To stop reading with ds?

[ohmaaaan]

Honestly, I am aware of how important it is. But it is an unbelievably frustrating experience and I am worried it’s putting him off reading more than anything else. Would actually really welcome advice on to how to make it less arduous 😩😩

Sorry haven't rtft. My DD is year 2, doesn't enjoy her reading books, we haven't done loads of reading at home (of the school books), and often just a page here and there. Instead I do things like read to her from books at home and just ask her to read a word here and there (which I choose) or do things like read road signs, things in shops etc. I really don't want home reading to feel like a chore. Thankfully she has come on well at school and is where she is expected to be, so planning to keep on this strategy until she is a free reader and can read what she wants.

But reading from memory is fine.

My DD is 17. Dyslexic. She can't do phonetics or sound out word. For her it's memory or even guess work based on memory.

Keep going. You're doing fine. He's doing fine. One day it should just hopefully click.

But he isn’t reading, he’s just reciting what he thinks it says. So it may say something like ‘At night the stars come out.’ Ds will say something like ‘it is dark and the stars are out.’ He knows approximately what it says but isn’t even really looking at the page!

When I used to read bedtime stories to DD I would read and follow the words with my finger. Not like I was showing her, just keeping my place on the page. And then every now and again I'd get to a random word I "didn't know" and would sound it out and then say it properly. Or oh I'm really tired, can you do this page for me please.

Try asking DS to "be helpful" and check what the shopping list said (very carefully written in neat handwriting) and things like that. When he's less aware that he's being asked to read. If he says Book and you know it says Beans..."hmmm are you sure? I don't remember needing Books, can you spell it and we'll figure out what it says."

Has he had his eyes tested as well?

At that age, we started reading the Adventuremice series with DS. He would read words he could decode, and we would help along with any he couldn't (plus we would read a sentence or page as well as him). The illustrations are fantastic, the stories are engaging and most importantly... he really enjoyed them and wanted to read them! The phonics books sent home were always joyless to read and we all got very frustrated. Also, have you got phonics flashcards at home? Just with the sounds on them? Our school do RWI and we got their flashcards and found it v helpful to have the same pictures etc alongside each sound to practice at home.

And FWIW he's in Y2 now and reads EVERYTHING he can get his hands on. He has a little highlighter and highlights any words he isn't sure of if he's reading to himself whilst I'm putting younger siblings to bed, and then we go through them together and I read back to him the pages he's read with all the unsure words added back in so he hears the fluency. It's great fun and I never thought we would get here!

Is it a school book? Biff and chip type thing? Or are you trying to get him to actually read before he's ready?

Keep reading to him. Take a little break from him reading to you.

Set a ten minuite timer, stop after ten mins regardless of how much of the book you've managed. Takes the stress of you as you know regardless, in ten mis you're done.

Try reading some the book, then ask him to try the odd word, if he struggles sound it out together.

In the example you gave, of repeating blanket - it sounds like he's just playing up, I wouldnt react. I'd carry on reading and sounding out.

Plenty of praise if he does something correct.

Also speak to the teacher if you're struggling.

I feel your frustration. My 5 almost 6 is the same. Her sister had completed all the reading levels by same age which I know now was exceptional but yeah…

it’s so hard but basically teachers don’t have the time to give them the 1-1 time we can give. One thing that helped me massively is her teacher giving me permission to read every other page with her. It halved the time and frustration. I want to give up frequently and respect your rant but you know you can’t x

DD really struggles with reading. I found it helpful to read stories she already knew. She was so slow at reading that by the end of the page she had no idea what she had read. Then she would start guessing and I would get frustrated. So if we read a fairytale like cinderella, she knew the story and could anticipate the words a little better when she saw a pattern she recognised. For context, she is y6 and still reading at y2 level so I feel the frustration. Especially hard when I myself, and my eldest just breezed through reading levels and found it hard to sympathise.

Build his confidence by getting some easier books he can read: Read with Oxford, Stage 1 on Amazon. He might also respond to them better because they’re home books not ‘homework’.

My DS was behind with her reading in Year 2. It was painful and he really lacked confidence so it could often end in tears but we started incorporating it into our bedtime routine (not in bed though) with a cup of milk, and be caught up within weeks. It’s now his favourite thing to do.

It’s a ball ache but worth it in the end. He’s in Y4 now and we still do it.

My daughter struggles with a book so we try to build in reading into other activities, so a weird or sentence here and there while playing games or doing other activities that she enjoys it I'll read most of the book but pick out words I think she will be able to read.

What really helped DC was a (horrific) book called toe by toe. It was painful but really helped with their reading. It just concentrates how to read the words - no story just sounding out.

Haven’t RTFT yet….

Have you thought he might be dyslexic? There’s a lot more to it than is presumed, and increasing evidence of its impact on executive function - working memory etc.

I agree with @tomorrowfollowstoday keep it positive, praises the wins. He’s not getting it wrong deliberately.

I feel your pain, reading has felt like a battle in our house despite me instilling a love for books in the DC from birth!!!
3 DSs, the eldest, like me, very early and proficient reader, middle one big struggles due to dyslexia, little one (just turned 7) very likely also dyslexic, almost two years behind but making steady progress.
the worst thing for me is seeing him “hate” reading because he’s so bright and curious but thinks he’s “stupid” and he’s missing out on the joy of books. He absolutely loves being read to.

Have you spoken to his teacher?

Can you change when or where you do it? Before school rather than after? Sofa rather than kitchen chair?
A nice snack at the same time.
You read the first page to take the pressure off

Agree with just reading to them loads. Try reading a story they know and love, and read it but point at the words as you go and get them to 'read' the last word of each sentence. Just to emphasise the point of reading is to read fun stuff not the boring school books.

Or pick funny but easy read books like fox in socks by dr seuss (lots of cvc words). If he gets stuck, read the word for him, make sure the story is getting through rather than fixating on him reading every word.

Definitely other reading like shopping list etc where reading has a purpose is valuable too.

I don't think your experience is uncommon. Teaching children to read is hard work, and laborious. I have a dyslexic child so I feel your pain. Practice is everything and it is boring and painful in my experience BUT worth it.
I would try and help him enjoy reading by taking him to the library. Most libraries don't charge children for overdue books so just go and get a pile one day after school or a Saturday. It will be free to join just take some address id for yourself.
They will have reading schemes similar to school but also lots of picture books that you can read together. They will also have comic book style books for children which the boys always love, like Spiderman, Minecraft, and other fun favourites suitable for him to look at even if the words are too difficult.
I would suggest letting him choose a few books so a mix of story books, comics and reading. And you choosing something from the reading scheme section - one or two that are a bit easy for him so that he can get through them easily and feel some success and work on fluency and then let him choose a couple with stories he'd like to read at the right level.
The point is let him choose, hopefully he will be more interested.
I would then recommend he watches some Alphablocks if he's struggling with his phonics as a way to reinforce that without any effort from you.
Look at Oxford Owls website Link and check out their 'how can I help at home' section in each area Phonics and you can play around on their phonics page together and see if you can guess that sounds Oxford owl phonics
If he's still struggling then reading eggs website does a free trial and helps children learn phonics. Reading Eggs
Explain at the library that you've got bored with the school books at the moment and want a change, he's working really hard and loves listening to stories and ask them for some suggestions to get you started.
You and he will get there, some children find it easy some don't. Best of luck. This time will pass and the good news is your little DD will have picked all these reading skills whilst sat on your lap!

I endured reading with my (then undiagnosed) autustic, dyslexic DCs and it was painful. I also felt very much out of my depth as while they were struggling with words like was/saw (because the letters shuffled around to them) I was reading chapter books at that age and no recollection of the learning to read process.

I had a breakthrough with some Star Wars easy readers (DK) and also had some of my old Ladybird books. The Puddle Lanes had a parent page and child page, so the adult page was more prose to tell and develop the story and the child's page had a simple sentence on that theme. I don't know if there's similarly structured books still in print as they worked well. The Peter and Janes are still in print, and while they're not exciting, they are good for simple sentence development and non-phonetic sight words.

Some nights they were just too knackered to read and I'd just read to them, and if I was struggling on a busy night, poetry was an easy win.

By the later stages of junior school we were burned out with the pesky magic key and reading records, so I moved on to reading age-appropriate books like Harry Potters that they weren't reaching for and audio books of novels.

DS1 was assessed with a reading age of 15 on going up to secondary school. DS2 is age-appropriate, and both have well-developed vocabularies. DS1 favours factual content over fiction, and often reads his Warhammer Codex and lore, and that's the scope of his range of reading for pleasure.

It's hard because reading is so important academically. The system does expect a standard prematurely for some readers and leave children who struggle behind. Dyslexia doesn't tend to be assessed for before 8, and in many LAs only private assessment is avaliable. Some children catch up later, and some don't click easily.

I also recommend Alphablocks for the phonics. That was something we stratigically revisited and it did help.

In your position I would sack it off and just read your usual bedtime story to him instead. Not permanently - you can try again tomorrow, or at the weekend, or next week, whenever feels manageable. Just to give yourself and him time for a short break and a reset. If you feel guilty, you can always chat about phonics sounds he can spot on the cereal packet over the breakfast table, or play an Orchard Game or do the odd five minute mum phonics activity or whatever.

My strategy for reading aloud with a reluctant reader (but enthusiastic listener) was to sandwich it in-between being read aloud to. So I'd read him a story or two, then we'd do a few minutes of him reading aloud to me, with the promise of another read-aloud story on the other side. Good snacks available while sitting together on the sofa during reading time also helped.

This is exactly what they do when they can't do it the "proper" way. Try to think of it as him being clever rather than lazy - he's found another way around because the way he's "supposed" to do it feels impossible. (Not just "too hard" - too hard on a really exhausting, overwhelming scale).

That's why it doesn't help to present him with entire books to read, especially if as PPs say he's been stuck on the same reading level at school for ages. Break the task down and make it much smaller - like one sentence. If this is too much and you're getting the same issue, try single words at a time.

If he's struggling to actually decode the words then the second problem will be that he's spending all of his cognitive effort on that and therefore he won't be able to hold all the individual words in mind long enough to put them together as a sentence, and so he loses the meaning and the whole thing becomes extremely tedious and boring and feels pointless. This is really common in dyslexia and also with ADHD where the working memory capacity is limited and also gets filled up with random unrelated stuff.

So just go back a step, it's the most useful learning thing you can do in any case. Frees up their capacity to actually do the thing that's been set and then enables them to get more practice at it, building a much stronger foundation for the next step above.

Excellent!

The key is to make it fun. It doesn’t matter what the reading material is.

Assuming you're in england as you say Y1, has he not only been im the class for 6 weeks or so?

Ask for a meeting with the SENCO if you feel youre not getting anywhere with the class teacher. It may be that he needs more intervention - at this age/stage there will be a huge variation in reading ability. In Y1 in my child's class, there were kids still working on reading books with no/single words on each page, whilst others were free reading, and everything in between. They will want to be putting additional effort into those who are struggling and the SENCO will be well placed to tell you what is going on in school, and ways you can support at home.

For what its worth, my child (even now...) is a reluctant reader. He always does much better when there's no other option. E.g. Sat in the car waiting for an appointment, or sat in a cafe etc. Most of our "school" reading is done immediately after school, sat at the table with a snack. He's still in learning mode, hes being fed and there's a natural requirement to sit there whilst he does so.

The books are tedious for you so how do you think they make him feel? School books are shit, just read regular books with him and I promise he’ll be way better off for it.

HE IS 5! you are being mean to your own child because you are probably comparing him to a "really good reader" in his class who is probably a girl ...arghh

I felt that I was doing more harm than good so I just read to them. They had audiobooks playing all the time.