Developing Reading Skills Lyon, D. R. (1999). Developing reading skills in young children. Retrieved April 12, 2016, from http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/developing-reading-skills-in-young-children/ This article published by the Great Kids website was a transcript of a lecture taught by Dr. Reid Lyon in San Francisco in 1999. It covers a number of topics such factors contributing to reading difficulties among children, diagnosis and intervention for children with reading difficulties, as well as how parents can better support the development of reading among their children. Dr. Lyon, a research psychologist and the Chief of the Child Development and Behavior department of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), explains that there are emotional and social consequences among children with reading difficulties; in extreme cases, frustration and shame due to their difficulty in reading lead older students to drop out entirely of school. Dr. Lyon’s view of reading difficulties is that it can be both genetic and environmental, and that the problem can be characterized by “deficits in phoneme awareness, phonics development, reading fluency, reading comprehension, or combinations of these”. The key to addressing these problems is early detection as children above the age of nine respond poorly to reading instruction. Through his extensive experience, Dr. Lyon is able to express in a simple language, the importance of providing children with expo...