Reading - school says they should enjoy it but its more like torture

[Bugsy2]

We are expected to supervise our children reading every night and then write the progress up in a reading progress book - this is a state primary btw.
DS is in Year 2 & it is nothing short of torture trying to get him to read. He hates it.
School say, that you should make the reading a pleasurable experience.
Can someone please tell me how???????

Dull sound of Bugsy hitting her head against a brick wall.

Bugsy - your observations of your son sound exactly the same as the 'symptoms' my children have shown when they were starting reading. I think they are pretty standard. Try not to compare with your dd. They all learn at their own rate and forcing them when they are not ready just makes everyone unhappy. That doesn't mean to say don't encourage him.

Bugsy, I have a book called Guerila Learning which is helpful, it's a US title but you can get it from Amazon. My dd1 is in Reception and for some reason adores school, but I still think there are ways to get around the system. I feel deeply for your ds as I was unhappy at school. Mayeb if you can identify what he is good at/interested in (which I am sure you have) you can encourage that as much as possible at home and so build up his self-esteem. Bloody schools, bloody government, what they hell are they doing to our children by making them think reaching targets is the be-all and end-all?

Nearly Three, I think you've hit the nail on the head. My ds self-esteem improved enormously once he realised he was a fab swimmer and drummer. It has filtered into everything else he does (not that he is a fab reader now, but he at last he enjoys it. A friend's child has just discovered he loves playing the tubor and has started lessons - and this is the first thing he has ever felt good at. It may take a while to find the "thing" but everyone is good at something and it makes us feel we can succeed.

DS has done reading each night since he was 3, and he's hardly a bookish drudge.

We sweeten the pill quite a lot. Our kids get to choose comics, which is how a lot of my early reading was formed. I'm a big fan of their close coupling between words and pictures as a method of accelerating comprehension, not just glyph parsing which is what schools mostly teach.

Most libraries have a good selection of books with dinosaurs,fairy princesses et al.

The biggest sweetest pill is media tie in books.
Books of favourite TV and films is attractive and usually fun.
But you must let them choose.
They will pick unsuitable material, and well, that's the way it goes. But they will enjoy it, and homework reading will be less of a battle of wills.
We're now playing with Wikipedia.com, which is tough going for a 5yo, but he loves the fact that he can find out anything at all.
Needs help with some words of course, not something you can just leave them with.

DC, some kids simply do not like books. I am bookish and so is dd1, from when she was about 7 or 8 mo. Try reading with dd2 though and she'll literally throw the book across the room. Ds is 5 mo and adores books, he get so excited when we read to him.

Bugsy yes that sounds very like my ds. There are a couple of tests you cn do on line, or ring up one of the dyslexia organisations. Even if it just to rule out the possibility. they can also give you good ideas to try. Try the Dritish Dyslexia Association here or Dyslexia Action here

Here is a list of common issues that the dyslexic child may have (from the bda):
Primary school age.

• Has particular difficulty with reading and spelling.
• Puts letters and figures the wrong way round.
• Has difficulty remembering tables, alphabet, formulae etc.
• Leaves letters out of words or puts them in the wrong order.
• Still occasionally confuses 'b' and 'd' and words such as 'no/on'.
• Still needs to use fingers or marks on paper to make simple calculations.
• Poor concentration.
• Has problems understanding what he/she has read.
• Takes longer than average to do written work.
• Problems processing language at speed.

Primary school age non-language indicators:

• Has difficulty with tying shoe laces, tie, dressing.
• Has difficulty telling left from right, order of days of the week, months of the year etc.
• Surprises you because in other ways he/she is bright and alert.
• Has a poor sense of direction and still confuses left and right.
• Lacks confidence and has a poor self image.

Dyslexia is a descriptive sort of thing - there are no cut or dried tests for it, but I was told that if several of these things sound familiar and your child is falling behind or showing signs of problems with confidence around reading and writing an assessment my be worth while. If you do it privately it is quite expensive (I paid £390)

my son has just started reception and am supposed to listen (MAKE) him read every night for fifteen minutes this is no easy task
secondly the book is boring thirdle they don;y change the book for a fortnight so he gets really bored and then doesn't try
and finally he seems to just memorise it anyway and shows little interest
has anyone any tips on what i could do with him

tinkerbellie,
It sounds, sadly, as though your son is being given non-decodable books. It's a really turn-off for children to be given books that they can only read by memorising and guessing.

nooka, thank you so much for all of that information. All of that sounds just like DS. Every single thing.
I have parents evening next week, so will be grilling his teacher about this.
For my own piece of mind, I'd go private - where was your ds assessed (if you don't mind me asking)?

UPDATE
Had parents evening last week & teacher is recommending DS be assessed by the SENCO teacher. I also have an appointment for him for CAMHS via the GP, so hopefully we may get to the bottome of his troubles.
Not entirely sure what SENCO assessment involves, but hopefully I'll be asking for more information.