Parents of children who hate reading

[Ineedaholidayyyy]

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

School books are incredibly dull.

My book-hating boy (now 12) could only be tempted by the silly stuff: the Treehouse series, Captain Underpants, Roald Dahl and endless Beanos.

It’s completely alien, and a little upsetting to me, that he doesn’t enjoy “proper” reading and can’t get into a book. But he’s sailing through school with flying colours - it hasn’t affected his progress. He just has different tastes to me.

A lot of the boys in my son's class in year one were not reading fans (including him), but one by one they all got into the BeastQuest books and I think for the most part all enjoy reading now they are in year 3. The trick is to find books they like which is easier said than done sometimes. Those awful Biff and Chip books the schools give the kids as set reading are enough to put them off reading for life!

School books can be utterly dreadful. It's about the content of the books. It's a chore to read them and they get nothing out of them.

You have to readd the fun to books. So they want to read. Especially if they don't feel like it's reading.

He's still a little young, but Dogman is your friend. I'd say it's probably more like yr2 but comic books do help.

There's a few comic books which have been released in the last couple of years which cover this age group. They are a game changer.

Hang in there and see a page as a result.

Then invest in something he actually will enjoy. It will come.

Read fun books with him that he likes - the school books are boring, I don't blame him for being bored! Our breakthrough with our two boys was the Dog Man books. They loved them so much they just started reading them independently for an hour every evening! No nagging involved whatsoever.

Also if you haven't already, sign him up as a local library member and let him choose his own books, experiment a bit and see what he likes.

Let him choose the book he wants to read with you - the school reading books can be sooo boring!
DD is in year 4 now and struggles to read because she's dyslexic. We've had the frustration and refusals... she loves us reading to her though.
One things that works well for us is to take turns reading together - I read a page, the DD reads a page (or sometimes just a paragraph). It can sometimes feel overwhelming, so breaking it up into smaller chunks makes it more manageable for her, less daunting.
Try different types of books - non-fiction books are often easier because they are more visually oriented.

Another thing is audiobooks - DD has a Toniebox, which she absolutely loves (and which gives us a very welcome break 😉)

Find books he likes (school reading books are dull). In year 1 my son hated reading. I bough him some Horrid Henry easy readers and he loved them. He went up a level of book every week for a whole term. I hated them but that didn't matter

Would it like it if you put put subtitles on this favourite TV programmes? Mine used to like that when they were younger, and it exposed them to the written word obviously.

I think it did help improve their reading without causing conflict.

Have you tried Reading Eggs? It's an online programme, and is free if you join it via your local Library.

My son is year 3 and hates reading 😣 I’ve just ordered some Minecraft books in the hope they will interest him. He’s kicked off tonight over me asking him to read two pages of his reading book!

With regards to audiobooks, again if you are members of a local library, then again you will have free access to BorrowBox, which gives you free access to both eBooks & Audio books.

I agree with others, the school books are really boring. My youngest (summer born, just went into year 1) had no interest in them. So I wrote she had read them, when she was actually picking up 'room on the broom' and 'the gruffalo' off our bookshelf and reading them.

Put the subtitles on when watching TV or on his tablet. Reading by accident there! It's made a huge difference for my son.

Mine liked making it into a game - he would sit on my lap and we would read alternate words.

I have no idea why that was better than just reading the fucking book, but apparently it was.

To be fair, it's quite hard work at that age, and probably rather boring considering the simplicity of the stories. My daughter wasn't keen at that age but got into it once she had mastered reading. We didn't make a big deal of it at that time but modelled reading every night.

My son was behind with reading quite significantly in year 3. He was a reluctant reader and protested that the school reading books were boring.

We always read to him before bed, books of his choosing, that interested hjm. By chance one night I challenged him to try and read a page of the book we were reading to him (which was much more advanced than his school reading book) and to my utter astonishment he managed to read it! From that day on we ditched the school books (we didn't tell school) and allowed him to read what he wanted and within a school year he'd gone up 17 reading levels and had completely caught up.

He now reads before bed for pleasure every night.

He still maintains that the school reading books were just deadly boring and because he was behind, babyish. I had thought they were essentially compulsory so had persevered, but I wish I'd listened sooner and binned them sooner. I've since spoken to many other parents who did the same and saw similar improvements in both reading and enthusiasm for reading.

I love reading always have but both children now aged 12 and 15 do not and did not like it.
I'm ok with that- we all have different interests. They can read well but just don't have interest. They like sports.

As far as I can see this pushing of reading doesn't always have positive effects

Neither of mine just to add really engaged much and I didn't force it at all. By year 2 they could read. Don't worry about it

DS is seven and is learning to read in 2 languages. For German, he‘s had a year of schooling and German is a syllable-based, phonetic language. He hated the simple books designed for his age, so I‘d always get him to read a sentence per page of the books I‘d read him at bedtime. We have had particular success with ‘choose your own adventure’ style books as he had to read the options at the end of the chapter to continue.

We started learning to read in English at the beginning of the Summer holidays and I’ve now got him to end of reception class level. I’d point out signs with the phonic he’d just learned. Our main success has been with the Reading Eggs app, though, he likes collecting the gold coins.

1. check eyesight.
2. check any other additional needs
3. make an activity out of any and all incidental/practical reading. Signs, recipes, instructions.
4. put subtitles on TV shows.
5. read to him every night at bed time as an enjoyable bonding activity. No pressure at this time to teach/learn at all.
6. Make sure he sees you and whole family enjoying reading.
7. Try not to worry. He may not love reading books but he will be able to read. That's all he needs. And he may well come to love reading later in life.

Don't put any pressure on him.
Keep reading to him so he continues to enjoy books and stories. If he doesn't want to, leave it but sit side by side so he can follow the words as you read to him.

Visit the library. Get books that he may find interesting. I remember being surprised that a book about glassmaking was something ds loved and Dd loved the magic porridge pot so much, I read it every day for weeks.
Mine still enjoy reading and are in secondary school.

It's difficult. They are always tired after school and my daughter never wanted to do it either! She's going into year 4 now and still doesn't want to read a lot of the time, it's just not her thing, she prefers writing. Someone once told me that it's the teachers job to teach them and your job to have fun with them.....I would focus on trying to create a love of reading. Read to him. Then you could try read a few pages in return for him reading one page. You might get to the point where you take turns reading a page or 2 each. Don't bother too much with book bands, let him pick what he likes from the library. Come year 3 it becomes more about comprehension so the storytelling and enjoyment of the story is probably more important than the actual reading/phonics - leave that to the teachers! He's only 5.....he'll get there, we expect way too much from young children in this country and he might simply not be ready to read yet from a brain development point of view, so don't stress it. I felt the pressure, and the schools pile it on the parents as well. It's all well and good saying they need to read for at least 15 mins a day, but in reality it's not easy to get a tired 5 year old to do this, and whilst it's a good habit to get into it shouldn't be turned into a battle.

I'm so glad I started this thread, I already feel better about the situation knowing I'm not alone and plenty of people have gone through the same challenges. It's difficult when you hear other parents gushing about how well their child is reading and asking for extra books when we can't manage a page.

Thanks for the tips and input. He's got lots of books at home and he really does enjoy being read to, so we will focus on spending more time reading to him, and seeing if we can get him to pick out a few words from his favorite books.

I like the TV subtitles tip, I will definitely give that a try and we've got a local library, haven't been for a while but I'll make an effort to take him and get him to pick some books himself.

DS was exactly the same. We read to him a lot, but it was a real struggle to get him to do the reading. Something clicked into place around year 3 and he started to enjoy it, I think it's because it stopped being hard work for him and he could read for pleasure.
He's rated 'exceeding expectations' in reading and writing the last couple of years, so it clearly didn't do him any harm.

My son was a super reluctant reader but it turned out I just had to find out something he liked. Gave up on the books from school and went to the library and charity shops loads and let him pick out whatever he wanted. At the start he liked the Lego Star Wars books with a character or two on each page, then he moved on to a pokemon character book, then beast quest and now he likes Bunny versus monkey and similar graphic novels. He can read anything he wants now, he just prefers certain things and his reading came on so quick once we figured out what he liked.