies but that is probably because he will watch the same movie tens of times. When I test him on comprehension of what he has just read, his comprehension is very poor. I feel he is unable to "get inside" a story, so in consequence the stories are boring for him. I understand this is part of the lack of "executive function" which also leads to his chronic disorganisation. A consequence of this lack of reading is that his essays eg for media studies are poorly expressed. Not having read much the words and the facility to express himself do not come easily.

I really feel I had tried every type of book with my son without ever getting him to enjoy reading. He is a little better than he was though; at the moment he is reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman and even though the heroine is a girl, he does seem to be half enjoying it - although he never reads another chapter without my asking.

I think you're on the right track; get him talking about books that he already reads, or look at the ones he's willing to read and look for something similar enough that you can gently expand his horizons.

I do understand your dilemma with school, so the following rant is not directed at you. But it is totally absurd to presume that every child is ready to learn the same things at the same age. I fear, as he gets a little older, his grades may suffer, and that will not be his fault. It is the fault of a system which insists on treating individuals as cogs in a machine. Despite having a few excellent teachers, the educational system as a whole did far more harm than good in my case. In fact, I'm convinced the educational system as we know it is a fundamental violation of the human rights of any child who doesn't fit the typical mold.

Again, I do understand this isn't something you have any control over, and you're trying to do your best, and I applaud you for that. But it drives me crazy when individuals are harmed by a system which puts a priority on everyone being just like everyone else.

I don't think it is executive function at all. I struggle mightily with executive function issues; no matter how hard I try to organise anything, the result is constant chaos.

From your description, I'd guess that he has never learned to understand stories as such, so they are just a collection of sentences to him. I was lucky; I was reading early enough, and trying to understand books that I knew were meant for grown-ups, that I had a motive to keep struggling until I finally learned to understand the "social" side of things. And it helped that I'd learned a bit about 'story' by reading tales of the sea, where the facts of the adventure gave me some insight into plot.

The trouble is, most kids' books are written by and for NTs. Asking us to read those is like asking an average NT to read a paper on quantum physics. As a result, I'm sure many of us have some level of trouble learning what goes on in a story. In case over time this helps you think of a solution for your son, I repeat that in my case, the stories that helped me most were the ones where I explicitly knew I was reading about a strange world I had to figure out. That is at least some of the point of speculative fiction, and of historical fiction. And when reading books that are old enough, or too far above "your own level", you take this for granted as well. Most of the stories other kids liked, the ones I was "supposed" to like, never worked for me. It was precisely reading things that were considered at least mildly - and sometimes wildly - inappropriate, that I began to learn something about the world around me. Sadly, now that your son is older, it will be that much harder for him to encounter such things unless his special interests lend themselves to pointing him in the direction of speculative or historical fiction.

To expand on the rant I posted just above this, how can society expect that the same, standard material will work for every individual? A fixed educational plan that doesn't take into account differences between one child and another can leave some of those poor kids behind for the rest of their life. And "no child left behind" is a total joke unless and until they admit that obvious fact. The only things I read in school that ever taught me a thing were those books hand picked for me by the few teachers who bothered to get to know me and who took the time to pick out books they thought might do me some good. The ones the whole class read? I never got a thing out of any of those. Either I was so far ahead they were meaningless, or they made no sense to me and might as well have been written in Sanskrit even though I could read the words and sometimes parrot basic answers from them. There was not a single textbook or required book that was a good fit for me. And one of the very few commonly required books that might have been helpful to me, The Diary of Anne Frank, was one book I was never required to read. (Although I do think it's an important book, I'm not saying this will help every child, by the way, but since I had an obsession with World War Two and the Holocaust - still do, in fact - and since the book when I finally read it had a huge impact on me, I do think it would have been good for me.)

I don't think my son's reading issue is with not understanding the social side of things - I tried him with literally everything, some literal and straightforward accounts, some not, many humerous - he just was never that interested.

His remedial English course at school is quite good - there are no set texts and the students (all struggling with English I guess) can read whatever they like within reason, as long as they are reading!

Sorry; you misunderstood me. I think his inability to understand the social aspects in stories got in the way of his learning to understand 'story'. And, if you don't understand the very point of having stories, or how to read them, then every story will be nothing but a jumble of pointless sentences. Which would have exactly the result you describe.

In other words, he has learned to read the words, but has never learned to look for meaning in them. And since that's the whole point of reading, it would affect everything he reads, even the "literal and straightforward accounts". I never had this problem, but I can actually see how it could develop. When he was younger, he was given stories that included so many social elements, so many things that were pointless and utterly opaque to him, that what he was taught - even though this was not the intent of the teaching - was that a story is just a long list of words to slog through, without any meaning. Once he learned that "lesson", he would be "blind" to meanings, even literal and straightforward ones. I'm not sure how you'd repair the damage at this point, though. That was my point about the educational system - when affecting minds like ours, since it is not designed for them, it does damage which is hard or impossible to correct later.

Social Stories for sure


Also, work on "Literature Circle" activities that focus on critical thinking, connecting stories to their life and other stories, etc.

Here is an example:

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/r ... _WDFDN.pdf


I also like to do Read Alouds for more difficult/challenging books and stop and have him ask questions and I ask him questions. We do a quick comprehension check throughout and also literature circle work, character charts, etc.

I also try to focus on using theory of mind to get him to put himself in the character's place to guess how they feel, why they did certain things, or predict what will happen next.

Character Studies are a good way to get him to start thinking about the characters a people with thoughts and feelings. Something like this: http://www.sanchezclass.com/docs/character-study.pdf
http://www.sanchezclass.com/docs/character-frame.pdf


I find doing many activities about one story help to tie everything in and get the repetition needed to solidify the skill.


Have him practice writing his own stories, focusing on the characters and how they feel, who they are, etc. Sometimes being the author helps them understand the concept better.

The Daily Reading Comprehension books are great for practicing specific skills as well. http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Reading-Com ... 1608236331

I was a failure at reading comprehension exams.
Most would say it is a problem connecting with a charater's emotions and intentions.

For me the reason was that I was over-analysing the passages and giving too detailed/analytical answers.

Here's an example of something I remember from my early school years (although I cannot reproduce the literary style).

OK not really a work of literature, but imagine a comprehension exam asks this:

Question: "What do you think he was looking for in the old house?"

Many (including myself) would answer like this:
- "From the limited text given in the passage it's not possible to define with certainty what John was looking for, However from the statment of his "problems would soon be over", one would imagine that the sought-after item would be either money, some evidence to prove his innocence in a possible case, or maybe some life saving medication".

Guess what. Score zero. Nil points.

Correct answer the examiner would be looking for.
- "he was looking for something of value".


Arrrghh. ( bang my head against the wall ).
Sometimes, teachers and examiners really annoy me in their vague, inprecise nature.

Thank you for all the great help and advice.

SC_2010: I especially like the character study sheet because it lists adjectives, which gives me a chance to discuss what the words mean. My son struggles with open ended questions when it comes to things that are this hard for him. So the "word bank" element of that is very good.

I am definitely going to have to do a social story about how different people have different personalities. I am going to have to go through some of his books and see what I can find. Naturally, the few fictional books he reads have pretty one dimensional characters, but I think that for now, that is alright, because it will be easier to understand that way. I won't be able to move on to more complex materials until he can understand the simple characters, anyway.

I think the points made about what the point of reading is, was very valid. Sometimes I think, because he is hyperlexic, he sometimes scans the letters/words as a stim. I do that too, sometimes. If I am bored and all I have in front of me is a tube of toothpaste or something, I might just scan the ingredients with my eyes for awhile.

I know that he knows he is supposed to read his school materials for meaning. They test for comprehension and he does well because they aren't asking the things he has trouble with, yet. I think I need to write a social story about the elements of a story, with an emphasis on characters. I tried to do a mind map on that earlier this year, but I think he is too linear for that, and a social story would be better.

Chris71: I would have answered the question in a very similar way. I can't believe you didn't get any points for that. You gave specific examples, all of which showed that you understood that the object would have had value to the searcher. Bogus grading!

This is a perfect illustration of something I said in another thread. We just think differently than NTs. They claim we don't see the forest for the trees - but if we think of "forest" we see it the way an ecologist would, as a complex network of different species, undergrowth, animals, birds, etc. when NTs just want to see "forest" as some vague, meaningless abstraction. As the ecologists are learning, the NT way has its drawbacks...

You actually extracted more from what you read than the NT kids did, so they called you "wrong" for not blurring it all out into a vague abstraction. Which just shows how wrong they could be. I had a lot of problems like this in school - except I'd argue with the teacher, and usually win. They hated that. I loved it.

Forgive me for not reading the whole thread, but some personal experience: DS went from the bottom reading group to the top reading group in just a few days because I finally realized I needed to help him script the types of responses he needed to give the teacher.

For the most part, while he has poor TOM skills in social interaction, he gets it with TV and books, but he didn't understand what the questions meant. I would read the book to him and say "so what do you think Sally is thinking here?" and then say, "Well, since Sally has her hands on her hips and is frowning, maybe she is angry that Seth took her frog." or whatever. Then I transitioned to using that script with the types of questions in reading homework.

DS had understood it all perfectly; it just wasn't really pertinent information to him and it had never occurred to him to answer anything but facts.

Am I the only one who would have answered that he was looking for a secret hatch and presumably a way into the basement (which is where a floor hatch would likely lead)?

This isn't you, it's them: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/opini ... apple.html

Standardized tests are just not set up to catch discrepancies in understanding.

This is not to say that people on the autistic spectrum don't have difficulty making inferences in reading and understanding the social context of what is going on, all of which are important in reading comprehension - just that this is a very, very poor example of a measuring instrument.

I was an English major who failed math twice in high school, yet my ISATs were astronomically better in math than in English in part because I understood English better than the test writers did. I remember they were having us analyze poetry, and were apparently looking for extremely shallow and literal answers for a form of communication that is expressly NOT about the literal, surface answer (something about birds, I remember, that was really about freedom - but freedom or other metaphorical responses weren't in the list of options for the answer.)