Abstract
Reading is a fundamental and essential skill that plays a pivotal role in various aspects of human life. However, parents who have poor educational backgrounds and limited reading abilities face unique challenges when it comes to supporting their children reading development. The reading difficulties experienced by parents have a profound impact on children's literacy outcomes and create a cycle of educational disadvantage. To have a deeper understanding and better describe the experiences of parents with reading difficulties, this phenomenological research examined the parents’ view on the matter of teaching reading at home. The study specifically took a closer look on the experiences, challenges, perceptions, realizations, coping strategies and needed academic support of parents in teaching their children despite their situation. Findings showed that parents experienced difficulty with pronunciation in the English Language, suffered from headache and felt incapable to teach reading. Challenges are affecting parents in different aspects such as incapable to teach, finding time to mentor, child unwilling to learn, felt exhausted and hopeless. These challenges were identified as factors that blocked learnings and incapacitated them in teaching their child hence, strategies are made to overcome these challenges. Coping strategies are extremely giving the means and ways for parents to lessen their burdens and to avoid having unfavorable feeling towards their situation. These strategies involved internet research, looking for learning materials and tutors, sought help from teachers and neighbors, peer tutoring, and providing academic support for parents to have helped succeed over the challenges.
