Madison hated to read at one point. Which is quite hilarious considering she is quite the voracious reader now. I’m sure she would read the junk mail if I didn’t drop it in the recycling bin on the way out of the post office. This could have definitely gone the other way. I could have fed into her feelings of incompetence. She could lament it is the bane of her existence like she does now with math. She is quite adept at drama in case you didn’t know.
5 Ways To Get Your Kid To Hate Reading
- Force them to learn at a pace or in a way that doesn’t work for them. This especially true for Madison. I had purchased Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
. We were good to go in my opinion. It’s an easy premise. You do one short lesson per day. At the end of the book, the child is reading. Except she didn’t get it in one short lesson. It took going over the lesson two or three times before she got it. It became Teach Your Child to Read in 200 or 300 Easy Lessons. I was freaking out. A veteran homeschooling mom reminded me that each child is different. Who cares if it takes her 500 lessons? It’s what works for her.
- Not taking their developmental level into account. You know why it didn’t work in 100 easy lessons? She wasn’t developmentally ready. She had turned five in June then started school in August. You go to kindergarten when you’re five. That’s what is expected of children. Except some of them , especially young five year olds, aren’t ready. Had I taken the time to check her developmental level, I would have realized we needed to wait another year to start.
- Make them read above their level. Nothing will frustrate a child more than continuously struggling to pronounce words or comprehend what they are reading. You want the child to build confidence. You also want to stretch them a bit too. Both children have independent reading that is at their current level. The book they read a loud to me is one level below their current one. The family read a loud is one level above the oldest child’s level. Free reading is their choice.
- Asking them to narrate everything they read. Narration is crucial to check comprehension. Asking your child to narrate absolutely everything is absurd. Everyone will get frustrated quickly. Ask for narrations on different books each day. This will spread it out over the week. You get to check comprehension. They don’t get super frustrated.
- Don’t have reading materials out for their pleasure. I know what stories both children like to read. You bet those kinds of books are on our bookshelves or on our Kindles
. When they have free time and it’s not screen time , they can read whatever their little hearts desire. Their hearts won’t desire to read though if the books they like aren’t readily available.
As you can see, it’s easy to grow a reader. It takes lots of patience and time. Don’t neglect audiobooks
