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.

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

Aaand that's why you shouldn't be trying to teach her. Because you actually don't know what youre doing, and the fact that you're having to cajole and force her to do it goes to show that.

It was more important to me that my dc learnt to love reading. So i trusted that their reception teacher would teach them that's, and make it fun, and she did. I've never once said to them "do it for mummy". Because reading needs to be something they do for themselves, because they enjoy it. You'll end up with a child who sees reading as a chore because you're manipulating her into it. But you clearly think you're right, so crack on. When's she's in year 2, or year 7 and you're still forcing her to read you'll realise you were wrong. She's the one that loses from having a pushy mother.

Yes UK, I didn’t ask the school for permission to teach her. I asked what technique the use.

It wasn’t as intense as you might think because it was over the course of 2 years. The alphabet she learned via song in 1 day - it was on in the background while she played. So I consider that zero minutes. The appearance of the letters she learned in 2 days, approx 15min total spread over 2-3 weeks. Then we practised by looking at letters on signs when out and about - whenever we remembered. The sounds she learned in about 3 days, over 2-3 weeks approx 15min learning time total.

So this was spread out, over a long time period. Slowly slowly.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a pushy mum. I have come here seeking advice. Many have given me constructive feedback, and shared their experiences with me which I really value, and it has certainly impacted how I will do things moving forward.

I’m glad you’ve found a method that works for you and your child and school. That’s ace. Good luck with yours.

Yes UK, I didn’t ask the school for permission to teach her. I asked what technique the use.

What phonics scheme and reading technique do they use then? What’s it called?
What you’ve described doesn’t really sound like anything I have come across, so it would be interesting to explore. I don’t know of a scheme where as step 1 you learn the alphabet - as in the official letter ‘names’ rather than the sounds and then the names of written letters as the next step.
Sounds often come first - often just a particular set, not all of them in one go - and sometimes without anything written down at all. So for example children might look at ‘t’ not knowing how it looks, that is secondary. They learn to say ‘t’ - the sound, not ‘tee’ as in the alphabetical name, that’s of no use right now - because sounding out the phonemes correctly is really key - and then you might play a game with lots of pictures of things or objects that begin with ‘t’. So they recognise it when they hear it and they get lots of practice saying it. They then focus on how the sound looks so they can recognise it in a word. Repeat with other common sounds, and then you can start reading basic words. That’s a very broad overview, approaches vary, but many follow this as basic pattern.

The school uses read write phonics, which I think is a synthetic phonic method. It’s structured learning of sounds.

The steps I described weren’t part of teaching her to read, because I didn’t set out to teach her to read, it was things she just happened to learn. Then it got to the point where she had the tools, and reading seemed like the next natural step. From this moment I followed the read write phonics program. But because she already knew the sounds we started with what is described as ‘blending’ the sounds - basically sounding them out - c-a-t cat.

Teach her to read? No, simply read to her with her and show her the words, and let her enjoy the books. We all learn to read eventually. Just let her enjoy books for now, this is how you get her to want to read them and therefore learn to read.

Also, as someone who home edded from age for reception and Yr 1, it seemed like she was not taking things in, refusing to show me she'd learned a thing, refusing to demonstrate or participate for the most part, despite the battles and feelings like she was learning nothing as she seemed reluctant, like your situation, she now can read and can write, count to 100 and do simple sums. So it all sank in along the way. We only did an hour a day max. But I read to her and point to words as I read them a lot.

The phonics scheme you're describing is mostly likely read write inc. I really would back off with the teaching now OP. As previous posters have said, just concentrate on enjoying books together and leave the teaching for school.
You say you're not pushy but as a teacher of 30 years experience, you sure are coming across that way!