Upset about being told off by Ds's teacher, my four year old does not want to learn 'Sounds write'.

[FlllightAttendant]

Oh golly, just got back from school with a 'note' to me in his book. It says 'I have put some letters in his bag, please practise these with him. If this is not clear, please ask.'

Ok, we have tried 'practising' these sounds, he is NOT INTERESTED. They have been there since september. I have written in his book, 'Ds is not really into reading/writing but he enjoys sounding out words to me sometimes'. They have just ignored it and are now putting the pressure on.

He is four fgs, all he wants to go to school for is to wallop the other little boys and play fart games, and be walloped in return.

He is not interested in reading, I thought they understood that - reception is about playing, non?

I just feel defeated. How do I handle this, once I have gathered myself into something resembling calm?

I am probably overreacting but it just feels like they are expecting too much. I don't want to force him into reading etc as it will put him off for life.

don't french children go to nursery fulltime from 3?

I think it's full time from 4, like the UK.

Don't they go to school in Scotland a year later?

Buy him a ladybird book on engineering. Explain the process needed to achieve understanding of the words in it.

stand back as he suddenly starts to apply him (probably not inconsiderable) intelligence to the problem at hand.

Books are puzzles. Words are the pieces. Reading is the tool - show him that he can use the tool, and he will want to solve the puzzle.

I thought it was normal for 4 year olds to learn some letter sounds, at least. My mum taught me to read, and she wasn't at all pushy, she was rather disinterested, actually, and she herself was taught to read by her dad (her mum couldn't read)

So the notion that it's hothousing to meet government targets seems a little hysterical ... early reading has always happened, it's just that nobody cared before now.

Morning FA! (And others!)

Thinking back we did get the letter sounds - it was the words that we didn't push with DS as he wasn't interested.

What you could do with the letters is just copy them or cut them out into separate bits and stick them up on a window or the fridge or something and just leave them. Maybe point to one and ask him the sound. Ask him to think of one other thing that begins with that sound. Great praise if he does. Then leave it. Maybe try again later in the day with another letter.

All very low key but you are practising with him.

Morning Buda...coffee?

I have just read the posts since I last wrote something last evening and want to thank everyone for their helpful suggestions.

Readmeandweep, no, there's no moral objection whatsoever, and I'm not deliberately refusing to do it. I think I explained that I have been trying to sneak letters and so on into everyday things, making it fun, trying to encourage him to sound things and write the odd word etc.

It isn't that I am not trying. To illustrate, last night he was doing his usual activities and I took the letters out of his bag (they are on a string) and said, let's try these, can you tell me what this one is?

Cue running round the room shrieking with cries of 'NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!'

He just didn't want to do it. That's all. He finds it really boring and after we had raced through them, with a lot of help/prompting from me, he couldn't wait to go and do something he was interested in.

My point is not that I do not wish him to learn. My concern is that he learns when it interests him. Is that so wrong?

If you had tried to get socks on this boy in the morning, you might start to understand the difficulty in extracting a bit of 'just do it dear' when it comes to letters!

Colditz I like your idea about the book, I think it will probably be a crucial moment when that happens - even if it is not imminent. He will find words very useful one day.

No thanks to coffee - yes please to a nice strong cup of tea!

How about making up your own version of the letters in coloured card or paper and just do the sticking on the wall or window or something. Then just leave them there. Even just seeing them every day may pique his interest.

Off to get mine up out of bed.

Don't know if it would be any help (and in the gale that blowing outside at the moment def not), but I had a little girl mindee, who new all her worlds, but could just not recognise her numbers.

She loved trampolining, and we have a 10ftone in the garden, so I cut out big numbers from foam, and attached them to the posts of the safety net, then each day we paid a game of, ' Can you jump to number 2, can you jump to number 6', and so on within a week she knew her numbers.

I know do it with my preschoolers with colours and shapes.

4 is too young.Its the teacher's job to teach him and his day at school is probably far too long for him anyway at this age.
Let him chill out at home and play with him rather than trying to sneak in "learning through play". You should not be supportive of the school, you should be supportive of your son. Give him a break for a few months and try again. I think far too many parents do too much school-related work rather than spending time just playing with their children at home.

I cant beleive children are being made to try and read at 4. Dd is 5 in a few weeks and goes to preschool nursery 5 mornings a week and there is no pressure for her to do any reading or reading, she can write her name and has started to recognise words and letters but thats her picking things up at her own pace, i dont see what good it can do a child to make them do things they are not interested in!

Why oh why oh why does the English syster INSIST on starting children at school so young.

I went to kindergarten until the age of 6 and a half. Moved to England not being able to read a word - picked it up in about a term.
DS (in NZ) didn't go near a letter or sounds or anything like that until he was 5 - he had a blissful year at Kindergarten making fart noises and hanging upside down on the monkey bars. He is 8 now and has a reading age of 11.
DD (in Australia) turns 4 in two weeks time. She is starting kindergarten on the 5th Feb and will have a blissful year of play, with very little letter learning. If I want I can defer her entry into school until she is 6 ... so she could even have 2 years of Kindergarten if I wanted.

Tell your DS's teacher that you will play letter games but you won't force him to learn.

I really believe that most children are just not ready at 4.

Can you do it without him realising though? Maybe if you didn't use the letters in the bag, he would be more amenable to learning.

For example could you 'post' one in an envelope addressed to him (you could reuse the same envelope each time obviously, and wouldn't need to actually post it, just put it through the door. Then say 'Oh look, a letter has come for you - shall we open it?' Inside is a letter - say 's' - you say 'oh, a letter inside a letter, how funny. I wonder what letter it is? It's a 's' - 'ssssssssssssssssssssss' says the snake - can you think of anything else that begins with s and we can take your special letter to show it - he says something like 'sink' so you take the letter s to show it the sink - look s, this is the ssssssink' etc etc Then get him to colour in the s, and stick it on his wall. A few days later, another letter arrives!

Sounds horribly horribly patronising -sorry - but this is the sort of thing my children would respond to - making a game, giving it some 'story' element (taking the s to see the sink). And they LOVE getting post and opening envelopes, and would find it very funny to have a letter in a letter!!!

I don't think saying 'let's practise your letters' is going to work with a child who has decided they don't want to do that!

Also, you do have to pick your time carefully - dd loves doing her reading, but if she is engrossed in playmobil and I suggest practising her reading, she absolutely won't! Similarly if I suggested to ds1 that he went and did his violin practice while he was in the middle of something, it would be far harder than if he was 'between things'.

Does he do jolly phonics with the actions? They are really good fun - if they don't do them maybe you could get a phonics book or flashcards? Because they have actions (eg a is ants running up your arm) they don't necessarily realise they're learning the letters at the same time!

Why do parents have to teach their children though? I hate doing homework with my children. Hate it! They spend enough time at school learning at their age. Why does it have to filter into homelife too?

oh gawd, he is only 4.

We have never pressured ds, who is now 4.4.

Until about 2 months ago, he showed NO interest in the following: reading, writing, or really, colours or anything. He just played rather amazing imaginative games. We didn't pressure him.

And in the space of a few weeks, because he has suddenly decided that it is something he would like to do, he has learnt to count up to god knows what, can add and subtract reliably, tell the time, and knows all his colours including cyan and magenta. He can write his name, recognise quite a lot of letters, and has now asked to be taught to read (which of course we will do).

And he STILL plays imaginative games.

Kids WANT to learn to read. Reading is important, it means you have access to lots of information, and kids do generally want it. Plenty of kids don't learn til 7 or 8, it doesn't stop them becoming enthusiastic, even obsessive readers (not just Einstein-look at all of Scandinavia)

Anyway. Come over to the HE section and we can all talk further .

I think the reason parents have to do it as well is because it's been shown that children whose parents back up the school curriculum at home do MUCH better - because the child sees that the parents consider it to be important.

Hmmm, but then you're practising the letters and sounds anyway if you're working them in casually.

I wouldn't see it as at all necessary to sit down and make him stop what he's doing and say "Let's try these", for that to count as practising those letters at home. I've had sheets home for mine with letters and sounds on in Reception and never ever sat down in a 'now we're doing these' sort of way - I think that would be doomed to failure for quite a high percentage of children at that age!

Forgive me for speculating when I don't know you, but it sounds as though you've got a bit of an HE-community-inspired view of what school will be like and are seeing pressure and a too rigid, non playbased approach everywhere, even in places where it perhaps isn't. It's not that you won't encounter that - you will further on and that's why HE is really worth considering (we did, and still have it as a viable first alternative if things don't go well) - but you won't encounter them everywhere, especially not in the foundation stage, and teachers are not bogeymen trying to force unready children to sit down and do horrible things. They know that putting too much pressure on a child to do something risks putting them off it.

It sounds to me now as though you're already practising these letters with him, so in fact doing what she wants already...

One more thing - you may be thinking of yourself as rather the odd one out, an (HE-inspired) parent who unlike most of the rest doesn't want your child forced into learning to read etc. Probably from the teacher's point of view though you're just one of an undifferentiated mass of 'interested involved parents' as opposed to the 'won't give how or what their child is learning a second thought' parents, and any firmness in her note (which was probably identical to those given to many other parents) was directed more at that second group.

Your son sounds lovely and as though he will get the proper reading really quickly when he is ready. I'm sure he's not going to come to any harm from even a few more letters and sounds games.

v good posts from readme and torty

I actually find it unbelievable that some people think that learning letter sounds is seen as pressure

you just wait till your kids get into year 3!

and lol at all the kids that wont learn letter sounds yet are clearly all geniuses (geniui?)

fairymum off to private school with you

Thank you enid!

I was going to add that ds1 is in Y2 now, and I'm so glad his reception teacher got them all reading as quickly as possible - they have KS1 assessments this year, and I'm absolutely dreading it - it seems so small to be giving them a label of 'level whatever'. But they do need to be able to read the questions, and express their answers via writing. Lots of it is teacher assessed.

Fortunately ds1's school isn't too obsessed by these, they just happen, they don't particularly prepare them for them, they just teach their curriculum. And as a result they are lower down the league tables than they should be. I think it would be far better to give the Y2s a reading test, to check how they're doing!

my ds1 & 2 have grown up in the swiss system. They didn't start school till age 7. ~Prior to that they had 2 years Kindergarten which was focussed on learing social skills, interactions, learning to listen, to teacher and each other etc. but they didn't do any reading or writing at all.

At age 7 they start school, and 'formal' learning starts. My 2 dss learnt to read at home, but mostly by themselves and out of their own interest, but plenty of the kids started school without any literacy skills. And the first few years are also slow - they only attend mornings plus 2 pm per week, not sure how many years till they attend 5 am + pm.

But, soon, we will move into the british system. I am really concerned to think of ds3 having to attend full time school (he will be 4.5) and learning to read and write so young. I don't feel at all happy with this system.

And while ds1 & 2 have had a wonderful, gentle start to the world of education, they are moving from 1 system to a relatively incompatible system, so ds2 will be going from Swiss year2, to UK Yr5[shock.

The gap in knowledge is HUGE, but, if he had stayed in swiss system a few years longer, he'd have overtaken his british peers. In the 'international league tables' Switzerland comes out far higher than the UK, so I ask myself seriously if this early start in formal education is really necessary, and for me, the enormous gut feeling is NO. Still, by this time next year, I'll have 1st hand experience of both, so I'll let you know.

And as for OP, I'd say there will come a point where it'll 'click' and he'll just do it. Something might whet his appetite. I'd definitely say to take your ds's lead. But then, from the impression I get of the competitiveness of the british parents?educational system (purely from what I've read on mumsnet) you have to be brave to stand up and say no. good luck.

Enid I don't think anyone said their child was a genius?

I know mine isn't. I was trying to illustrate the fact that he is capable of learning very advanced stuff if he is actually interested in it.

Thanks Ernest, that is really useful to see it from someone who has experienced an alternative system.

I wish your children well in adapting.

Agree Ernest. Its funny how the British thinks its so important to start them early. Other countries start them later and they soon catch up and overtake their British peers. I can see why a lot of parents panic about SATS etc, but really if you yourself is an educated bright parent you know your child will be just fine even if you don't own fun foam letters for the bath from the early learning centre! Personally I started school at 7 growing up in Sweden and I have got two university degrees and at least pre-children I read books!