Positive reluctant reader stories!

[Franny1]

Please send me your lovely stories of kids who have gone from reluctant readers to bookworms!

Not particularly looking for advice (have had lots :) ), just keen to hear some comforting, positive stuff so I can enjoy keeping my fingers crossed that my seven year old DD (very able, loves to be told stories, just still can’t be bothered to read by herself) will one day get into it!

At 7 it’s unlikely that her reading ability will meet the kinds of books she finds interesting. Just keep encourging a love of books. Look at getting her some graphic novel eg Investagator and Monkey v Bunny.

Ds10 always a reluctant reader, severe dyslexia diagnosed 2 years ago. He’s now 10 & reads independently now, has a love of certain genres too. I’ve plugged away at it for years, reading to him, which he always loved. Going to the library until he finally found something he liked & was confident & capable enough to read. I still read to him with some books too.

Yes why relucant ?

One DD has hugely advanced reading age way above years

The other struggled.

One i got around with story CDs.

Watching films and stopping doing all comprehension but with films eg what do we know about the character ,what will happen next

Use three words to describe character etc

She's still not an avid or quick reader but her cat score was was top 30 in 200 kids and she's doing exceedingly well on English.

My middle dc was always a reluctant reader while the eldest and youngest were always bookworms.
He eventually got into comic style books (Dogman etc) but didn’t seem to want progress to anything more complicated. We resisted the urge to push it (am sure some of the reluctance was because siblings loved reading) and suddenly aged 10 he read a longer book after a school author visit, loved it and now he’s racing through books and reads every night.
So she might suddenly decide she wants to, based on my own experience try not to push her and let her find it on her own terms - especially if she’s stubborn and a bit rebellious like my middle one!

Bear in mind, there is not a lot of honesty about reading. I am confident that many of those boasting of 7/8 year olds "who sped through Harry Potter", actually those kids had little comprehension of what was actually going on. My DD just got greater depth in reading in SATS, she would pretty much refuse to read even an early reader by herself in year 3. She loved to read easy books until probably year 5.

Keep reading to her, the comprehension skills and enjoyment are so much important, ignore reading age, it's not important. DD will now read by herself every night (mix of hard and easy books), absolute habit now. Never has bothered with Harry Potter though!

This is SO like my DD. She is such a stubborn personality and her older brother is a massive bookworm - I have been absolutely wondering if this is part of it so really interesting to hear you say this!

My youngest brother was a reluctant reader - quite probably because he had plenty of older siblings happy to read to him. My mother was distraught (she had been a teacher) and labelled everything around the house in the hope he'd pick up reading skills, told us NOT to read to him, and we had to ask him to read to us, all to no avail, he didn't see the point. Then at 8 was threatened with going into the remedial class at school which he didn't want to, so he learned to read over a weekend. The Cat in The Hat was his first book (read aloud on the Sunday morning), and he quickly settled into being a very good reader, preferring factual and technical books to novels. Now retired, he had a career which was very dependant on words being used in the correct context. Did not hold him back one bit.