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Preventing the "Summer Slide" for Children with Learning Disabilities
Summer break is something most kids look forward to all year, and it’s a well-deserved chance to rest, play, and step away from the structure of the school day. But for children with learning disabilities, those long weeks without consistent academic activity can come at a cost.
July 15th 2026 / Mental Health / By Randall Symes
When Worry Becomes Anxiety in Children
The “summer slide”, the gradual loss of academic skills and knowledge that tends to happen over school breaks, often hits harder for kids who already struggle with reading, writing, math, or attention. By the time September rolls around, some children find themselves further behind than they were in June, making the start of the new school year feel discouraging before it’s even begun. The good news is that preventing summer slide doesn’t mean filling the summer with worksheets or recreating a classroom at home. With a bit of planning and a few simple strategies, parents can help their children maintain hard-won skills while still enjoying a relaxed and fun summer.
What the Research Says About Summer Slide
Summer learning loss has been studied for decades, and the research is remarkably consistent. The earliest large-scale analysis dates back to a 1996 meta-analysis of dozens of studies, which found that on average, test scores were at least one month lower when students returned
to school in the fall than they were when they left in the spring.
More recent research has continued to confirm and refine this picture. A study of children in grades 3 through 5 found that students lost, on average, about 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading and 27 percent of their school-year gains in math over the summer. Other estimates suggest the losses can be even larger: research indicates two months of reading skills and two and a half months of math skills can be lost over a single summer, and because
summer slide is cumulative, those lost months add up year after year, potentially totaling the equivalent of two years of learning by the time a student reaches middle school.
Math tends to be particularly vulnerable. Research indicates that 70 to 78 percent of elementary students lose math knowledge over the summer, while 62 to 73 percent lose reading skills. This pattern makes sense when you consider how children encounter these skills in daily life. Reading gets reinforced passively, through books, signs, conversations, and screens, while math fluency depends on deliberate, regular practice and doesn’t take care of itself the same
way over a long break.
Importantly, summer slide can show up earlier than many parents expect. Learning loss can be recognized as early as grade one, which means the cumulative effects can begin building well before children reach the grades where academic demands really start to ramp up.
Why Summer Slide Hits Harder for Kids with Learning Disabilities
For children with learning disabilities, academic progress is often the result of consistent routines, repetition, and targeted support built up over months of school, tutoring, or therapy. When that structure disappears for two months, the skills that were starting to feel solid can quickly become shaky again.
It’s also worth understanding that not all knowledge fades at the same rate. Conceptual understanding, the ability to reason through a problem and explain why something works, tends to hold up reasonably well over the summer because it’s built through genuine understanding rather than rote repetition. Procedural knowledge, on the other hand, such as math facts, multi-step computation, and reading fluency, depends much more on ongoing practice, and is exactly the kind of skill that erodes without it.
For children who already face learning challenges, this distinction matters. Many kids with learning disabilities work especially hard throughout the school year to build procedural fluency, whether that’s decoding words smoothly or working through multi-step math problems. Without
continued practice, those gains can fade quickly, and children may return to school needing to relearn material they had previously mastered. For kids who were already working to close a gap with their peers, even a modest regression over the summer can mean starting the new school year further behind, which can affect both academic performance and a child’s confidence and motivation.
The effects compound over time as well. Some research suggests that summer learning differences accumulated in the early elementary years can account for more than half of the achievement gap that shows up between students by high school, underscoring just how much these summer months matter in the bigger picture.
Practical, Low-Pressure Strategies for Summer
The key to preventing summer slide is consistency, not intensity. Short, regular practice sessions are far more effective than occasional long ones, and they’re much easier to fit into a relaxed summer schedule.
Some approaches that tend to work well include setting aside 15 to 20 minutes a few times a week for reading together, practicing math facts through games, or working on writing through journaling or letter-writing to family members. Everyday activities can also double as learning opportunities. Cooking together involves reading, following sequential steps, and measuring, all of which reinforce academic skills in a natural, hands-on way. Board games and card games can build math fluency, strategic thinking, and turn-taking skills without feeling like “work.”
Building or craft projects support following multi-step instructions and spatial reasoning. For children with ADHD or other attention-related challenges, shorter sessions paired with movement tend to be far more effective than longer, sit-down study periods. A quick round of math flashcards before heading outside, or a chapter of an audiobook during a car ride, can keep skills active without adding stress to anyone’s summer.
Given how strongly math fluency depends on regular practice, even small, consistent efforts, like a few minutes of mental math during a car ride or while setting the table, can go a long way toward protecting the progress a child made during the school year.
Maintaining a loose daily routine, even one that’s much more relaxed than the school year, can also help. Predictable mealtimes, a consistent bedtime, and a general daily rhythm can make the eventual return to school feel less jarring, both for kids and for parents.
Summer Is Also an Ideal Time for Assessment
For families who have noticed ongoing concerns, whether it’s difficulty with reading, writing, math, attention, or social skills, summer can be one of the best times of year to pursue a psychoeducational assessment.
During the school year, schedules are often packed with classes, extracurriculars, and homework, making it difficult to find time for assessment appointments. Summer offers more flexibility, allowing families to complete the assessment process at a comfortable pace. Just as importantly, completing an assessment over the summer means results and recommendations are often ready before the new school year begins, giving families a head start on putting
supports in place rather than waiting until concerns resurface mid-year.
An assessment can provide clarity on what’s really going on for a child, whether that’s a specific learning disability, ADHD, giftedness, or another factor affecting their learning. With that information in hand, parents can work with their child’s school to set up appropriate accommodations, programming, or interventions right from the first day of classes, rather than spending the first few months of the year trying to identify the problem.
How Randall Symes Can Help
At Randall Symes Psychological Services, we provide comprehensive psychoeducational assessments for children and adolescents, identifying specific learning strengths and challenges and offering clear, practical recommendations for support at home and at school. Our bilingual team conducts assessments in both English and French, and we work collaboratively with families across Edmonton and the surrounding area.
If your child has been struggling and you’re not sure why, or if you simply want to be proactive before the new school year begins, summer is a great time to take that first step. Contact Randall Symes Psychological Services to learn more about our assessment process and how we can help your family head into the fall with confidence and a clear plan in place.
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