4yo resistant to learning

[Izzymay]

Hi fellow mums/mums to be

I’m looking for parenting advice on what to do about a 4 year old (almost 5) who is very resistant to learning. I’m trying to teach her how to read, and she’s doing ok, but it’s really hard getting her to focus for 3-5 minutes. She either zones out, or zones in so much that she asks numerous random questions.

she also tries to get my attention by pretending not to know things. I often have to level with her and say something like ‘look mummy is really tired today, can you just stop this and read it, she will read the page without an issue.

The Oxford reading books for her age group are very shorty. It could take us 3-5min to read the book but her lack of concentration means it can take 15-20minutes. If I were to follow her guide and stop when she stops showing interest, we would not get past the title. She has zero interest in learning anything.

Any advice on how to deal with this would be much appreciated.

Play is child's work. Let them climb trees and learn reading and writing around aged 6/7. One of my DC started school at almost 6yo. He spent a bonus year just playing at nursery.

Try and relax about it. DS is almost 7yo and not really into reading that much, but will get there when he's ready.

I would suggest reading whilst out and about. You see signs at parks, town centres, without making this a chore. Children learn better without it being forced.

Sorry keep missing to reply to specific questions. She’s going to reception.

Someone mentioned about school saying for parents to not try to teach at home. I have to admit this is something I didn’t think about at all. It could get to her feeling bored or believing she knows it all and not trying hard enough with other activities. Definitely food for thought.

Thanks to everyone who shared ideas about games etc.

Ive been reading to her pretty much every night since she was a baby. She loves books in poem form, and even short poems. I will see if she’s into slightly longer books.

I have loved reading aloud to all of the DC since they were babies. My favourite book is Wind in the Willows to read aloud, but other books they choose themselves. Mr Men are brilliant books. So many out there.

If they pick up books that's great, if not they learn other skills. Not a big deal. Mine all spend lots of time outdoors. Eldest two in top set for everything. I just leave them to it, but am here if they need my help/support.

Sometimes stepping back is a great way to help your child.

I've been there, got the t-shirt. My suggestion is let her start school and focus on what she likes doing.

For the next year, learning is through fun. If it isnt fun, she wont learn. Now if you would like to 'push' her - make it fun. If she's bored and unwilling - it's on you and not her. Teachers have 1,000s different activities developed over years to make it 'fun' plus there is peer pressure. Nobody doesnt anything they dont enjoy. Make her enjoy it and if not, let her be.

Kids are interested in different things at different times. Mine hates puzzles (as did I, genuinely didnt see the point, like what is the point they are just bits of paper, or crosswords or educational board games) but he really really wants to understand how things work, why people do this or that. What is a virus and a vaccine, why wars happen and who Boris Johnson is and what he does so we chat rather than focus on puzzles. I get that puzzles get kids to practice certain skills but I just cant get him to enjoy them. Am not ruining our relationship over some puzzle pieces.

Op I'm teacher and one thing I learnt from the lockdowns is that my own children do not take kindly to being taught by me. Many of my colleagues said the same. It was very strange and our homeschooling efforts often descended into rows. It might be she is resistant to the formal approach with you for now. I would give it a break and concentrate on keeping a love of reading there by you reading to her every night. In my experience as long as children see the value in books they will eventually get there with the reading.

If she hasn't even started school, stop teaching her.

You are unlikely to be using the same methods as school (for reading, writing or maths) and she will just get confused.

You will also put her off learning if you are forcing it in her.

Wait until she starts school - they will advise on how you can help your child best. My DCs primary used to do workshops to teach parents the correct methods etc.

I was going off what I read online that the Oxford reading books are for 4/5 year olds
I think they just mean they are for children in reception. Your daughter will read them when she's 5 in reception, kids with birthdays in June will read them when they're 4 in reception. It doesn't mean that all 4 year olds should be reading them.

The thing is, they're not taught to read by reading books. They're taught all the different sounds which makes up words, so that when they come across a word they're not familiar with they can identify what sound that letter combination is likely to make. The children actually reading books is almost secondary to that.

You're not helping your dd at all by trying to teach her. Why's it so important to you that she gets a head start over the other children? Mine started reception not able to read at all. They've finished reception reading very fluently for their age and able to comprehend what they're reading. I'm there to support their learning, I'm not there to teach them. I'm also not sure what the rush is to get her into the lion the witch and the wardrobe - she's unlikely to follow it, it was written for much older children. Get her some Julia Donaldson books and let her enjoy the phrasing and the simple stories that were written for children her age.

My DD is also off to reception and the school said to us that all we need to do is teach them to toilet independently, be able to get mostly dressed independently and ideally recognise their name so they can find their peg.

We read to her every night and we're doing the summer reading challenge from the library. That's it. I'm not a teacher, I wouldn't know where to start so I'll leave it to the professionals.

I have such fond memories of reading to mine when young, developing a love of reading and the English language.

Now teenagers, that love of language is still there. Foster that @Izzymay, nurture it. A positive attitude to learning sets them up far better for school (and beyond as we never really stop learning!).

You aren't helping your DD, reception teachers don't really want you to start teaching them anything like reading/writing at home as unless you do it exactly the method they do, they essentially have to unteach your DD and then start again

The thing is, they're not taught to read by reading books. They're taught all the different sounds which makes up words, so that when they come across a word they're not familiar with they can identify what sound that letter combination is likely to make. The children actually reading books is almost secondary to that.

Indeed - although not ‘secondary’ as such. It’s just separate. Learning phonics is important and learning to love books is important - but these two things do not crossover at the start of reception. Not unless it’s child led. A child might learn a sound or a high frequency word, then later be perusing a picture book in the book corner and recognise the sound in the book for example.
Phonics lessons and learning to read words and sentences is completely separate to enjoying story time with your teachers and friends or sitting in a book corner during free play to look through picture books.
’Reading books’ as in the ones where children will come across the phonics sounds they have learned to read out loud themselves don’t tend to be given out until after Christmas. Schools who teach a high quality phonics program, following something like sounds write for example, will continue to send home picture books to be enjoyed for pleasure for the first term.
Most schools will publish information on how they teach reading - I would highly recommend the OP takes a look at her DD’s school’s approach. If they do use sounds write, which many schools have moved to lately, they have online parent tutorials to better understand how to support their children. Other schemes may do similar things to support parents on their websites. It might not be a great school as she says, but the way the OP is doing currently is definitely not what any school with high quality teaching of reading and phonics would be doing.

I think I'm going to echo some advice already given but from a slightly different perspective. We are very reading focused in our house. It's a big part of dp and I's life and Ds1. We have always taught extra to school , partly because the school isn't the greatest at teaching (great at other things though ) and ds2 hasn't had the greatest teacher in the last year.

Ds2 was far less interested. We started the same as we did for ds1 but he saw it as a chore. We quickly realised this then meant because he didn't like it at home he stopped engaging a bit at nursery then school. I got it wrong. Not a problem we changed tack.

We didn't push at all. We just accepted for a bit he was more creative and arty and fostered that. We figured he would get there and we would push a bit more when it was actually necessary.

We had to be really careful not to make it a chore again. No guilt , no comparison. The only thing we did do is not read things for him. (We didn't just leaving him hanging we got him to figure it out from context clues via pictures etc).

What we didn't do is read things out to him. Say he wanted to use the computer but needed to read an instruction. Rather than read it out to him we worked out if there was a button he needed to press (say there was an obvious green button). He started to realise that to do the things he wanted to do he would have to learn how to read.

It stopped being about arbitrary learning, and it became about learning something because he realised he needed the skill. He realised that without reading he would have to wait for one of us to be available and it took longer.

So he started to try. We gently helped him by sounding words out. If he wanted something typed in. We wrote it down and he copied it.

If he wanted a toy and to work out what was in it , we would draw a picture related the word then the word and ask him what he thought.

He is now asking me to do phonics and reading with him to practice daily during the summer because he's excited about reading better.
He doesn't want to read , he does want to find out if the dragon really did steal the princess etc.

Now he is full on invested. However for ds2 there is no pleasure in just reading. It has to get him something he wants. Part of that was withdrawing our help so he realised that connection.

I would say be careful of using guilt tripping like "don't annoy me I'm tired " that doesn't embed the desire to do anything for themselves so as soon as you aren't in control they will stop.
Dp and I teach adults and you learn really quickly that learning for the sake of it is not a good motivator (and quite patronising when dealing with adults which is why we don't use it ) Learning because you need that skill to get something else is far more sustainable.

There is always a way to point out why they need a skill. Learning for the sake of it is purely for those who enjoy it , which is not a morale issue. It doesn't make anyone better that they enjoy learning.

DS1 loved learning - he was reading out house numbers and words he recognised on buses when he was only a toddler. He loved reading and went to school already able.

DS2 couldn't have been less interested. In fact I think he only really hit his stride when he was about 7, and now is fine (albeit prefers comics to books, but has no issues with reading for functional reasons)

Seriously?

A story is supposed to progress, you know make sense.
If a story is so poorly written that it can be read backwards and you can't even tell, then the sentence structure, comprehension and overall structure of the story is basically non existent and crap.

I know many kids learnt to read on them. A reasonably together kid who is interested in books will read anything, and start reading.
It is a bit like saying, McDonalds is food so the child gets fed so it doesn;t matter if all they it is McDondals does it? yes it does matter.

If you have a choice, you don't buy and feed just crap. Same with books. If you have a choice why buy something over 50 years old which has been shown to be crap.

@Nietzschethehiker thank you for sharing your experience. I recognise a bit of my daughter in the story you shared about your son. She’s quite independent minded - hence her reluctance with me teaching her in a top down/old fashioned way. I still plan to pull back a little on the whole teaching thing, but letting her figure out how to read things in everyday life could be a very good way of letting her see why this is important; which will hopefully inspire her to want to learn when she’s ready. Thanks again.

I agree 🙏🏼

There is probably an element of this. And I agree, nurturing a love of reading is key.

I taught her by sounding all the letters which make up the word. I didn’t know there was another way of learning to read.

I am not motivated by her being ‘ahead’ of other children. This is a foreign concept to me. I am motivated by her doing her best.

There is no ‘rush’ to read the lion the witch and the wardrobe. Someone shared their experience of reading to their children and I thought I might try it. This doesn’t mean I will stop reading the shorter books. But one day, if I’m in the library or my sisters house and I see a chapter book, I might pick it up and read a bit. And if I see she likes it, I’ll order one. And if she stares at me blank - I’ll know she’s not ready for it. No harm done.

maybe what you see as annoying distractions is her way of trying to get you to just be an affectionate mum to her, not a teacher all the time.
can't you just cuddle, giggle, tickle, be silly.
she goes to school, that is her work day, why should she have to be on duty as it were all the time.
doesn't she get any down time.
what about emotional development, feeling loved and accepted whether she makes progress or not.
if you don't let up she will remember you as always pushing her to do, be, achieve something. she needs to relax. and so do you.
good luck.

I have consulted the school teacher on how they teach.

I have consulted online sources. Articles, YouTube videos etc.

And I started reading with her only when she was comfortable with 1) the alphabet, 2)recognising the alphabet, 3) knew the sounds of the letters, 4) understood that letters come together to make words ( this was surprising to me at the time but totally makes sense : ). We then stayed at this level for 6-9 months. That is to say, I didn’t teach her further. More recently we started practising reading as it seemed like a natural next step. This too was a carefully planned process that rolled out in stages.

I promise I didn’t wake up one day and demand she reads. I’m a scientist and over planning is in my DNA. There is no issue with her ability to learn reading or my ability to teach it. My initial question was about attitude to learning. I think I didn’t express that clearly enough which might have caused confusion. Nonetheless, I’ve received a lot of interesting and thought provoking feedback that has given me ideas on how to go forward.

A mother wears many hats. A teacher, a play friend, A DJ, a cook, a healer, a protector, a dancer, tidy upper…

Doing one doesn’t make you less of the other stuff. That’s the beauty of motherhood. Thank you for the good
luck wishes. I’ll need it for sure :)

She's 4-5 are about self discovery. Don't force her and let her do what she wants/likes. Do little bits every week and then every day but don't force her. What you described is all normal behaviour. Let her be a child. My daughter was the same last year. I'm getting worried I did too much work with her in reception and should have let her play/life life. She's going to be glued to table very soon.

And I started reading with her only when she was comfortable with 1) the alphabet, 2)recognising the alphabet, 3) knew the sounds of the letters, 4) understood that letters come together to make words ( this was surprising to me at the time but totally makes sense : ). We then stayed at this level for 6-9 months. That is to say, I didn’t teach her further. More recently we started practising reading as it seemed like a natural next step. This too was a carefully planned process that rolled out in stages.

This sounds very intense for a child who hasn't even started school yet!

I'm also surprised that her future school gave you advice on how to teach your DD to read - that is very unusual when she isn't even at school.

Are you in the UK OP?