There is a quiet emergency unfolding in early reading; in the children across America who fear bringing attention to their struggle. It's not instantly recognizable to most.

It shows up later.
In stalled progress.
In children who read well enough until suddenly they don’t.
In confidence that looks sturdy in kindergarten but brittle by third grade.

By now, most people have heard some version of the headline: reading scores are down across the United States. The explanations vary. Screens. Attention spans. Pandemic disruption. All of these matter.

But underneath them is a more uncomfortable truth.

Many children are being taught to read in ways that ask them to compensate before they are ready to decode. And as a result, they resist decoding as a key strategy for learning to read.

The Rise of Guessing as a Strategy

If you sit beside an early reader long enough, you begin to notice a particular rhythm.

The child looks at the word.
Then the picture.
Then perhaps the first letter.
Then back to the picture again.

And then, often with confidence, a word arrives.

Sometimes it’s correct. Sometimes it’s close. But in either case, sound did not lead the way.

This isn’t accidental. It’s the natural outcome of instructional models that emphasize meaning-making first and treat phonemic rigor as something that can be absorbed along the way. Balanced-language approaches often encourage children to use “multiple cues” like context, images, prediction. They do not come at the expense of decoding per se; but decoding is learned to be a more frustrating alternative - despite the fact decoding is a proven key to unlocking literacy.

The intention is compassionate. The effect is destabilizing.

Guessing becomes not a fallback, but a habit.

Why This Looks Like Progress (Until It Isn’t)

In the earliest stages, guessing can look remarkably effective. It feels great to see your child reading. And many beginner texts are predictable by design. Pictures are generous. Vocabulary repeats. A child can appear fluent while relying very little on sound.

Adults see engagement. Speed. Confidence.
What they don’t see is the absence of a reliable system underneath.

Over time, a pattern emerges:

• Reading works best when texts are familiar

• Unfamiliar words are rushed or skipped

• Sounding out feels slow, even threatening and almost always frustrating

• Confidence fluctuates wildly depending on context

This is not because children are lazy, unmotivated or anything else like that. It’s because they’ve learned that reading is an act of guessing, not decoding.

The Cost of a Less Rigorous Foundation

Here is where urgency matters.

When reading relies on context rather than sound, success becomes conditional. When the crutches disappear; in the case of fewer pictures, denser text, new vocabulary, the guessing strategy collapses. And when it collapses, the child doesn’t think, “This approach failed me.”

They think, “I’m not good at reading.”

This is how a national reading crisis is built. Not through neglect, but through good intentions paired with insufficient rigor. The mechanisms to instill decoding skills don't cut it.

Balanced-language models often underestimate how much structure early readers actually need. They assume children will naturally integrate sound as they go. But for many children, that integration never fully happens.

A Moment That Clarified the Pattern for Me

There was a small moment in our house that sharpened this distinction for me. A grandparent was helping my daughter read, doing what had been shown to them when they were learning to read. Each time she hesitated, attention drifted to the picture. What could this word be? What would make sense here? Grandma encouraged it.

When the guess landed, there was relief.
When it didn’t, frustration followed.

I was wise enough to bite my tongue. Grandma's intention was loving. But I could feel the strain building… reading turning into a performance, decoding quietly sidelined in favor of identifying.

Later, when it was just my daughter and I, reading a different picture book, I didn’t prompt or rush. I waited. Without the picture to lean on, there was a brief moment of uncertainty. But then, the first sound stepped forward, and then the next and the next until she was actually reading. Not perfectly, but steadily. The phonics foundation she and I laid earlier — slowly and repetitively — began to carry the moment on its own.

The words didn’t come faster.
They came cleaner.

That moment didn’t prove some theory to. It simply demonstrated a pattern which was unmistakable. I see it with every child I read with. And once you see it, you begin to notice how often children are asked to perform reading before they’ve been given a system they can trust.

What Actually Helps Guessing Fade

Guessing does not disappear when we explain more, or encourage harder.

It disappears when choice is reduced.

When fewer cues are available.
When sound is allowed to lead without competition.
When repetition is trusted to do its quiet work.

This is where phonemic awareness stops being an abstract goal and becomes a lived experience. Sound-to-symbol relationships begin to stabilize. They become relied on and trusted (even complex ones). Reading slows down briefly, and then becomes steadier. The phonics foundation is allowed to grow into full literacy.

This steadiness is often mistaken for regression. In reality, it’s consolidation.

Why This Matters Now

The reading crisis is not simply about scores. It’s about foundations. When rigor is postponed in favor of confidence, children are asked to stand on structures that haven’t finished forming.

Confidence cannot substitute for reliability.
Accuracy cannot substitute for fluency.
Prediction cannot substitute for decoding.

Sound has to come first — not eventually, not implicitly, not as one cue among many; but as the backbone of reading itself.

A Different Goal for Early Reading

Now, I'm not suggesting picture books be eliminated, that using visual cues should be discouraged or maligned completely. What I'm suggesting is that the goal of early reading should not be speed in identifying context.

The goal is reliability. A system the child can return to when the text gets harder. When the pictures disappear. When the context becomes more complex. When guessing stops working.

Sound becomes that system naturally, and more than simply learn to "read", a child's confidence flourishes. Not as a performance, but as a felt sense of stability. Of safety in knowledge.

Guessing fades and reading becomes something a child can actually stand on. An experience they trust will enrich their life.

Michael Land is an education designer focused on early literacy and phonics-forward reading systems. He is the creator of Word Nuts Reading.