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Original poster

Parents of children who hate reading

128 replies

Ineedaholidayyyy · 04/09/2024 17:17

My son has started Year 1 at school. We had a battle last year getting him to read regularly at home, it was very challenging. He would get frustrated when he couldn't sound out words, which lead to him not wanting to read at all. We had a breakthrough in the last term, but he was still a little behind at the end of the year. He's one of the younger ones in the year, so i wasn't bothered about this and was just pleased he was making progress finally.

Tonight, I've asked him to read 3 pages of his reading book, not a lot to expect surely?. He's gone into a massive strop and point blank refused to read anything, telling me its boring. I really don't want to go through this again for another year. My partner thinks I'm being a bit strict with it being his first week back, and that I should leave it till next week to push the reading, which is probably the right thing to do

So I'm interested in hearing from parents who have gone through this. What can we do to try and incentivise him and get him to enjoy reading more? We read a book to him before bed which he loves, he just really dislikes reading his school books. I don't want him to fall further behind this year. I know we can do things like stickers but I want to get to a point where he will read his book without a reward. I'd rather this than a punishment for not reading , eg no TV

OP posts:
BareBelliedSneetch · 04/09/2024 17:27

Bribery.

we didn’t make it a fight. We’d encourage, but pull away before anyone got too cross.

but we did a sticker chart with rewards, to get over that hump where the books are dull and the sounding out is hard.

Sleepychicken · 04/09/2024 17:27

Hi, I am an avid reader, both of my kids hated it! They didn’t mind getting read to, so i used to take turns with them - either a word each or a line or page each, and limit it - so we just have to do 1 page a time then build it up as they get older. Also think about when to do the reading, after school was always a fight but mornings before school were ok or after a bath.

Then when reading their bedtime stories I would point out words for them to try and when out and about point out signs, anything with words on - they didn’t realise they were reading half the time but both were always above age expected for reading.

good luck, I remember the struggle!

Orangeandgold · 04/09/2024 17:25

My daughter is much older now. She now loves reading but I remember the struggle. I also found it very hard to teach reading.

we would read together. I take a page and she takes another page. We did that for a while.

I read somewhere that young children don’t read, they memorise. So making reading an experience and talking about the pictures and what they can see and what is happening.

I also never “punished” for not reading so that it was wasn’t seen as a chore or a bad thing. If she didn’t want to read then I would read to her.

we also turned going to the library into days out.

If my daughter was very stroppy (we had a sever issue with maths for example!) I realised it was because she couldn’t do something but was too upset to voice it. I needed up speaking to the teachers and demanding 121s and asking them to keep an eye and exchange tips.

I hope others have some good tips. Especially from teachers who probably see this daily.

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