DD7 is excellent reader but doesn't seem to enjoy reading?

[saltshaker99]

DD7 (nearly 8) is starting year 3. Reading and writing are her top strengths, she was the first one in her class to move on from banded reading books to free choice books and her teachers have raved about her skills in English. She loves writing stories and does so of her own accord all the time, and she uses vocabulary and turns of phrase she's read in books. DH and I have always read to her every day, including chapter books for a while now. So she loves being read to and she loves writing.
The problem is that it is SO hard to get her to read. In year 2 we were usually only able to get her to read the bare minimum so that she could put something in her reading record, it was such a chore to her. And this was with books she had chosen. Back in early summer, May or June, she took a stack of 7 books out of the library that she was excited to read, and we still have 2 of them sitting around now. Every time we went to the library I would say I'm taking back the ones she hasn't read, and she's protested and insisted she will read them if we renew. But it's like pulling teeth with her. If she's at a loss asking for something to do I often suggest doing some reading but she acts like that's a disgusting suggestion. We had problems with excessive screen time in the past but we started to cut that down about a year ago and her screen time is really minimal now, most days. She has glasses, her eyesight isn't a problem.
Today she has a whole day at home because she's under the 48hr rule but she isn't sick anymore. Her dad is off sick too and looking after her but hasn't got much energy, I suggested the two of them have some cosy reading time together where they both read their own books together, and she started huffing and puffing like it's the last thing she would want to do. She said she doesn't really enjoy reading chapter books because it's hard. I don't think reading chapter books is actually hard for her but I can understand a stamina problem at her age, you need to read though to improve your stamina! She hasn't done a single page of reading since starting back at school and her reading record is empty still. I think at her skill level, reading should be a hobby that she enjoys? So weird. I want to foster a love of reading because it's so good for attention span, stamina, love of stories, vocabulary and all sorts of things.
I have wondered before whether part of it might be because the books she chooses look so nice on the cover but are horrendously dull once you start reading them (girl finds out unicorns exist and goes to a special school for unicorn riders where nobody has a personality, foils some kind of dastardly scheme that has no stakes), but I might just be being snobby there. We've read her loads of books that have proper characters/humour/suspense that are ones we've chosen ourselves but she always prefers to have them read to her!

I read with kids in school as part of a support program.
Some really liked real life things....eg. Kids encyclopedia, wildlife books, great fire of London even if they didn't want to engage with fiction. Also graphic books (Dogman) and kids newspaper. We even did play cooking following a kids cook book.
The advice we were given was to encourage them to read anything they fancied and with time the rest would come.

This sounds a lot like my daughter a couple of months ago. When she was on the reading scheme book she devoured her school book but once moved on to free readers half way through y2 she lost interest. I think she was very driven to move up the levels and once that motivation was gone she couldn’t be bothered.

over the summer she has got in to Tom gates and diary of a wimpy kid. There not great literary works but she is back to reading regularly again with no encouragement, often reading a whole book in a day or two. They are chapter books but with lots of cartoon pictures and seem to be pitched well for that age group.

You can’t force it.

i go through phases - either I devour books (14 in a month!) or I don’t read for a year.

She probably does actually find reading hard. She's really only just learned to read, and while she may be good, it's quite hard on the brain. I LOVE reading and I sometimes just can't be bothered, and I've been reading for about 40 years! Reading is much more taxing than watching a screen or even playing.

My son is the same age and sounds very similar, and he will currently only read Dogman books. He's read them over and over, like you we had lots of books out of the library over the summer and he barely touched them. I've had some success with the Secret Seven, but he'd really rather read Dogman. He says he finds chapter books without pictures hard to read (but loves to be read to).

Might she like non-fiction books with pictures instead? You can get some really great science and history books for that age group, which still have quite a bit of writing but in smaller sections.

I haven't read all the posts, so apologies if this has been said before, but just because she can read chapter books, it doesn't necessarily mean she has developed the depth to actually understand them yet.
If she's reading things she can't yet comprehend, it will put her off. I could read a complex, academic science book, but I wouldn't understand it and therefore wouldn't enjoy it.

Good advice here. My DD 7 likes the graphic novel series Bunny vs Monkey

Reading for pleasure stats have dropped sharply over the last decade and that drop is very evident in your dd's age group.

Your daughter is not a statistic, of course. But being unable to focus on a book (fiction/nonfiction/magazine whatever) impacts critical thinking skills. Ask any current university lecturer about their students' reading abilities. Reading is much harder to do than many activities (and how lovely that she likes to play and make models and stories).

A couple things tend to help: you sit down to read with her. Not TO her (although that really is a great thing to do so do that also!). You read your own book, she reads hers. You two can talk a bit about what you're reading after.

No phone/iPad time. None. Again, you need to model this too. TV and movies can be fine - they still require focus, especially if you ask about what's being watched - as long as it's still not something she's doing that often and she's not watching on an individual screen (phone, laptop etc).

It's possibly a very big lifestyle change and even more possibly not one you want to implement. Fair dues. Clearly the vast majority of us no longer live like this! But after a while I suspect that would solve the reading problem.

Whether it's worth solving is another question.

Do you and her dad ever read for pleasure? Not just reading to her but in your downtime.
Seeing it in the home makes a difference.

I'm really conscious of this, thanks. She used to have way too much screen time and we've cut it back and back. She loves her tablet and we couldn't take it away completely without it seeming like a punishment but we have gradually reduced the daily limit to now 30mins and now she doesn't get it every evening either. And for TV we're often putting on slow programmes from our own childhoods like Sooty and Pingu. DD does quite well now having to entertain herself without screen time.

Replace the tablet with a kindle!

My DS was exactly the same( still is actually).He was an excellent and very fluent reader at primary school( narrated the school play age 5),but getting him to read anything other than the prescribed reading books from school was like trying to get blood out a stone. I did worry how he’d perform in his English exams( Scotland)but needn’t have worried as he somehow managed to get top grades in them,DD was the exact opposite and always had a book on the go. DS is an adult now and still won’t pick up a book. He does a lot of reading online and loves researching items he’s interested in.

Now you mention a tablet….. my library uses Borrowbox for all its e-stuff (we are in a big SW consortium, I think, in case you live in that bit of the country). There are at least 40 kid’s magazines you can read for free. That might do for a stealth supervised read? I have an app on my Kindle Fire and iPad (I think Libby worked okay on both too).