My poor ds1........

[becaroo]

......I took him out of school in January as he was miserable and being made to feel stupid because he couldnt read at the level he was "supposed" to be reading at. There were a lot of other issues too but that was the main one.

Anyway, I have been HEing him since then and we love it, however, literacy is still a real sticking block for him. I am using "Yes we can read" albeit I am going slowly..only 1 page per session (about 3 sessions per week) as opposed to the 20 mins a day it recommends.

Yesterday he read the page and did really well but he just has no confidence in his ability at all. He got very upset and told me that he "was left behind in school" and that "the other children could read I and I couldnt" and that "I will never learn" and that he is "too slow".

I am heartbroken. He is such a sweet kid and so clever! His vocab is fantastic and he knows what the words he uses mean.

He does no reading now (apart from yes we can read) because it was just getting too stressful and now if he wants we read to him. He watches lots of dvds and likes imaginary play.

I dont know what more I can do to build up his confidence....I praise him all the time, I tell him how well he is doing but he doesnt beleive me.

Am I doing something wrong? I cant just let him watch dvds and play outside for the next 9 years!!!!!

Feel lost and a failure as a mother and home educator

(((((becaroo)))))

Thing about reading is, to a certain extent it is like riding a bike. Once you can do it, noone will ever need to know whether you were 4 or 8 when you learned. Or like potty training. Or like a million other things.

Can you persuade him of that? That learning to read is a knack, and you'll just read to him till it clicks. And it's not AT ALL because he is stupid, it's just that it hasn't clicked for him yet. And it's no problem.

If you let him watch DVDs for 9 years you are a failure as a mother. If you let him watch DVDs with subtitles on, on the other hand, he will probably learn to read. Just sayin'.

How old is he again? I'm wondering whether there are some books you could have that he simply could not fail to read - the Maisy ones are good if you still have them hanging around. We like things like dr Seuss Go Dog Go - many many pages of success available there, with lots of visual cues.

I think I might go away from having him read books at all, and just have script in front of him for a while on DVDs and you reading and the internet. And find some things to do that he can really really excel at right now.

how old is he becaroo?

I found a bit every day was the way to go with dd - and I also wrote her little notes with a question and two answers with a box to tick

Do you want to go

• to the playground
• to the park?

What kind of cake shall we make?

• coconut
• carrot

that kind of thing.I think the daily decoding does it but if he hates it, maybe just 5 minutes a day

Have you ever thought of getting his eyes checked?

Becaroo, have you had your son tested for dyslexia? Also, I took my son to an optomotrist, one who did dyslexia eye testing, and my son was fitted with blue tinted lenses and his reading came on in HUGE leaps and bounds afterwards.

I don't know if that is any help. I too had a son who was very unhappy at school at his inability to progress as he thought he should. He was at home with me for 18 months.

How old is he? It says six years on your profile.

My dd1 is six and a half and cannot read. Because in Belgium, they don't start teaching them reading and writing until the year they are six - so dd1 will be beginning to learn this september.

And children like your ds is exactly why - bright children who are just not ready to learn how to read and write yet.

Sorry if I have missed it but how old is he, Becs?

Ah x posts with Belgo

Ds1 is just 7 and only in the last few months has his reading taken off - his writing is still appalling but slowly, slowly getting there!

Boys especially don't have the neural pathways for literacy till about 6 or 7.

I find the school system in this country conveniently ignores this fact and pushes them way beyond their natural course of development - counterproductive in many cases.

Don't worry

he will get it

I PROMISE but don't push it, don't worry and concentrate on other stuff.

Poor lad, and poor you! It sounds like he's so convinced he just can't do it that even when he is managing ok he still doesn't feel like it.

What age is he and how long was he in school? I don't think you should write yourself off as an educator when you are having to start by undoing the damage that the school had already done - you have to give yourself and him the space to get over that first, and it sounds like the main thing school drummed into him is that he can't do this.

I didn't HE at that age, so I can't say how to teach reading to someone who's struggling with it, but I think maybe you could just stop doing "literacy" at all for a while, as it sounds like he's too tense to deal with it and it just reinforces the feeling that he can't do it.

How about sticking Post-it notes to common things round the house to get him used to seeing a thing and its word together? Just stick them up and don't make a big deal of them so they aren't "literacy work". Plus as omm says, subtitles on whenever you watch a dvd. That way he keeps seeing words and their meanings and starts to connect them up.

If his vocabulary is decent for his age, and he does things like drawing or other fine motor skills work (eg making models) then he'll be in a good position to catch up with reading once he stops feeling under pressure (from himself probably much more than any pressure he feels from you).

her DS is 7 IIRC.

Becaroo, stop talking about yourself as a failure, I'll have to have words with you again won't I!

please remind yourself that even if his self esteem is still low, it's still better than if he'd stayed in school.

did you think about the alien language idea on your 'reading...again' thread?

I've also seen a book called Toe By Toe recommended on MN, if you haven't seen it already, worth checking out maybe.

Ref your 'Reading again' thread I'd be really interested to know why you ended up with 'Yes We Can Read'?

I wouldn't recommend Toe by Toe at all, unless you want to bore him to death. But then, I 'd recommend all the stuff I recommended in my previous post on the 'Reading Again' thread

My son was 7 in June. He was attended nursery/reception/year 1 and 2 terms of year 2. He has been HE since Jan this year.

MMM We tried "Toe by toe" and despite him doing really well on it, he HATED it. As maizieD said - it bored him.

"Yes we can read" was recomended on another thread - its very like toe by toe but more user friendly. He doesnt like it much either! I suppose I just grasp at straws a bit wrt literacy and will try anything that might help him.....I cant just do nothing with him, can I?

I have noticed that he seems to struggle with phonics - even simple cvc words like "met" - he reads m-e-t and doesnt blend them together to form "met". I thought phonics was the best way to teach children to read?

Wrt dyslexia, he is quite good at maths which I thought made dyslexia less likely?? also, the books I ahve mentioned - toe by toe and yes we can read - are designed for use by dyslexics so am not sure which way to go now.

We have all the Dr Suess books, Roald Dahl etc and loads of non fiction on his fave topics (dinosaurs, big machines, animals etc) The house is literally full of books (although a lot of them are mine!)

I have tried to tell him that reading will be like learning to ride his bike - which up to last year he couldt ride without stabilizers. He now zooms about everywhere and is very proficient. He just doesnt believe me.

It is soul destroying to see my ds1 like this.

I just dont know what to do.

Automomous education sounds great, but surely it doesnt work for all children? Surely some children will never want to do any work/learn to read etc??

Am at a real low point.

Oh, sorry, had his eyes checked last year - 20/20 vision.

I agree about taking him to an optometrist. I think it is important to rule out a problem before anything else. It is unlikely to be something visual, but it is a possibility.

cross post, sorry

was it with an optometrist though?

Sorry about all the typos....very tired....

Becaroo I think you are spot on, like with the bike - ds1 only just got off the stabilisers about 3 days ago, and now he is brilliant - he just got it 'like that', but for years I watched (and he watched) his peers all racing about and I suspect neither of us felt he ever would make it, he was all over the place with the stabilisers on even.

So you are right, he will just get the knack - but he isn't ready yet.

I don't consider even for one second that he will never learn to read.

Once he is 8 and still not getting it, you might want to self refer to a dyslexia specialist and get him assessed - we did with ds1 about 9 months ago and she said he could be, or he might just be immature but she said his tests came out that his IQ was above 140 - so time would tell. It did and he's even slightly above 'average' in reading now.

What a turnaround.
It's like potty training and walking and everything else - you can push it for weeks if you feel so inclined but in the end you're making more stress and work for yourselves.

It must be veyr hard being the one with all the responsibility and all these concerns - but I think your only option is to stick your head in the air and have faith. Ds1 is the last boy on earth I'd have expected to be able to read. Really - don't worry and it will not be too late if it turns out he does have an issue with it. Adults can learn to read and write so an 8yo with specialist advice certainly can - but I reckon he'll do it himself before you get to that stage.

ds also 7 end of May fwiw x

Becaroo

Have you read 'Read With Me: An Apprenticeship Approach to Reading' by Liz Waterland? It's very eye opening. Out of print but you can get very cheap copies off amazon easily. I really recommend it.

And I think that completely stopping with the learning to read could be a very good idea. Try to get him to just shrug his shoulders about it. He's still very young to read - in a lot of countries he would only just be starting formal literacy lessons - everything else would be just being read to lots and lots; looking at words he sees a lot e.g. his name, his favourite cereal etc.; and playing with words and letters.

Phonics is not actually the best way to teach children to read. It's one of the ways they use to train children who are too young to learn to read. Many autonomously educated children learn to read the 'whole words' way; whereby they start learning to read by recognising more and more words and then start learning patterns in the words and applying those to new words. Of course you can help the process by telling him about the different letter sounds, but don't think of phonics as the starting point, but as a useful tool to use later on.

My son has been having problems and he now goes to a friend for one on one help, she uses toe by toe, but has adapted it to work for her. I really recommend it, it teaches them the individual sounds, how they fit into words and how to divide words up to sound out. after 6 months it's all beginning to click, although he still finds it hard work.

Could be worth looking at dyslexia again- maths isn't always part of it.

Sounds like my ds2 who has auditory dyslexia (and is great at maths). He cannot hear the sounds but can read the letters - cannot blend. He is 13 and high school have been great with scribes, laptops, 1 - 1 support. I knew he was struggling when he was left behind on week 2 of jolly phonics, unlike my other two. Do go to a private dyslexia tester who will give you loads of insight.
I love reading but I have had to accept ds2 will never be enthused. He is a whizz on the laptop though.

Just a note regarding phonics...

It's very much the fashion in the teaching world at the moment. Research has been done showing how good it is, etc, so schools have moved away from the "look say" approach they used to use. But if you learned to read in the 60s or 70s, if you learnt with Peter and Jane, you used the look say approach - and you can read, as can I.

Phonics is good, but it isn't the best for every child. My eldest had a strong visual memory and all attempts at phonics passed her by. She would look at a word, remember the shape of it, and know it from then on. Even at 9 or 10, if she met an unfamiliar word, she had absolutely no idea what it said, despite being a generally good reader, because she had no phonics. She's now 14 and can read anything, however difficult or unfamiliar. Somewhere along the line she picked up the phonics knowledge without being taught.

What I'm saying is you may need to try a different approach. I agree with the posters who say put words around, write little notes, put subtitles on DVDs, go shopping and ask him to find beans. Ask him where the word beans is on the tin. Read notices and signs in the real world. Put a sign on the fridge saying fridge. Don't make a big deal of it. He will make the
connection. He will read.

I used to be a schoolteacher and I can tell you that a significant proportion of boys are not ready to read until 7 or 8 or beyond. All research backs up this fact. It is sheer stupidity in this country that we ignore it because we brainwash thousands of boys into thinking they are stupid when we are just trying to make them do something they are not developmentally ready for. It's as stupid as if all nurseries made a target that all children had to be potty trained by 18 months. You'd just be creating stress and misery, and for what? My youngest was potty trained at 21 months, my eldest was 9 years old before she was reliable day and night. But nobody knows that now - it's irrelevant what age they did it - and it will be the same with reading.

Tell him you are taking a break from it at the moment, and then do the things suggested. And please believe he will be fine.

Ds2's problems went undetected until he was 9 as he too has an amazing memory for the shape of words. He now has coping mechanisms and will remember where to find a word to write it ( eg on a book title, letter, bit of advertising).

Thank you all so much for your posts...was feeling a bit sorry for myself last night

At 3am this morning (whilst lying awake worrying yet again) I basically came to the same conclusion as you all....leave it alone, read to him, use subtitles etc and when he is 8 if he is still struggling get him assessed.

I have read the Liz Waterland book and really liked it, just been swept up by the phonics approach I guess.

I wasnt taught phonics and I had a reading age of 15 at 9 years old. Was the best reader in school according to my headteacher! So....maybe ds1 just needs a different approach.

Shame....I have spent a FORTUNE on phonics stuff

Thanks again, so much x

Bec, glad you're feeling brighter now. I was the same as you at school!
Just try and remember boys are often very different in this area - they have different brains, different spans of concentration and they are better and worse at other stuff too.

See how you go. In the meantime try and focus elsewhere. I ducked out of reading with ds1 for months - school was school and home was home, and I didn't agree with blurring those boundaries. So he did reading at school and his own thing at home.

Not pushing it seems to have worked. Though I don't know how much of a fuss they made at school, tbh!