If your child with Williams syndrome is 12, 15, or 18 and still cannot read—or cannot read well—please hear this:
Their opportunity to become a reader has not expired.
For too many students, reading instruction has quietly disappeared as they have gotten older. Perhaps their early instruction emphasized memorizing words, using pictures and context, or guessing from the first letter rather than explicitly teaching them how the written code works. Perhaps COVID interrupted critical years of instruction and intervention. And sometimes, somewhere along the way, a child simply became “too old” for beginning reading instruction.
But getting older is not the same thing as losing the capacity to learn.
Research specific to Williams syndrome gives us good reason for hope. Reading ability among people with WS varies tremendously—from individuals who cannot yet read words to individuals reading and comprehending at or near age level. Importantly, research by Mervis and colleagues has found that the method used to teach reading matters. Children with WS who received systematic phonics instruction demonstrated stronger reading outcomes than those taught with other approaches, and systematic phonics was associated with better word reading regardless of IQ (Mervis, Greiner de Magalhães, & Cardoso-Martins, 2021).
That matters enormously for an older struggling reader.
It means we should not look at a middle- or high-school student who cannot read and conclude, “We tried reading. It didn’t work.” A better question may be:
What kind of reading instruction did this student actually receive?
Did someone systematically teach the sound structure of spoken language? Letter-sound relationships? How to blend sounds to decode unfamiliar words? Advanced phonics patterns? Syllable types? Morphology? Were those skills explicitly taught, practiced to mastery, and revisited over time?
If not, we may not be looking at a student who cannot learn to read.
We may be looking at a student who has not yet been taught to read in the way they need to be taught.
The broader reading research supports explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and systematic phonics, including for struggling readers. The National Reading Panel found systematic phonics more effective than approaches providing little or no systematic phonics, with benefits for children experiencing difficulty learning to read.
Would we rather that instruction had begun at age 5 or 6? Of course. Earlier instruction gives students more years to build fluency, vocabulary, knowledge, and comprehension. But “earlier is better” must never become “later is pointless.”
A 14-year-old beginning phonics instruction deserves age-respectful materials, excellent teaching, enough instructional time, and the same belief in their capacity to learn that we readily give a 6-year-old.
We cannot give students back the instructional years they missed.
But we can stop taking years away.
And today, cost does not have to be the reason we stop.
The University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) has made extensive UFLI Foundations resources freely available to educators. UFLI Foundations provides explicit, systematic foundational reading instruction and is specifically designed not only for young beginning readers, but also for intervention with struggling readers in any grade. Its free online toolbox includes lesson resources, decodable passages, activities, digital tools, an intervention placement test, and progress-monitoring resources. The complete teacher manual is also available at relatively low cost (University of Florida Literacy Institute, n.d.).
That means a middle school or high school student who still needs foundational reading instruction does not need an expensive commercial program before someone can begin teaching.
They need someone willing to begin.
Literacy changes access—to education, employment, healthcare information, relationships, community participation, and independence. Functional literacy is more than an academic achievement. It is a matter of access, opportunity, and dignity.
So if a student with Williams syndrome cannot yet read, keep teaching.
Start where they are. Teach explicitly. Teach systematically. Give them enough time and enough practice. Celebrate progress, even when it comes slowly.
There is no age at which literacy stops mattering—and no birthday on which a person should age out of the opportunity to become a reader.
References
Mervis, C. B. (2009). Language and literacy development of children with Williams syndrome. Topics in Language Disorders, 29(2), 149–169.
Mervis, C. B., Greiner de Magalhães, C., & Cardoso-Martins, C. (2021). Concurrent predictors of word reading and reading comprehension for 9-year-olds with Williams syndrome. Reading and Writing.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
University of Florida Literacy Institute. (n.d.). UFLI Foundations. University of Florida College of Education. UFLI Foundations and its free instructional resources are available through the UFLI website.