DS is in Y1, turned 6 in March. In terms of ability, he is a very able and confident reader, going into a mostly Y2/Y3 literacy group for an hour and a half every day. The school has just introduced 'Success for All' and he has, in his class teacher's words, 'skyrocketed' through the levels to Wings 2, so I've got no concerns about his actual reading ability. But oh my giddy aunt, when we sit down to try and do his reading at home it is instant ants-in-pants time, fidgeting, sliding off the sofa, getting distracted midway through a sentence, silly voices, producing toy cars from his pocket to fiddle with....driving me nuts! Yesterday it took him over an hour to get through a page that I had deliberately selected for what should, based on his ability, have been a quick burst of reading that he could have blasted through in about five minutes if he'd actually sat down and read it!
DH and I are trying to be patient and positive, but we're both getting increasingly frustrated. His teacher goes to great pains to choose books pitched at his ability that she thinks he'll enjoy, and we take him to the library and find non-school books about things he's interested in (cars, cars, Top Gear, cars and cars...), but even with a book he's chosen himself and bounced out of the library all excited about, he still spends more time flopping round the sofa than he does actually reading! I'm not worried about ADHD, I don't think, because he can focus for ages on things he wants to do - playing with cars, drawing cars, watching Top Gear - just not on reading. We've had very occasional comments in his school/home reading diary about sessions when he's been like this at school, but it does seem to be mostly just at home. I've just ordered him a 'tangle' fiddle toy based on a recommendation on another thread, but what else can we try? I really don't want reading to become a battleground.