Does anyone else find listening to their child read takes more patience than they have?

[MrBocoBurns]

I think of myself as a patient person, especially when it comes to my children. I very very rarely raise my voice, never ever smack or threaten. I'm calm. Relaxed.

So how come, since dd1 started in reception after EAster, do i find that listening to her read makes me want to fling biff and chip and kipper out of the window and scream at the walls?

She's gone up another reading level - yellows last week - yellows level 3 this week. She's doing well considering she only started this term. But she's tired and grumpy, if she can't get it straight away she starts doing this writhing with irritation thing that drives me nuts.

She gets a word wrong, we talk about it, practice it, - then on page 2, same word - she stares blankly at the page, before growling at the book and doing a headstand. Raaaah! What am i doing wrong? I need to read with her earlier before she's tired, but have my neice for hours after school and she won't concentrate until neice has gone home as they want to play.

Is it always this frustrating and such a battle?

At DSs school they do Jolly Phonics and they call words that can't be sounded out 'tricky words'. Each week he brings home an envelope with new tricky words to learn. When we get around to doing them, I lay them all out on the table and call one out, and he identifies it. He quite likes doing that as it's more like a game than ploughing through the Magic Key.

this is the problem with ORT - there are lots of old posts on this.

Basically, they teach them phonics at school and then send them home with ORT which isn't a phonics based scheme!

There are words they seem to learn by seeing them lots of times (like 'said' for example) rather than sounding them out.

(there are phonics based books you can get - think apple tree farm are phonics based)

Try these links
rrf
syntheticphonics.co.uk
jolly phonics

The message boards are great for advice and the rules are all there, it just takes a bit of time to learn them. 'cake' and 'woke' are the 'magic e' or split digraph which my two both seemed to get age about 4.5yrs with the long vowel sounds

Just work through the sounds she knows, learn the rest yourself and go through them slowly, the JP DVD and CD are good if you want to use them but you do not need them, there are so many free resources around.

As long as you do not propogate the guessing strategy and teach her to blend through the word for all unknown words she will get there.

When my ds was being particulalry stubborn the best thing i did was read the book but deliberately get some words wrong so he could 'correct' me - that seemed to work every time!

Boco, I have very similar problems too. My DD1 started Reception in Sept (she was 5 in Oct). She can read quite well. She can sound out really well. BUT... she lacks concentration, she gets upset if she can't read a word - almost as a ploy to get out of doing it. She hates to 'compete' with her peers (parents were invited to assembly recently and the 4 best readers in the class got to do a piece - she wouldn't read for days afterwards because "Ann, Betty, Carol & Dave are really clever and I can't do it" )

I am trying to build her confidence. I do try and make reading fun - we do different things to keep it fresh. But I do find it hard to keep my temper. Particularly with things like not recognising a word from the previous page. It did occur to me once that 'could not read GIANT' would be a crap Cause of Death.

It doesn't help that DS1, who is just 4, seems to be naturally academic. I'm hoping that perhaps having a 'reading buddy' at home will help her but it may crush her confidence and really push me to the edge. DH and I take turns in listening to reading but he gets just as cross as I do.

When DS1 starts school I'm going to try reading straight after school while they have a snack at the kitchen table - at the moment DD1 comes home and they all want to play. So like you, we read at bedtime, and she's tired. And we probably are too.

I'm not concerned at her reading ability, it's her lack of trying that gets my goat.

That's exactly it Norks, - i think she's bright, but she's tetchy and vaguely hysterical, and it's catching!

I hate not feeling patient and calm, i thought i'd be really good at this, but actually my fuse is much much shorter than i realised, and i'm rubbish. The more frustrated she gets the more frustrated i get that she's not concentrating / staying calm / looking at the book / not rolling on the floor flailing wildly and groaning. I feel a rising fury and the book is flung and everyone is wailing.

And we only read the set school books 3 times a week.

So, my plans for improvement are...

read earlier in the day
ask her to read the odd word/line from her bedtime story
wear a gag
get back to putting 'secret messages' on the fridge, in the car, etc
take a vow NEVER to compare her to DS1 when he starts bringing home reading books - I know this would be a terrible thing to do but I don't trust my foul temper not to throw it at her and then regret it until Judgement Day

I'd do yoga. But I don't have the patience

DD3 has started bringing home books that I could swear I read a few weeks ago with DD2 - and they don't improve the second time round. I use a bribe system - you read me a book and then I'll read you a book. She loves being read to so it works. If she's not in the mood I just stop, because otherwise I get all snippy with her and hate myself. Been through it with DD1 and 2 and the truth is that the vast reserves of patience aren't always forthcoming when you need them. Don't worry - she'll get there in the end. Mind you I still find myself snapping at DD2 - no use looking at the ceiling, the words aren't up there - and she's in Year 2!

It is frustrating at first. I know you want to scream when you've thrashed out a word and then the dc don't recognise it in the next line. Drives you insane, drives EVERYONE insane.

I think the key is to do a little bit. Even just one line, but do it every day and if you can do it more than once a day. They recognise more and more words over time so it all becomes a bit easier and they build up reading stamina over time too. Better to do just a little bit and with pleasure at that age I think.

Hang in there, you can do it.

Rosa that's so familiar - i say 'why are you shutting your eyes??? Why??? You can't see the words with your eyes shut! Why are you burying your head in the cushion? The words are not written on that cushion! They are HERE! HERE! In this awful bloody boring BOOK about bloody BIFF and FLOPPY in the arsing PARK!!! If you do not LOOK at the words, there is absolutely no way you will be able to READ them!!!' etc etc.

Then hate myself for not being able to calmly and serenely reassure and educate.

SSSandy you sound very reassuring. I bet you're great at it.

Boco, it will get easier(I know that doesn't help)

Is there anyway you can get your niece to be doing a quiet activity, whilst dd reads, as soon as she gets home? I find the later we do hw the harder it is to get my dd to do it, it is writing hw that frustrates me...

If you manage to do it early then dd and niece can play happily, even if you read half the book in the early afternoon then half before school(whilst brushing hair?) in the morning or just before bed?

haven't read the whole thread - but my ds is exactly the same (including the writhing around).

I find he is much better in the morning (evening reading is a dead loss). And I just give up if he is obviously not into it - otherwise I just get in a really bad mood - which doesn neither of us any good.

What about DD getting in bed with you in a morning and doing it then. I have been through this to an extent with DS who found it impossible to sit still and read at the same time. But now in Y1 the reading is going fantastically. I still find though that if he is tired his ability/stamina/enthusiasm plummet.

You're all right. Need to find a way of doing it straight after school or in the morning. The mornings are usually spent with me running around shouting 'EAT!' and 'where is your other shoe dd1??' (what was that i was saying about being calm?)

But that's my fault and i need to be more organised - i could do that. I'll try getting up a bit earlier maybe.

See with my suggestion, boco, you don't even need to get out of bed.

Thank god Boco has started this thread.

We're the same but doing it with twins. Ds is more patient but dd becomes enraged with the whole thing and it doesn't help that I'm not naturally a 'teacher'.

I think she's just guessing or memorizing the story, but it's all sucha huge struggle. I have vowed to blitz it a little every day during the summer holidays. Bt the time we get to it after the school day dd especially doesn't have much patience for it.

Dd tends to say words backwards too. Dh was reading with her the other day. I overheard

dh 'H.I.T Say the letters together. What does it say?'

dd shakes head

dh 'Just try'

dd 'TIT!'

Oh god tg, doing it with twins - must take double the patience? Do you stay calm?

LOL at tit!

We did perfect reading this evening. Everytime DD1 got stuck on a word, I thought of this thread and started giggling. I could tell that DD1 was slightly nervous about this strange response from mummy and I think it spurred her to plough on to the end of the book.

So we both got stickers tonight

And it's this bit that made me giggle most...

"They are HERE! HERE! In this awful bloody boring BOOK about bloody BIFF and FLOPPY in the arsing PARK!!! "

Oh God yes.. this has irked me to death since DS1. I do it but it makes me want to tear my hair out. Reading came so easily to me, much more easily than it has come to my children.

Oh God I am gooing through this with 5 year old ds at teh mo. I too could explode when we practise and spell out SHE on one page then on teh next page he has no idea what SHE says and will guess something random like TREE cause there is a tree on the picture.

And yes my ds will growl, fidget, moan all the way through the story....