How to get my child to read for fun?

[purplespink]

I cannot get her to read for fun!

DD is 7 and has the reading age of an 11.5 year old (her teacher told me this at parents evening). I read to her most nights before bed but I cannot for the life of me get her to read for enjoyment. I don't really want to go down the reward line unless others have huge success with this? How did you encourage your child to read for enjoyment? I have always read to her / together and regularly take her to the library but she doesn't enjoy picking her own books. She doesn't see them as a gift, which I will still get her regardless at Christmas (she loves me reading her the Horrid Henry ones, that's the only exception, so I will be buying her a set of those).

If she has such an advanced reading age, I really wouldn’t sweat it!

If she has any interests you can buy her books related to this. This helped my reluctant reader ( dyslexic and poor reading age). So he liked factual books with lots of pictures about his interests. He also liked books that were essentially comics in book form ( like dogman ).

You can't force her to.

Also reading covers more than fiction books so nonfiction books, comics, magazines and newspapers are all included in reading.

Is she interested in say the natural world? Then take her to a large WHSmiths to see if there is a magazine that covers what she likes. If she does buy it. Then if she reads it, buy her the next issue then repeat, and then eventually subscribe for a year.

Keep reading to her. Make reading a pleasurable cosy thing you do together. Maybe sometimes you'll stop on a cliffhanger and then she might be so keen to find out what happens next that she reads to you while you're driving. But if not, don't sweat it either.

Although I totally get why you want her to read to herself, and it's a frustration I share, the evidence is that there is as much benefit to reading to her, which you are already doing. So I'd keep on at that.

If you have to force it, it's not fun.

I don't see the big deal honestly. My DS never reads for fun. He has always preferred numbers and science to literacy. He does plenty of outdoor things (football and horse riding) so he's not on screens all the time either. He's 16 and left school this year with 8s and 9s at GCSE.

if she is reluctant to read books, would she read magazines?

Do you read for pleasure op?
When I settle down to read, the dc are very welcome to cuddle up beside me with their own books, but it’s a quiet time and not really for chatting (unless it’s book talk). I’ve always read real books, rather than used a kindle or my phone, to model it.

My other secret is reading their books, so we can chat about them later. Even if it’s just what they have to read for school, let them recommend a short story, or something they found interesting in a text book.

DC crave attention and you can give it through reading, as a natural way of connecting over ideas, without artificial rewards. Sharing snippets of what you read - a nice image, a funny turn of phrase, a new word, or an interesting idea - gives them glimpses into your world.