Nearly 5 year old wholly disinterested in reading

[ASwimInAPondInTheRain]

Hello there,

My nearly 5 year old boy (5 in Jan) has been in reception since September.
We have read stories with him every night since he was very little, thinking this might instil a love of reading and books! Oh how naive I was.

When his school sends reading books home it's a really painful experience for all of us...my son gets frustrated - looks anywhere except the words on the page and never wants to read. When we read him stories he hardly ever sits and listens, but messes around with toys.
Very occasionally he will read the letters in the words in his school books but he doesn't ever 'blend' them even if the sound of the letters clearly make the word. He can read his own name, that's it. I ask him what phonics he's done in school some days (they do phonics everyday) and he always says he can't remember. In nursery in his end of year report his literacy / phonics level was lower than his other levels.

He enjoys and is really good at the reading eggs app but his engagement with reading books or any other low-fi reading activities (eg. homemade word snap for example) is non existent. We regularly take him to the local library to read the books there and borrow new ones.

I have a very reluctant reader on my hands...breaks my heart when me and his dad work in and around books.

His writing is similarly non existent...his name but that is basically it. He does enjoy drawing.

Does anyone have any tips / advice / words of wisdom? Does this sound like a bit of a cause for concern or par for the course?

I know its hard there is pressure all around for them to read young. But 5 IS young for reading, hence why other countries don't start formal education until 7. For the moment I would just try and stay positive maybe just keep reading to him but don't put any pressure on him to read. Lots of people read late and still go on to do very well and develop a love of reading, me included.

Is he interested in the stories in the books he's being given by school?

My son is also in reception a few weeks ago I was worried about his reading the same as you are but literally this week it has "clicked" and he's started sounding out simple words like cat, dog etc.
He didn't even know the alphabet when he started school, they can learn so quickly,keep reading with him at home and don't worry it will click soon

That sounds just like my daughter. She's 8 now and her reading has progressed fine and is age expected despite her reluctance. She basically refused point blank to read to us for most of EY and KS1 and I think it did take longer than many children to click but it's a non issue now and she goes through phases of reading to herself or to us before bed quite happily. During the day she will without fail choose a creative activity over reading a book. It's just who she is. That said my husband who always has his head in a book only became a bookworm as an adult.

The only advice I would give is to make a complete non issue of it. He will get there in the end almost certainly but it can be stressful for the parents in the meantime.

I was advised to continue to read stories as there is great benefit in listening to books beyond their reading ability (also story audiobooks), visit the library and let them choose their own books, and let them see you enjoying reading your own books too (good role model) but sounds like you're doing all that already!!

We also subscribed to reading eggs online which would have been good had she been the sort of child that likes playing games on the iPad (she's not really).

Don't force it. Its too early to say whether there is an issue or not but learning dyslexia friendly approaches wouldn't hurt.
Reading on different colour paper instead of white as the contrast is difficult for some children.

If you make things for him to read you could set the word, letter and line spacing as wider than average and use a sans serif font such as Arial.

Read through trickery, so it's not obvious he is even reading such as simple recipes. You could make them yourself with pictures of the ingredients above the words.

When reading school book you can try reading with a reading ruler (these come in different colours). Or get an envelope with a window and cut it out leaving a couple of cm on each side to help tracking and focus on specific words.

Read non fiction book instead of fiction, on whatever topic he likes football, cars, animals, trains or Thomas the Tank Engine which is fairly technical on the train side of things.

In terms of building vocabulary reading out loud to him is invaluable, keep doing it for as long as you can. The books should get more complex than what he can read himself too.

Watch Alphablocks with him.

Maybe try just talking about the story in the book he's given, and you blend the words and read it to him. Look at the pictures together, make it exciting and take away the pressure of reading the words eg can you find the...?

I'm a reading volunteer in school and there are lots of children, often boys, who take longer to grasp phonics but they all catch up once it clicks.

Mine hated reading in Reception. I was so disappointed as me and his older brother loved reading. In year 1 with nonfiction age & reading level appropriate books rather than fiction it just clicked. He's now 15 and reads adult novels in a few hours, is studying Ancient History and rarely isn't reading something!
Don't stress about it, he'll pick up on that. Do vary what you read with him, a comic or the cereal box is still reading!

Don’t stress about it. At age 4/5/6 they don’t need to be reading. Read to him but don’t make it a battle.

If he can do it on reading eggs it's not that he can't read so I'd focus on finding books on a topic he likes - for my DD it was dragons and further back in time for my DH it was car magazines that finally got him reading.

My DD has never done anything that she doesn't see the point of - so really struggled to engage with the school books plus memorised them so it wasn't really reading after the first run through!

Ah thank you everyone! A wonderful array of experience, advice and wisdom!

@starpatch thank you! I will make sure to be more positive about it all and stop stressing about it.
@RedWingBoots he doesn't like them! There's one book he likes with a character with his name but that's it.
@Leah5678 well done to your son! That's great news 😊I'm looking forward to the 'click' moment whenever it comes 😊
@Mothersruin123 your daughter's story gives me hope, thank you so much for sharing it. Were you able to feel relaxed about your daughter's reading when it wasn't going so well?
@Singleandproud I absolutely love your tips, thank you so much. I'm going to make some recipes for us tomorrow! I'll check out the colour contrast stuff and look at getting a reading ruler too.
@Whyisitdarkalready we've just started watching alphablocks! It seems great. Love the idea of me blending the words as I read. Thank you so much for your tips and reassurance.
@POTC you're so right. I'm definitely stressing about it and he is picking up on it. I'll relax a bit more about it - reading is meant to be enjoyable right?
@35965a thank you, you're right. Less stress will be helpful for us both.
@randomsabreuse I think my son sounds similar to your daughter - he also doesn't entertain anything he doesn't see the point of! I'll try and find some early stage books about things that interest him more.

@ASwimInAPondInTheRain that's good to hear.

All children are different, my DD was an early reader a reading age of 12 at 6 etc, she's 13 now and I can't remember the last time she picked up a book despite the house being full of them.

Hopefully you DC gets the bug soon, sometimes it just takes the right book.

Oxford Owl has free online versions of the Biff, chip and kipper books if he wants to try online ones so it's similar to reading eggs and he can read on a tablet.

Any chance he might be dyslexic? DD2 was never a keen on reading,even though the rest of the family are. She is 18 now and told me a few weeks ago. That she can't tell the difference between p and b. I have booked her in for a dyslexia assessment.

@dizzydizzydizzy dyslexia is very common, it's fairly unusual to get diagnosed in Ks1 as reading ability differs massively though so you have to do a bit if wait and see. Which is why so many children don't get diagnosed until much later than that. Although trying out dyslexia friendly approaches is unlikely to do much harm.

Did you know you can get books formatted specifically to be dyslexia friendly. Waterstones has a range and so should your local library your DD might like to try some of those.

@ASwimInAPondInTheRain another thing you can do is make a tonne of salt dough, make letters of the alphabet and di/trigraphs with them and use them to spell words. Kneading the dough is brilliant for getting finger muscles ready to write but physical manipulation works for reading too.

DC3 was very reluctant to do any reading for the first half of Reception. Didn’t want to even sound out a single letter. We have always done things like reading him lots of stories, regular library visits and so on.

He started to show a bit more enthusiasm towards the end of Reception, and now he’s in Year 1 and will happily sit down every evening and read through the school reading books.

But I have no idea why he was so reluctant to start with, or what changed to make him happy to read now.

My daughter is in year one with a July birthday, so started reception just turned 4 and is also not the keenest reader.
School used the jolly phonics songs for each sound so I’d get her to tell me which one she did that day then we’d watch it and do the actions together.
One thing that worked for us was her dad reading with her, sounding words out then blending wrong so she had to correct him. Or she’d look for ‘the’ or one of the other sight words then once she’s spotted it I’d read that page to her.
She’s doing fairly well with it now, but still won’t read if she’s tired. We sometimes do a sentence each taking turns, or a page each if she’s not feeling like reading.

Honestly, I think kids in England start school far too young.
My now 6yo started school 2 weeks after his 5th birthday and was just given picture books for months. He's now reading Oxford level 7 books.
Just give him time without too much pressure.
I don't plan to send my youngest to school until he's 5.5

To be honest I think 5 is very young. He might simply not be ready to read yet. I find there is quite a lot of pressure to read at a young age in the English school system.

You could try 'paired reading', where you read aloud together for a while and then read alone (you can google it to understand the technique) - this seemed to motivate my reluctant reader, but she still didn't 'click' with reading until she was almost 8. The real turning point was when she was given a book series that she couldn't put down. (Mr Gum.)

The teacher should be able to tell you what the daily or weekly phonic is, so you can practise it? Enlist their help, they will be pleased that you are keen to help your DS.
Another idea is to put the subtitles on when he is watching TV. There was a literacy campaign recently on this, I think it's a really great idea.
One other idea is that I used to write little stories for my kids, about things they were actually interested in. Nothing fancy, just a few short repetitive sentences with hand drawn cartoons, based on words I knew they could just about figure out. Just because the school books were so utterly tedious. If he can read his own name, write sentences about him!

I think I wish I'd relaxed earlier about it to be honest. There were a few battles that may or may not have exacerbated the issue, not helped by the fact that DD can be quite stubborn and contrary when the mood takes her. It wasn't good for any of us to be stressing about it anymore. I figured it's our job to provide a conducive environment and plentiful support, it's their job to learn to read, and the school will be teaching them.

Honestly it sounds like you're doing a great job....he'll get there in the end. He's so little still!

Oh I've just remembered that my husband used to write little treasure hunts for DD. She was a little older as it was during covid, so maybe just turned 6. He'd hide the clues round the house and there would be a little prize at the end....sometimes it was just a silly drawing he'd done, or the promise of a movie and some popcorn. She sometimes writes her own treasure hunt now if she has a friend coming round 🥰

We've also had success with writing phonics on bits of paper and sticking them round the room and getting her to run around finding them and/spelling out words. We used the same approach for number bonds, and most recently for times tables.

He’s four years old. Give it time.