<p>MQD, Of course it’s not an intrusion - I asked for help, and I appreciate all the responses. I wouldn’t say that S2 monologues about his interests or has an unusually hard time with transitions, but he is definitely visual/spatial. He has always (since he was able to talk) remembered and recognized routes, even if it has been a long time since he’s taken them. I will try the idea of blocking out text.</p>
<p>I love that librarian - what a gift!</p>
<p>corranged, that’s a good point about reading out loud. But we are now making him read to himself, and he says that he doesn’t take in what he reads. </p>
<p>Another possible piece of the puzzle - he showed strong interest in music as early as 2 months (no other musicians in the family). He has been taking piano lessons for 3 years and, by all accounts, he has some talent. </p>
<p>I took an online dyslexia test that calmom recommended, and there were many questions that I couldn’t answer, because I don’t really know how he thinks. I could answer some, of course. </p>
<p>I definitely think that some testing is in order. This child is very different from everyone else in the family and, even if no disorder is identified, it would be useful to understand how he thinks and learns.</p>
<p>Thank you very much to everyone who posted!</p>
<p>Here’s a reply in the opposite direction from Calmon, not to negate her wisdom. Not only is she brilliant, she does have professional insight here.</p>
<p>But here goes. My S does not like to read. I think ADD is one of the reasons. However, he does read well and understand well. He scored 750 on his SAT CR, and 35 on the ACT. He won the English award from his school as a graduating HS senior. He attends Williams and so far his only A’s have been in English. And he doesn’t like to read. I kid you not.</p>
<p>(His sister is still fuming about the English award which she missed because the teacher played favorites. She reads everything.)</p>
<p>He is even considering being an English major. ??? Huh?</p>
<p>I suggested that if he pursues that to focus on poetry. Less reading.</p>
<p>My point is, if grades, test results, comprehension are all there it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a problem.</p>
<p>I’d like him to read more, but there it is.</p>
<p>“I suggested that if he pursues that to focus on poetry. Less reading.” LOL, specializing in Haiku?</p>
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<p>This sounds like astigmatism! I can’t buy or wear anything that’s too stunningly striped or checked; it makes my eyes hurt.</p>
<p>As you have it set up, it’s hard to tell if he wants you as the reader or recognizes he gets much-neded Mom-time as the 2nd child by saying he can’t understand a book unless you’re reading it to him. </p>
<p>I wonder if you got a book-on-tape and two copies of the book; sat together and let the tape read it to you both at the same time. Silently turn pages with him. You can stop and pause after l0 minutes to discuss the plot, and then resume. After another l0 minutes, discuss but then say regretfully that you have to go do some housework (NOT tend to the other sibling!). Leave him there with the tape still playing. Tell him you’ll read another 5 pages before you go to bed, and he should too; then tomorrow you’ll discuss them together. Don’t forget to follow through.</p>
<p>The next day, ask him about the content of the chapter and discuss a bit of content, just to see how far on he went without you. If he kept a-going with the tape alone, that indicates he’s helped by the tape (any reader will do). But if he gave up on the tape the minute you exited the room, he may be saying he just misses you and wants to be with you more. If so, make a deal with him: for every 30 minutes he reads alone/with the tape, you’ll spend a DIFFERENT 30 minutes with only him (cooking, playing cards, doing chores and chatting, whatever). Time with you then becomes his reward for independent reading. If you read the same books as he does, you can continue conversing about them for comprehension.</p>
<p>A different set of issues is if you find that he reads any paragraph but doesn’t comprehend it, no matter what. Part of improving comprehension at that age is improving fluency, so see how he sounds reading out loud. If he’s disfluent, he really is putting a lot of internal energy into just decoding, so it’s too much to also comprehend. I’d get him a private reading tutor for that, if you can do so, as there are prompts and approaches aimed at comprehension for that age. For example, they pre-read a page for the tricky words and explain them, then go back and attempt the whole page. They teach them how to surmise new vocabulary from the context. They teach them to develop an expectation set (What do you think will happen next in the story?) and then read to see how the actual story compares to their expectations. These are all remedial mini-lessons. </p>
<p>It’s wonderful that you value reading!</p>
<p>We let them pick the kind of books they wanted even when I did not like them, Fear Factor was a big hit with S’s, as were several of the other scary ones. DD had Pony Pals. Great literature they were not, but they eased on into reading other books that were more advanced as they got older. S1 read really advanced at a young age - Harry Potter-like books at 7 or 8. But the others did not get there until older.</p>
<p>Also do the eye exam but find one who does the tracking tests. We found tracking issues in 2 of the 4 and exercises helped. S1 had special glasses to ease reading strain, too. He graduated from them and as a result now he still does not wear glasses for anything.</p>
<p>NYMomof2 - try not to worry too much. Reading ability is my favorite subject, I really should have made it my career, so I relish the discussion even though I know it’s tough on you.</p>
<p>First, yes do the testing. It could be the eyes, ADD, something else. Eliminate the possibilities. My SIL had “lazy eye” when she was little and had to wear a patch for a while. She never liked school and sort of hates to read. Now she is in a book club, but perhaps more for the social part, and she reads the selections on tape. I used to tutor kids with reading problems, all of whom were on ADD meds; it can definitely contribute. My older D is undiagnosed ADD and she does NOT read for pleasure, except magazines, usually fashion, but she finished college with a 4.0 and is off to grad school.</p>
<p>Don’t, please don’t, stop reading to your 9 yr old son. I stopped reading to my S when I thought he was getting too old for it and now I regret it. They grow up and one day they don’t want you to do it any more. Wait til then. Trust me.</p>
<p>One trick I used with my tutoring kids was to have them use an index card or a ruler and run it down the page so they only read one line at a time and did not see the rest of the page while reading that line. It helped them focus and not be distracted by the print or get that dizzy feeling. Pointing to each word with a finger while reading helps in the same way.</p>
<p>Your S seems like he’s hot on geography. If he doesn’t have a comprehension problem with that, then he may not have a comprehension problem. It could be ADD. He can’t pay attention unless he’s extremely interested in what he’s reading, so his mind wanders, or his eyes do. I have two Ds and the elder is not a reader, the younger is a voracious reader of complex fiction. They have the same mom. Maybe the ADD affects my older D, but really I think she just doesn’t like literature all that much. In college she would take courses in poetry or drama (plays) for her english credits cause it meant less words to read. She just doesn’t enjoy it despite my best efforts. But she is pursuing a technical degree in something she very much enjoys and she understands her subject very well. Your son may wind up as a geography professor, or work for an oil company in oil field exploration, or maybe work for National Geographic. If he checks out after the diagnostic testing, don’t worry about the fiction.</p>
<p>As a final note, with one of my students, I would have him read the hunting and fishing section of our sports pages in the newspaper. Reading is reading, and at the age of 9 the trick is to get them hooked with what they’re interested in. Perhaps a librarian could put you onto fiction for a geographer. So get the tests, read to him, and relax.</p>
<p>Good methods, except that I’m guessing this boy has outgrown word-by-word finger-pointing.</p>
<p>Staying on the right line could be meaningful, though. Some around 2nd-4th grade benefit by running a finger down the center of the page (over the text, but down in a straight line). Others do better running a finger down the margin as they read each line. Same idea as Mercymom’s white card (some distractable kids like white cards), but just tracking lines with a finger lets him still see the print. Just play with it to see what’s right.</p>
<p>Good authors on reading methods is the team of Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell; Steve Harvey; Debbie Miller. Actually, just look up “Reading Comprehension” at a bookstore search site.</p>
<p>Some people don’t outgrow the finger pointing, though. One of the boys I worked with had divorced parents and his mom read with the finger pointing method. When I tried to get him to do it, he refused vehemently. He told me that was how his mom read and that his dad screamed at him whenever he did it. His dad didn’t want him to “read like his mom”.</p>
<p>Nothing necessarily related to the OP, but weird, huh? I chalked it up to the animosity of divorce, but also figured maybe he’d inherited a disability from his mom. One more thing for the parents to fight over.</p>
<p>^wise tutor</p>
<p>mommusic, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have astigmatism, because he just had an eye exam last month. My husband and S1 both have astigmatism (S1 inherited both astigmatism from my husband and near-sightedness from me). I will double-check with the optometrist to make sure this was checked. I will also ask him about testing for eye tracking. </p>
<p>Is there anything else visual that I should have checked?</p>
<p>paying3tuitions, Thank you for that diagnostic procedure! I do not think that he is avoiding reading out of fear of losing his being-read-to time with me, but I will consider the possibility as you have outlined.</p>
<p>mercymom, I do not plan to stop reading to him until he no longer allows me to! He had a wonderful 4th grade teacher this past year, who also had S1 in 4th grade, and I remember at the open house years ago this teacher made a passionate argument for reading to our kids as long as possible. He said that being read to was a different experience than reading to oneself.</p>
<p>mercymom, I will try the index card, that is a great suggestion. I think someone earlier in the thread suggested something similar. He has accumulated a great deal of information on geography; I feel confident in saying that he knows much more than most adults. But most of this was gained by poring over maps or globes, or extracting facts from atlases. He is very interested in weather around the world, and always reads the weather section of the paper, and can tell you much about the climate of many cities. But none of this is reading blocks of text.</p>
<p>In terms of interest, I do let him choose his own books. The books I read to him are often fiction, and he loves it and begs for more. So I don’t think the problem is that he is not interested in the content. I am sure that the problem is the actual reading.</p>
<p>Thank you for the list of authors, paying3tuitions. I am going to have to learn more about this.</p>
<p>The divorce story is appalling - at least I don’t have that problem!</p>
<p>Is your son good at math? There is some connection between being mathematical and not liking to read fiction when young.<br>
I changed my own block-building-when-very-young mathematical oldest son i who only wanted non-fiction by using Encyclopedia Brown’s series by David Sobol in 1st grade.<br>
After several of those, I got him alfred Hitchcock’s 3 Investigators series. Then The Pushcart War (small chapters, really really engaging story of a battle in NY City between pushcarts and 18 wheelers. Back-room politics, etc going on. Really fun reading.
the poster who mentioned funny stories was right on target. Redwall series is hilarious (for 4th grade reading level). Oh, Gordon Korman’s This Cant be Happening at McDonald Hall and Beware the Fish are HYSTERICAL. </p>
<p>Do not give up! The librarian tried to tell me about another son who also didn’t like reading, “well, some kids are not natural readers.” Duh. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to turn them into readers. Keep at it. Leave books around, start them by reading a chapter, then get busy and leave the book there. Or in the car. Or in the bathroom for reading while taking a bath. Determination will win out–just don’t let on what you are up to! Kids won’t read if told it is good for them. </p>
<p>Liked the idea of 'read or go to sleep". I read that suggestion in the Trelease book. I never had to resort to it myself–well, maybe with that last son I did it, but I have recommended it to many other parents.<br>
My own kids had the proverbial flashlight in the bed trick and I was never the wiser until one day I was changing someone’s sheet. I put the flashlight back. Losing a little sleep while engaged in such a wholesome and useful pastime was fine with me.</p>
<p>ADHD might interfere, my nephew has that and didn’t necessarily like to read. His sister has ADD (daydreamer type) and reads voraciously. Reads everything in sight, like the rest of us ‘girls’ of all ages do.</p>
<p>Re the pointing with finger as read–it interferes with developing fluency, I was told by my lead reading tutor when I was tutoring in reading last year. You encourage reading with finger in 1st grade, and then discourage it in 2nd grade on up, as it slows a kid down when they finger-point as they read, for some reason.</p>
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<p>Finger pointing is excellent in pre-K/K, just to emphasize a one-to-one correspondence between the spoken and written word. It shows them also that each word exists on a page with space around it. </p>
<p>Around lst grade, as they’re really reading haltingly, fingerpointing is good because it continues to make sure they don’t miss any small words. </p>
<p>But by around 2nd grade you can say, “You’re big enough to try pointing with your eyes now.” That helps them begin to perceive phrases rather than words, as the mind begins to take in more and read ahead a few words, so phrased reading begins. All of these steps encourage fluent reading, which in turn relates to comprehension, the topic of the OP.</p>
<p>OP, is there a reading specialist at the school to help figure things out? Your situation is not easy. And all my standard techniques here are not to say he has no possible learning disability, eye problems or other concerns; he might. Brava to you for making tracks to figure this out. By 9 kids should be reading, and if it’s 3rd grade next year, you want your child in better position, so as not to become discouraged.</p>
<p>I’m sure you stop after every paragraph or so to ask what happened in the paragraph. Don’t let a whole page or two go by before discussing things, in other words. You can even be subtle; don’t ask, “what just happened” but maybe something more like, “I wonder why he picked up the football again?” to see if the main point of the paragraph got through.</p>
<p>When a person reads, many things are going on at once inside the brain: decoding, comprehending, comparing to other stories, responding emotionally to the characters. </p>
<p>As someone mentioned above, it might also be that the current books are too hard, in which case, drop back a few levels to easier books to see how it goes.</p>
<p>General rule is that it’s fine to need help for around 3 words per page, but if you’re getting into not being able to read 3-5 words per paragraph, that’s too much decoding to be able to compehend the plot at the same time, so drop back book levels.</p>
<p>In summertime, librarians can help if you bring in the trouble book (or just the title, if it’s famous) and ask the librarian for books a few levels easier than that one.</p>
<p>Plus all the other possibilities mentioned could be problems: eyes, learning disability, ADD. It’s complicated. My advice is for straightforward reading without those complexities, so you can experiment with that while waiting to see on more complex possibilities over the summer.</p>
<p>If it’s 3rd grade next year, you want the person to feel as though they are reading on some level, even if it’s not your favorite level. Don’t let them feel like they can’t read and make a belief system about themselves; better to read easy books than struggle with hard ones.</p>
<p>There are also kids who read fluently out loud but then, when asked, comprended nothing of what they just read so fluently! They might do better reading silently, and then discuss with you after EACH sentence…to realize they can be making “pictures/movies in their heads” constantly as others said above. Enjoy the process and share in the movie-making after each sentence, might be enjoyable. (Just sit there while he reads the sentence silently; then discuss together briefly; move on to next sentence.)</p>
<p>That’s the real task of reading, the visualizing of the story, and not just reading aloud for others which is what we have to do at first to teach kids to read. Maybe slow down and discuss after each sentence, to ensure the point is made that reading is for meaning, always. And try this on an easier book, so it’s comfortable. </p>
<p>Much good luck to you and your family.</p>
<p>Thanks, paying3tuitions. S2 is going into 5th grade. He was tested by the district reading specialist, a very experienced woman, in 3rd grade, and at the time I was told that his decoding and comprehension were both several grade levels above 3rd. He is always in the top reading group in school. He loves books and will happily listen to anything being read to him. (I mentioned that I’ve been reading a book on lucid dreaming to him - last night he woke me at 3 am to tell me that he’d had his first lucid dream! In the dream, he met a stranger who offered him chips. He said that although he would never take food from a stranger in real life, he knew that it would be safe to do so in a dream. So he ate them, and he said they were wonderful, tasted like shrimp!) I have not been asking him questions during his reading sessions, but will start to do so today.</p>
<p>pensive, S2 is good, but not exceptional, in math. (S1 is a near-prodigy in math, was a late reader, but by 2nd grade was an avid reader, and still is.)</p>
<p>Pensive’s comment on math caught my eye because (and this may seem strange) a corresponding thought struck me when you mentioned your S’s (nymom) strong interest in geography, maps, globes, facts and figures. It hit me as a similar situation on a gut level and this is why. </p>
<p>During the years I’ve been paying attention to this, esplly with reading problems in boys, the ones who have the problems have a tendency not only to be ADD or ADDish, they also seem to have strong spatial abilities, for lack of a better term. Tend to do well in math, like science, engineering type things, good with their hands, building stuff, mechanical ability, etc. For example, of the boys that I tutored (only one of my students was a girl, admittedly I didn’t have a lot of students, but still) all but one had at least one parent who was an engineer. My older D has had two boyfriends with varying degrees of reading disability, and both were forestry/agriculture majors in college (outdoorsy hands on types). My younger D is an engineering/math/physics major currently doing a physics REU. She is surrounded by boys who overwhelmingly hate reading. Yes, there is the occasional passionate reader like she is, but mostly, no. They hate it. My best friends son-in-law is an engineer and she says he never ever reads for pleasure. Reads a lot of technical journals and stuff for his business, but that’s it.</p>
<p>I have no clue why this is, but over the years I have seen so much of it that it is noticeable. When D2 started college in engineering, at the orientation (one session for kids, one for parents) her advisor said she was the only person in her group who had APs in stuff like literature and history. Even the advisor noticed it and said “usually engnineers hate to read”. Now please don’t all the CC engineers slam me. This is just a correlation designed to help (?) the OP on a reading question. I do know guys with these spatial abilities who also love literature, but I know a lot more who really do not.</p>
<p>NYMomof2 - </p>
<p>Going into 5th grade means, as you know, the really tough comprehension stuff is starting, so here is one more suggestion. With my older D, the one who doesn’t read for pleasure, she used to also complain of headaches a lot. We tested her eyes every which way, at one point even got an MRI (yikes!), all A-OK. So another thing I did was as she got assigned novels for summer reading or school, I would look for copies with large print or which were formatted with lots of space on the page. All the words were there, but it was printed with larger letters and lots of space. Sometimes you can get a book in a cheaper edition with tiny print all packed together, but I found she did better with an edition where it was more spread out. That actually helped her a lot. With the lower level ability books you will see that in addition to easier vocabulary there is also more space on the page. Once again, my gut thinks the space helps the poor reader as much if not more so than the vocab.</p>