My 5 Year Old Refuses To Read

My post was republished by the huffington post and washington post among others and shared tens of thousands of times.

My 5 year old refuses to read. Guest posted on 08 08 2014 at 11 28am. He says it is boring and nothing will tempt him. Finally try to see your child s teachers as your allies. My 5 year old who is in year 1 summer birthday has learnt quite a lot of words and is above average ability in his class a bright boy but he refuses to practice reading at home.

If you can intervene early like in kindergarten or even before kindergarten your child will be getting off to a good start. This has been going on for a long time. 5 yr old refuses to read and or write. My 5 year old boy does write almost every day but he asked one day why it s hard to make letters and i explained that it takes practice to get stronger.

I recommend an old fashioned paper calendar simply because we already have too many distracting electronics in our lives. If a child doesn t like school that will be 16 5 years of misery. My 5 year old son is going into grade 1 and when i asked him if he is looking forward to it he simply replied no because i can not read a book yet. You don t want that for your child.

In the us the average expected years of schooling is 16 5 years 1. The only way we get him to eat is to sit with him and literally tell him to take a bit chew swallow take another bite and on. In my experience most teachers are dedicated and caring but i realize that this isn t always the case. But she s not exactly obedient either.

In fact she refuses to come to dinner when you call her ignores your requests to pick up her socks and teasingly rolls the soccer ball around on the kitchen floor despite your rule about playing ball in the house. Now he chooses to write pretty much every day out of his desire to get better at writing. Your 5 year old is probably well past the temper tantrum stage most of the time at least. My 6 year old refuses to eat anything his favorite foods snack food candy anything.

I usually end up bribing threatening whatever works. But on speaking with all of her classmates mothers i have found that they are all reading age appropriate books without having to sound out most of the time. Experiment and use what works best for your child. My heart broke for him in that moment but as you mentioned i am taking some small steps with sight word flash cards and letter sounds etc to help him feel a little bit more confident.

Even on projects we do that don t include writing he ll often include at least his name. Read my favorite picky eating book. She just plain doesn t want to and won t. Like crystal lowery i was told by many commenters and in angry emails from many others that not teaching my 5 year old to read was ignorant and abusive and would cause him to suffer academically for years to come.

My 5 year old is at par as per her teachers at school.