DS (8) won't read books - how much of a problem?

[OfficeBird]

DS2 is almost 8. About to go into Year 4 in Sept.

He CAN read, and finished Year 3 on Stage 14 of the ORT.
However his reading aloud is rather stilted.

He loves being read to though, and listening to story tapes.

BUT he has never, ever, picked up a book himself and read it himself.

We have had some concerns about his reluctance to read for some time, and saw the SEN lady last term. She suggested he may have some problems with slow processing, which makes reading hard for him .

He really resists any attempts on our part to get him to read, saying 'it's boring', 'he's tired' etc.
He says that when he reads on his own he can't remember what's happened in the book (which is obviously a concern...)

We've tried non-fiction, comics and kids' magazines, but he just tends to skim them/look at the pictures...

The SEN person said they will monitor him closely next term to see if he needs extra help, or if it's just soemthing that will get better with age (he's the youngest in the class).

How big an issue is this non-reading?
He's been given a 'booklist' to read books from over summer, and I can't imagine him getting through any of them himself?
What do I do, other than continue reading to him/ letting him listen to story tapes?

DH just thinks he is being stubborn and suggested we 'incentivise' him by saying he can only play computer games for the same length of time each day that he has spent reading

Hi OB, your ds sounds like mine and I have tried all the same things as you, we have huge bookshelves of different books! dts1 is in year 4 and still dislikes reading, he finds it hard which is part of the problem.

The one thing that does work though is not trying to get him to read a book but to do activities that involve him reading without realising it, such as baking (reading recipes), reading signs, checking labels etc...

DrinkMore.. the thing is I can't decide how much of an 'issue' it is.

My eldest DS is a real bookworm (as am I) so my reference point may be skewed. But my gut feel is that NOT reading puts a child at such a disadvantage compared to others who just hoover up knowledge from books.

I can't decide whether there is a genuine 'problem to solve' - in which case I should be trying to work out why he finds reading so hard/ dislikes it..

Or whether I should just stop worrying and let him listen to audiobooks and watch documentaries instead?!

Can you describe what you mean by 'stilted'?

Very often a child reads in a stilted fashion because they are having a problem with recognising the words, possibly having to sound out and blend a number of them, or trying to puzzle them out with not very helpful strategies. I would find it most unlikely for a competent reader to be stilted in their reading - but perhaps my idea of 'stilted' differs from yours...

I would very much agree that not reading puts a child at a disadvantage, both for increasing knowledge and for widening their vocabulary; neither 'live' speech nor that on the media (TV or radio)has such a wide vocabulary as written texts.

I would also agree with trying non book based reading activities.

I would also see how he copes with 'reading' phonically straighforward, but, to him, unfamiliar, words. If he finds them difficult, he probably does have a problem.

In the same boat here - and have many threads on the subject over the years

Yes it is a problem. A real problem that can handicap them not just in English but in other subjects too

I have no bloody clue what the solution is though. We've tried

1. Nightly joint reading - DS reads a page, I read a page etc
2. A wide selection of books - really wide - we take DS to Waterstones/the library and work through stuff that he might conceivably find interesting
3. Comics
4. Rxtra reading work from school

We had real success with the Wimpy Kids books - which DS adores - and also with the Horrid stuff - mainly maths but also other Horrids. Including Horrid Henry but that was some time ago.

Stuff like Top Gear annuals go down okay.

We also try to encourage writing creatively

Good luck

My theory is that this happens because schools focus too much on helping kids acquire the skill of reading without focusing too much on whether the child is anjoying or enduring their reading books. I'm amazed to see how many kids in dc's year are seen as fantastic readers, acquiring the skill at an amazing pace but the joy of reading was left behind as they were made to endure reading scheme book after reading scheme book in the relentless pursuit of the "free reader" title. Not that my little theory helps you!

As for what to do - incentives will not make him enjoy reading anymore - he'll only do it for the reward and consequently will enjoy it even less.

I think I'd continue to read to him with him, story tapes are good but reading to a child gives you the opportunity to discuss the language used - increasing understanding, you share the excitement of the story together and the child can discuss with you at length what they thing might happen, it's lovely cuddling up special time. It's a really positive "book" experience, once he is into the story you might encourage him to read a page a night or suggest you are too tired to read any more that night & if he wants to find out what happened, he'll have to read on himself (only for that night). Be relaxed about it though - focus on enjoyment.

I intend to keep doing it right the way through primary.

I would go for really easy books - what's on the booklist? I think sometimes teachers and parents give children 'stretching' books to read, which take too long and are discouraging.

HAve you tried BeastQuest? They are lots of them, they are short and exciting and lots of boys love them. Also humour works well - try Mr Gum!

What got my ds reading was having the audio books of the Cressida Cowell Dragon books and reading along to himself as he listened, if you see what I mean.

My ds is a perfectly capable reader, but he finds it hard to read a book he's not into. Finding something he'll even bother to pick up has been a big problem. I think your ds may be having the same issue, not into the books he's been given and therefore not interested.

I gave up on 'suitable for his age' books and was happy to go back a couple of steps in order to get him interested in reading for it's own sake.

Horrid Henry (backed up by story CD's) have bridged a gap, and you may find your ds picks up a horrid henry book too if he enjoys the humour and naughtiness of it all.

Been really struggling to get my ds to move on the anything else though. I managed to get some Mammoth academy books, which he read extremly fast once I read the first chapter to him and he saw how funny they were.
He also avidly reads joke books and also enjoys annuals (scooby doo, gogo crazy bones, horrid henry....). It's not such full on reading and have puzzles and games to distract too.

I also got him a subscription to RSPB which comes with a magazine every 2 months. Sometimes he looks at it and sometimes he doesn't. Or at least I thought he didn't until we were playing a game in the car of name as many things of one type as you can and he came out with a whole string of different birds (not always promounced correctly) and when I asked where he had learnt them all from it was from the RSPB magazine.
So is there anything he's into that has a club he can join? doesn't have to be like RSPB, could be fan club if he has a favourite group or tv show etc.

Oh the other things I did was agree he could stay up half an hour extra if he was in bed and reading. So he may sit in bed and read a book, or he may do a puzzle magazine, wordsearch or something. He likes being able to say his bed time is later and I like knowing he's sitting quietly doing some kind of reading.

I have the same issue with Ds2, he absolutely hates reading unless it is something that involves snot and other bodily fluids those were "ok" according to him. it was about a year ago though and I cannot remember how complicated or not they were (I am guesseing not too complicated)This year he red one of this series and said it was his favourite (still took him minth to finish but he finished)

We do the read in bed offer as well, gillybean!

Perhaps you and he have yet to discover the type of book he enjoys reading.

Ds1 was a reluctant reader until he discovered Cherub books (these are too old for your DS though!) Then, to my utter joy, I'd find him reading in bed when I went up to bed and had to "tell him off"

DS2 (9) thoroughly enjoyed the Charlie Small books at your DSs age. he used to devour those, and still does when a new one comes out.

does your library have a summer reading scheme? this year it's called the Space Hop and the idea is to read 6 books in 6 weeks. may be worth a look.

how is his writing? maybe writing (and illustrating?) a story together would be a fun summer project, and at least that's a way of keeping up with literacy.

to see if it's phonological processing that's the problem, make up a load of nonsense CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and see if he can read them. it will show up if he's having trouble remembering letter sounds and/or blending them. because they are nonsense words you know it's not just word recognition/memory IYSWIM.

e.g. cux, dat, pol, nem...
could then try longer words like
cude, mape, strob, pake, huddy...
anything as long as they make phonological sense.

(I'm not an expert BTW, far from it, but I read that idea in a teaching-to-read book)

My ds who is 9 in august is not really a book reader.

He though absolutely loves Magazines (over comics, so like Top Gear or a computer one etc), so I tend to let him choose a couple every half term when in Sainsburys. He literally reads every word, keeps them, memorises them [no joke] and can tell you exactly what issue contains what - even months down the line.

That IMHO is more valuable to him than me urging him to read a book of which he has no interest.

I think you do need to check whether he can actually read (de-code) or whether he has a fab. visual memoery and is relying on memorising and guessing to get through the ORT books.
You can do that with the nonsense word test here:
www.rrf.org.uk/pdf/Ruth%20Miskin%20Nonsense%20Word%20Test.pdf

Until DS was 13 he wouldn't really read books although he would dip into non fiction comics/ guiness book of records ie books with short paragraphs, not a page of writing which seemed to put him off.

It is surprising how much knowledge they can suck up from the world around them. When he started secondary school , all the teachers at parents evening said he must read a lot, and were astonished when we said he didn't read books!

However just before his 13th birthday he suddenly became a bookworm and now always has a book on the go. He had read Harry Potter before that but no other fiction. he used to read that with a ruler under line as I think he had trouble keeping track of the words, which is why he was put off by pages of writing.
The main turning point for him was the Alex Rider series which we had on cd, but a new book in the series came out and he was desperate to find out what happened next. Then it was the CHERUB, but as Soupdragon says they are a bit old for your son.

Captain Underpants books are good as well as they are written in comic form.

He does have a SLD but it's mainly to do with writing.

My DS could read, but wouldn't read for ages, if we tried to read a page each he would end up in a strop.... He was the same as yours and loved/loves being read to.

We got him to get ready for bed 30 mins earlier then he could read in bed for 30mins or go to sleep. If I read to him first he invariably wanted to finish the book/ read another chapter.

Even to the biggest book refuser, books tend to be preferable to sleep. Now he adores reading and will sometimes go to bed early to read if he is on the middle of a particularly juicy Famous Five.

After only doing the new routine for a week or so we spent a sunny afternoon of the Easter Holidays reading our books together in the garden-dreamy!.

We also went and chose some new books around the same time so he had stuff he really wanted to read. since then old books that had never been looked at have been devoured.
I am not sure how this would work to start over the summer though, with so much fun stuff going on in the evenings.

ooh that's a good link. (also glad to know I wasn't imagining the nonsense word thing!)

My ds1 is standing here with me - he's also 8 and a fairly reluctant reader (although reading over my shoulder now, of course ).

He's suggesting graphic novels like Alex Rider (Anthony Horowitz) which he loves - good way to get them into reading on their own.

I think for us the answer has been to not worry about it (easier said than done). As long as he can read, we're happy ds1 goes at his own pace - the other definite is that he has to read books given to him at school - he tends to read these on his own but we'll ask him to read us a few pages from time to time and to tell us what the story was about.

Ds1 says he prefers reading in his head - you have to trust a bit that this happens, but again it eases the pressure off a bit.

I have tried Horrid Henry, Captain Underpants etc but because he still gets stuck on words he won't keep going, I have found factual books keep him interested more, larger ones that also have loads of pictures and have subscribed to the magazine How it Works which he loves looking at / reading.

Had been considering the library scheme through the summer, will def try and do it, stickers etc may be an incentive.

My DS loved reading children's compendium of knowledge sort of books, like The Tell Me Why Book. He never liked plots much, went off characters, didn't like too many girls or spunky heroines in books, or anything that was soppy in any way, but non-stop gore or farting wasn't improving his vocabulary or teaching him much, I thought. But he loved facts, and following diagrams, relating diagrams to text.

He also liked books like The Navajo Code Talkers and other approachable books about warfare, with 'true spy stories' or 'codebreaking heroes' or potted versions of the Battle of Britain for instance. Nothing too long, no blow by blow accounts peppered by Churchill's speeches. Just a solid hero, machines, no girls, good and evil, action.... Might be this one I'm thinking of.

And he also liked the Nicholas series by Goscinny and Sempe (I read this aloud). Gentle humour, school situations, group of boys.. If you continue to read out loud every day, vocabulary will increase, your Ds will hear you pronounce words and eventually remember them and gauge their meaning from the context.

If he likes factual books how about these, there is a whole series. Plenty of pictures as well as chunks of text.

www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Ancient-Rome-Usborne-Books/dp/0746070039/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279 144058&sr=1-3

Thanks for all the replies - really heartening to hear I'm not alone!

I've been thinking about this, and some things that DO seem to work are:

• DS is a 'collector', so likes anything where there is a 'series' to collect/ listen to etc. He's loves the Charlie Small books, and we're currently reading all the Humphrey hamster books (which were a surprise 'hit' with him).

• Very into Star Wars, so will read the Star Wars comic

I'll have a look at the other suggestions - thanks - I like the sound of the How it Works magazine.

I don't think you can enjoy reading to yourself until you are a fluent reader. As previously suggested, I would check that he is ok with his phonics and decoding. My daughter was similar at the end of year 3 and we paid for her to have extra lessons (1 hr a week). The private teacher went back to basics and we found she was a bit shaky on her phonics and practised comprehension. Like your son, she wouldn't pick up a book to read to herself but loved me reading to her. She is now reading to herself and looks like she is enjoying too!

I refused to read until I was 8. I couldn't remember what had happened in the book so I got bored.
My school introduced a system called paired reading. Basically, you sit down with your child and you read the words together. When child feels confident they give you a signal eg a nudge/put their hand up etc and they continue reading to you. If they stumble over a word or sentence then you start reading together again until the signal.
My mum started this with me with charlie and the chocolate factory. We would paired read a chapter then as a reward she would read two chapters to me.
Because I was getting through a good portion of the book each day I got really interested in it and didn't want to put it down!
We did this with a few books then basically, I found an interest in books and started reading for myself.
I'm now a massive book worm! I love to read.

funky - that's interesting, as I've been trying to do something similar with DS.

If we were reading a chapter book together I'd say he had to read the first line of each page.

Then it became the first two lines.
Now he will do a paragraph (about 4/5 lines) per page.

The nonsense word test was one of the things the SEN lady did, and he got a few of them wrong - especially G/J sounds. I was a bit though because she DID seem to jump immediately to some conclusions based on just one or two mistakes from DS?