DD ending reception soon and still hates reading

[Chestnutx3]

Will she get it eventually? I'm at a loss what to do, signed up to reading chest for the holidays, she gets a book a night at school to read but she doesn't seem to have the love of reading.

I read all the time, house full of books. I was like Matilda, a house with no books but I was very academic, I just can't understand her.

She would never read given half the chance. She loves listening to book CDs, and loves all sports but doesn't like picking up a book. She is read to every night. I've tried everything. I'm so sad she doesn't love reading. She loves being with people, she is a real extrovert I think its her ideal of hell curling up in a corner and reading a book.

I've tried backing off for a term but she got worse at school and seem to go backwards in reading level, the teachers noticed. I do feel like giving up again as I think she has to get there on her own but she is falling behind at school.

How old is she?

DD2 is in reception she syill reads red books (the first level). She says books are boring so we are trying to overcome this by making them more fun for her, choosing humourous books etc etc. DD2 is still only 4 (she will be 5 next month) I refuse to worry about her reading level yet. She will find her feet at soem point. She gets new books a few times a week (not everyday) sometimes they get read and sometimes they don't... I don't want to create a battleground we will get there eventually.

I do wonder if yuor dd has picked up on your anxiety regarding the reading?

DD october born, could read before she started school just taught herself I didn't teach her. She can read well in terms of reading level but she is just not interested, teachers say the same. Whole point of reception at her school is to foster a love a reading - they've failed and I feel I have too.

Watching with interest. My DS is now finishing Y3 and still hates reading with a passion. Loves books in general and loves being read to but is so reluctant to do it himself and has no 'stamina' when reading so doesn't get sufficient practice.

DD hated reading all through YR. I never pushed her, never made her read too much. I am an avid reader and wanted her to develop a love of it rather than see it as a chore. She is now in Y3 and it seems to have clicked in the last couple of months with her. She now loves reading. DS (now 12) was exactly the same.
Comics can be good to get them interested or, as I found, any books that aren't from school.

Oh please more messages of hope. DD seems to love non-fiction and history type books but most are too difficult for her to read. I am trying not to push but she is getting more and more despondent when her classmates can read better than her, I try and tell her its just practise but it makes her even more reluctant to read.

My dd loves books (recently turned 4). She was very keen to learn to read so we are encouraging it. Have you tried reading eggs? She loves it. However, wil not read the same words she knows on the website from a book.. She is very keen still to learn how words are formed. However, the books available to children at this age are rather boring and uninspiring (IMHO). we have tried a whole array of books at basic level for her but she will not read those. Either it is too taxing on the brain and she is lazy to learn or the stories are not fun enough. I figure, as she has not even begun reception class yet, it does not matter. Incidentally, I have a friend whose so hates reading stories so he reads encyclopaedias.

Don't worry, she'll get it.

My DS1 is year 1 and doesn't like reading....he won't do non-fiction at all, but even fiction is a chore.
We have reading chest and he gets a star for each book and a prize after 10 books.......his reading level is very good, but he doesn't enjoy it yet.
He does love us reading to him, which is great, but he forgets he can read himself and still looks at words and then asks us what they say!
I actually think a book a night is too much.
I find reading in the morning much easier and significantly less whingy.
Good luck.

retired TA here:

Assuming there's nothing wrong, like needs glasses, dyslexic, etc then I am pretty certain she will get there eventually.

I've had Yr3 kids that can hardly read, but they came from impoverished homes.

If she prefers non-fiction, what are her major interests? Are you familiar with the phonics scheme she is on?

Try printing out captions about her favourite interest (maybe sport - appropriate for Olympics!) so that several captions put together make longer, meaningful but simple, sentences.
Then play like a Treasure Hunt, so she finds clues around the house, and has to piece them together to find the answer/treasure etc. When our DS was little we used to do an Easter egg hunt, with clues around the garden.

I think it's best if reading has a PURPOSE for children, otherwise just decoding text may not seem sufficient reward in itself.

"She can read well in terms of reading level... but is just not interested".

Hmmmmmm. I would back off if I were you. A book a night from school seems like a chore rather than a passion. What level is her reading if you don't mind me asking? Perhaps there's no harm in backing off completely for say 3-6 months and just reading to her and letting her enjoy that- if you feel you need to hear her read just do it once or twice a week max for a short time if she is not keen, create a space so she can come to it again on her own terms.

Most important as you say is they get a love for books and being read to and enjoying that is a very big part of that.

Also if your DD is like my DS, a bit of a perfectionist then sometimes they prefer not to try than to get it wrong. As you say, finding stuff the right level is really important. So, I think if I were you I would be doing lots of MN type research to find non-fiction books at her level that will pique her interest, that she can manage and she just won't be able to help reading. When the task is bigger than "reading for reading's sake"- ie reading because it's something you are interested and excited by it's a lot easier to get over that initial hurdle of "I can't do it/I don't want to do it."

I think most small children's books are boring. I didn't read until I could manage St Claire's and Mallory towers and I didn't really read much until I was about 12.

Then I read Agatha Christy, Sherlock homes, Dick Francis and any other thriller I could lay my hands on.

Dyslexic DD1 started with Twillight at 12 and then worked back to HP and RD etc.

Honestly relax and watch. If she's anything like my two by the end of next year you will be able to tell if she finds reading difficult or just hasn't found what she likes.
(DD1 clearly found reading very hard, DD2 found it ridiculously easy, but was and still is insanely hard to find books for).

www.piperbooks.co.uk
These are the delightfullly engaging Beginning Reading Instruction books designed for 4-6 year olds. Also delightfully cheap.

Write messages for her, like there's chocolate pudding in the fridge. She'll enjoy reading those!

She's so young! Give her a break (kindly meant). At the moment the mechanics of it are difficult. Once she can read quickly (in a few years time) she could enjoy reading for pleasure more. I know she can 'read' now but she's so young it's hard to process the ideas and the reading at the same time. She likes being read to because then sh can concentrate on the content
Ds1 refused to even read at all til ks1. He likes reading by himself now, although tbh he prefers footie and the x box

She's so young! Give her a break (kindly meant). At the moment the mechanics of it are difficult. Once she can read quickly (in a few years time) she could enjoy reading for pleasure more. I know she can 'read' now but she's so young it's hard to process the ideas and the reading at the same time. She likes being read to because then sh can concentrate on the content
Ds1 refused to even read at all til ks1. He likes reading by himself now, although tbh he prefers footie and the x box

Every time I tried to get ds to read in reception it resulted in a huge melt down and hour long screaming session. I ended up telling the teacher I wasn't prepared to make him read more than a book a week as it was painful and she was in agreement. He is also october born so not amongst the youngest.

Now in year 1 we get through 3 or 4 books a week with no fuss at all. I have no idea how he is doing in terms of bookbands as I don't understand them really and am not going to spend time worrying about it as long as he is happy. But the things he can read look ok to me for his age and his books have blue stickers on them if it means anything to you.

We've been on holiday last week and he spent all week reading out signs to me so I'm happy with his progress this year.

There is quite a bit of evidence which shows that the prescriptive nature of the literacy strategy puts young people (admittedly, adolescents in particular) off reading. However, e-books appear to support the reading enjoyment of less able/interested readers due to their multi-modal tools. I know they are expensive!

I recently had a look at the history of children's TV programmes - no wonder we read so much!

but the literacy strategy has never been statutory so schools have never been required to follow it.

you might be interested in this TES thread

community.tes.co.uk/forums/p/582389/7516009.aspx#7516009

ds1 was like this - dp and I are both massive readers and the house is crammed with all sorts of books. Ds's have both been bought 100's of books and have bookcases full...

But ds1 just didn't/doesn't enjoy reading - he took a while to be able to read fluently (from memory he was certainly 'behind' in reception and I think year 1 at least) but would never, ever choose to pick up a book and read it.

He's 10 now, in year 5 and is a fantastic reader but to be honest still doesn't actively enjoy it. However, he reads his football magazine from cover to cover each week - we started getting it for him a year ago and he loves it. He also got into the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books when he discovered them last year and now likes some of the Anthony Horowitz 'horror'-type books .

So, we have taken the pressure off him reading for pleasure - he can read, he just needs to find things that he likes and hopefully one day he'll find he actually likes it!

Meanwhile ds2 is an avid reader and also writer of stories - so who knows why it clicks for some and not others.

Just try not to put any pressure on her reading and yes, she will get it!

Chestnut my ds had very little interest in reading fiction until this year. He is about to turn 13! He can read very well but was never interested. Found it boring.

Like you, we read to him every day and he enjoyed that. He liked (and still does) listening to made up stories or watching stories on television, in comics, lots and lots of non-fiction, just not reading story books.

Like you, the rest of the family love to read, we all always have a book on the go, recommend books to each other, talk about them, etc. He was like the odd one out.

We did not push it. We let him choose his own reading material, gave him lots of opportunity to read but didn't insist on it. He has done well at school so far, is in top groups for all subjects, has lots of friends and different interests, etc.

And this summer he packed three fiction books for his weeks holiday .

Give it time.

DS' can read a bit but the school books are painfully boring. I've started buying the Songbird books and he prefers them, far fewer meltdowns at bedtime. Luckily we don't get a school book every night, I dread to think what would happen with that sort of pressure on us .

We try and read road signs, train times, supermarket aisle signs etc. He likes doing that.

I have a theory.

I think that it takes much longer than people think for reading to become so automatic that it's a pleasure.I noticed with both of mine that it was ages after they were "free readers" that they actually read properly for pleasure. They could read- but it still wasn't completely automatic, and still often preferred to be read to. There are always some who ,take to it like a duck to water, but i think they are in the tiny minority. Even my ds, who is G&T for literacy and expected to get a level 6 in his year 6 SATS, only really started to voluntarily ever choose reading as a leisure activity in year 5!

Another thing- certainly when I was a child, there was so much less to do than there is now. It was often reading or nothing. So we read!

Learning to read (decode) the words is the first big step on the road to becoming a reader, parallel to that is learning what the words mean and that is the easy part. The difficult part is persuading a child that reading can be enjoyable and more fun than the X Box or CBeeBies ... unfortunately some never get there.