<p>My younger son is still not a reader. He is able to read, at least decode, but I’m concerned about comprehension, and he still does not read for pleasure.</p>
<p>At the beginning of 3rd grade, I asked for a reading evaluation, because as far as we could tell, S2 was not taking in anything from material that he read. He has always disliked reading, preferring to be read to. We tried alternating, i.e., I would read a page to him, he would read the next page. But he would ask for the part he’d read to be read over to him, because he claimed that if the section were not re-read, he would have missed that part. The reading specialist tested him, and said that he was performing several grades above grade level in both decoding and comprehension.</p>
<p>He has done well in school, good grades, good test results. But he still does not read for pleasure. He does use books for information - he has several interest areas and he gets information from books. But it seems to me that this is different than reading fiction.</p>
<p>My husband and I decided that this summer he would focus on reading. I took him to the library this weekend and made him choose several books. We told him that he should spend 30 minutes a day reading; our hope is that with practice he will come to enjoy it. But he is still saying that unless we read to him, he does not understand.</p>
<p>We do read to him every day, and he loves all kinds of books, including fiction. But he will not read them on his own.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions? I can remember my older son re-reading the Harry Potter books right after 9/11/2001, all four volumes within a few days, every time he was anxious. S2 is now 2 years past that age, and still not reading!</p>
<p>Reading through the information you provided, your son is a good student with good grades who enjoys reading non-fiction books and retrieving information from them. He is probably a different type of reader than your other son, who seems to enjoy fiction genre. As long as he is continuing to perform well in school and engaging in non-fiction reading, it seems a focus on that type of genre would best serve him - perhaps an autobiography about a person he is interested in, a science topic, or other books that would be meaningful and pleasurable to him, and continue the read alouds for the fiction!</p>
<p>Guessing from your post reagarding your first son reading Harry Potter at seven, you may be choosing books that are too advance for a 9 years old. Let him start off at a level that a 9 years old is comfortable with.</p>
<p>Have you tried a variety of magazines? For elementary school there are nature magazines, history magazines, literature magazines. For my son it was a non-threatening way to read - sometimes books can overwhelm.</p>
<p>He was also a big graphic novel fan at that age.</p>
<p>Trying to remember some of the good stuff my son liked at that age: Hank the Cowdog series (funny) and the audio to go with them were hysterical. Magic Tree House series - good. AND <em>My Father’s Dragon</em> series (Loved, loved, loved it in 2nd/3rd grade).</p>
<p>Have his eyes checked thoroughly not just for 20/20 vision but for muscle eye strength/tracking etc. It might be a laborious process to read for him. My son at 8 did weeks of eye exercises and it helped him tremendously with his reading.</p>
<p>I don’t know that requiring him to read every day when he doesn’t want to is the best way to foster a love of reading.</p>
<p>Perhaps catering to his interests would work. What does he love to do? Find reading materials that support his interest, and he may read them for pleasure.</p>
<p>I read a technique one mom used to get her kids to read more. She ignored the kids’ bedtime for a while – some number of days – and then started enforcing it more strictly, but only after leaving books on her kids’ interests lying about in various places. When they protested the enforced bedtimes, she’d give in, but only partway; she’d tell the kids they could read in bed until [bedtime + some number of minutes] if they absolutely weren’t feeling sleepy (and they weren’t, because they’d gotten used to staying up a little later), but after that, it was definitely lights out! She claimed success; that helped turn her kids into readers, according to the article.</p>
<p>I second the magazine idea. I used to subscribe to several magazines that I knew my kids would like and that got them reading. I also took them to various museums (art, history, air, etc.) and would always stop on the way out and buy them a book on an exhibit. Non-fiction is as good as fiction for reading. I also have always cut out or highlighted articles or photos I thought they might have an interest in and left them out for them to read, which got them in the habit of reading things from a wide variety of sources. My kids read a lot more before bed and on car trips before the whole ipod revolution. (That really changed both of their reading habits.)
The important thing is to ensure that your son is reading something that increases his vocabulary and exposes him to good grammar/writing. This helps kids to be better writers later. If your son was evaluated by an employee of the school district, then have him tested independently if you suspect any problems. It is not in the district’s best interest to diagnose a kid with any type of learning disability if they think the kid can graduate from each grade level without requiring special needs ($$$). Lastly- set a good example. Be reading all of the time. Turn off the tvvideo games in your house when your son is around. Good luck.</p>
<p>Our son sounds a lot like yours. Guess what - he’s 16 now and still doesn’t read for pleasure. However, his reading comprehension is excellent, scores PSAT excellent, gets As in his HS English classes, etc.</p>
<p>When he was young, the typical books just didn’t interest him. He did go through a phase of reading Animorphs books (nothing amazing literarily speaking), but after that he didn’t hook into any other series that he liked. He liked reading magazines about computer games (cheat guides, reviews, etc.) We encouraged the reading of the magazines, figuring that some was better than none. If was curious, he would read. </p>
<p>Today he is still a computer oriented person and would rather code/hack than pick up a novel. I don’t think that will change very much in his future, though we’ve tried.</p>
<p>I agree with PAdad. Your older son may be an outlier, rather than your younger one. At his age, most kids read short chapter books.
Does he need to be re-read only works of fiction? or all books?
My S once gave some tutoring help to a student who could understand every word he read individually but could not really grasp the point of the paragraph he was reading.</p>
<p>My son loved the Artemis Fowl & Charlie Bone books at that age. Maybe if you can find some really good “boy” books, he might decide to pick them up & read them. </p>
<p>When my S first started reading books with smaller typeset, I had him use something to cover up all the lines beneath what he was reading. He seemed to do much better when he did this.</p>
<p>Also agree that the books you are reading with him might be too advanced. Let him read some light, fun stuff, if he wants.</p>
<p>A well-known reading specialist came to our school district to lecture on reading. She said that for quality reading skills, children should be encouraged to stop and question while reading (what do you think will happen next? Whey do you think he did that?), in an effort to foster them ‘making movies in their heads’ about what they are reading.</p>
<p>What I do w/my daughter (she’s 6 & doesn’t read/decode fluently, yet) is to play a lot of ‘books on CD’ in the car and when we are home. Some she loves so much we have to sit in the driveway to finish listening to a chapter. I’ll ask questions about the stories–we laugh together and comment on the action. I think this helps w/‘creating pictures.’ For instance, we’ve listened to the entire Harry Potter collection in a few months. You can bet we wouldn’t have worked our way through that just by me reading before bed. :-)</p>
<p>Another trick I did w/my older son & now younger daughter – fling a pile of books on the bed at night & say they can read themselves to sleep (even if they can’t technically read, they look through pictures and develop enjoyment). Otherwise, the light goes out.</p>
<p>Most kids–given choice between looking at/reading books & sleep would pick the former. :-)</p>
<p>Same here re the books in bed. Bedtime in summer and on weekends during the school year meant relaxing in bed with any variety of reading material until sleepiness kicked in.</p>
<p>Maybe he’s afraid if he starts reading on his own completely, you’ll stop reading to him - maybe he really enjoys that and doesn’t want to lose it. Try getting two copies of something and reading together at night, stopping often to discuss what you have read. He still gets the time together and the attention. You’ll have your own little book club. </p>
<p>I’d definitely have his eyes checked for double vision or tracking issues. He sounds so much like the daughter of a friend of mine. </p>
<p>Otherwise I’d suggest easier, sillier books and magazines. Back when I was doing Reading is Fundamental third graders were reading things like Captain Underpants, or the Time Warp Trio books the Wayside School books or other series whose names escape me at the moment. My older son was a very good reader, but he still read all those dumb Animorph books. Some kids like the Magic Treehouse Books though I have never understood the attraction nor did my boys. You could also try The Secrets of Droon - a favorite of my younger son’s. Good luck!</p>
<p>owlice, Great advice! We never forced the issue of reading with our kids. We always had reading material directed towards their interests scattered around the house for them (including at an easy reaching distance from their beds). Comic books, sports magazines, Times for kids, National Geographic, easy books, challenging books, etc. It worked for us. </p>
<p>Thank you for all the responses. First, to correct some misconceptions, my older son was NOT an early reader. His birthday falls in the year so that he is among the oldest kids in his grade. Our district is very aggressive about referring for reading services if kids are not reading in first grade. My son was, barely, but if he’d been born prematurely instead of on his due date, he would have been in the grade above and diagnosed. So my son was at the end of 1st grade, having already turned 7 months before, when he suddenly started walking around with his nose in a book. Reading Harry Potter came later, when he was 8.</p>
<p>I have not wanted to force S2 to read, thinking that it would come, but it hasn’t, he is almost 10, and I am getting worried. There are lots of good suggestions here that I will respond to.</p>
<p>I am very interested in the eye issues. He just had an eye exam last month. Everyone else in the family wears glasses or contacts, so I take him in regularly, expecting that he will need something at some point. No problems were identified; his vision is 20/20, but I know that you are suggesting something else, MQD and mathmom. Where would I go to have these aspects of vision checked?</p>
<p>Have you tried audiobooks? My son had the same problem at the same age, and did not read a book for pleasure until 6th grade. However, by age 8 we started getting audiobooks for him, and he loved to listen to them. He “read” all of the Harry Potter books that way, and many other more difficult books (such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy). He did not read on grade level until third grade, which, coincidentally, was the same year we started pushing the audiobooks. The audiobooks familiarized him with language, storytelling, structure, and dramatically increased his vocabulary.</p>
<p>I concur with other recommendations that you should have your son tested, too – mine turned out to have a minor vision problem helped by reading glasses, and when he got those glasses, he suddenly developed a much stronger interest in reading books with smaller print. He also turned out to be a sight reader – he has phoneme processing problems (which he hid well until he hit high school) which impaired his ability to sound out words. Now, he is the fastest reader in the house, with a speed of well over 1200 words per minute. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think it was the audiobooks that made all the difference. Painless reading. He is 16 now and still goes to sleep listening to audiobooks.</p>
<p>I’m not giving him books that are too hard, and they are books that are interesting to him. He would love it if I would read them to him, but doesn’t want to read them himself. My husband or I read to him every night at bedtime, and this is a special time for all of us that I don’t want to give up. But maybe I can give him time to read to himself after we read to him. </p>
<p>I will make sure that he knows that he will still be read to if he started reading himself. A wise teacher of S2 told all of the parents at open house to read to our kids as long as they would let us, saying that being read to was a different experience and very valuable. </p>
<p>When I read to him, he will happily listen to almost any book. We’ve read all of the Chronicles of Narnia and we are now reading all of the Dr. Doolittle books (the old, unbowdlerized versions). He even found a book I bought many years ago on lucid dreaming, and asked me to read it to him. He is trying to learn to become aware in his dreams.</p>
<p>We have listened to audiobooks on long car trips. That’s a great suggestion - I will get him some to listen to himself. How did you have your son tested for the phoneme processing problem, orchid?</p>
<p>Marite, how did your S help the child who could not understand the meaning of paragraphs? This sounds like something that could be affecting S2.</p>
<p>Jolynne, the questioning technique sounds like a good one. I will try that with him.</p>
<p>Google for “Visual Training” or “Visual Therapy”. </p>
<p>My son has Asperger’s Syndrome and lack of muscle tone is one of the things that comes with the package. His handwriting is awful, he is very uncoordinated, and has difficulty understanding where his body is located … always accidentally bumping me. </p>
<p>Exercising his eye muscles for a few weeks set him on the course of loving to read. It is as though his eye muscles needed just needed a bit of prodding. </p>
<p>It is worth a try but be careful to not pay an expert too much $$$ for eye therapy. </p>