Getting him to read...suggestions?

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Hi,
My 9 year old has in the past done well with reading. That is, he can read any word, anytime. But ask him to read a book and he's lost. He just doesn't have the comprehension. So it's not surprising that his reading grades are slipping.

I get that the more he practices the better he'll do, but how do I get him to read? He doesn't enjoy it at all, and neither does my husband. I don't understand because I love to read. Husband says we should use the hammer and make him do it, but I can foresee that seriously backfiring. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Get something that he would think may be interesting to you and get him to read it to you while you do housework, or sew, or anything like that. Say that you are giving up tv or radio or are just tired of it and that you'd like him to do you a favor and read out loud to you while you do the work because he has such a nice voice. Make it something that he would probably get into too, not something that would bore him. If he hasn't read the Harry Potter books (and doesn't think you have) get him to read them to you. Maybe even say that you joined an online book club and so you have to get it read. Then let him see you reading it too and when he reads to you out loud tell him to start where you left off, not where he left off last time. This may make him interested enough to go back and read whats in between.

Or, tell him that you don't want him reading <insert the name of a popular book series>. Say it's too mature or immoral or scary. There is nothing like forbidden fruit to make a kid curious.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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try getting him to play computer games that involve reading, they dont even have to be educational games. thats what got me into reading around his age

It depends on what he likes. I would not force it, if you can keep from it. Nothing makes a kid hate something as much as being forced to do something. If you aren't worried about sticking to pro-social content there is the Captain Underpants series. If your son has issues with spelling I would not necessarily recommend it as the main characters write comic books and cannot spell. If your son can get that it is intended as humor, and not imitate the poor spelling ---and you are not worrying about him imitating the pranks, it is a good place to start with a reluctant reader. There is potty humor, too, which depending on your son's maturity he might like.

Will he read non-fiction relating to his special interests? We have much better luck with non-fiction or fiction relating to his non-fiction interests. If you post your son's interest I bet you will get even more ideas.

Wow! These are all really great suggestions. One I've used that hasn't been mentioned yet is if you have a tablet or a smartphone and your kid is interested in electronic gadgets, get ebooks and let him read that way. Your local library should allow you to check them out so you don't have to keep paying for new books. I got DS to read Flat Stanley and some other series books that way. In general, DS really likes the series books. Maybe he finds the familiar characters comforting.

Also, in the whole vein of "helping you", maybe you could get him to read recipes to you while you cook, or instructions to you while you put something together or something.

As for getting him to start reading to you, another thing to say as to why you want him to do it instead of reading yourself is that you think you might need to get your eyes checked because reading is starting to give you a headache and you really want to find out what happens in the book. Make it about you, not about him. Then thank him for it and give him some kind of a reward. Like "I'll pay you <treat/privilege/cash> to read to me for 30 minutes".

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

My son is not a reader by choice. Some of the things we have done is:
1) let him read easy books that he can finish in one sitting rather than chapter books
2) Manga
3) comics - classic batman etc.
4) comics - far side, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield etc
5) books with his favorite cartoon character
6) books with lots of diagrams info - pirates, dinosaurs etc.
7) we read to him
listen to audiobooks in the car
9) shel Silverstein poems
10) he doesn't have to finish a book he doesn't like
11) everyone in the family finds a weird fact on the Internet, reads, and shares at dinner
12) read how to instructions on instructables.com and build something
13) read as part of nighttime routine
14) read top 10 lists
15) magazines, short articles
16) read cheat guides for video games
17) when he asks a weird question, I say I don't know, why don't you look that up on the iPad and tell me
18) fact a day, joke a day etc. websites
19) send him emails and ask for a response
20) read the instructions on food packages to me and follow them, for example, what temp do I set the oven for that?
21) read to younger children
22) make a scavenger hunt with clues to read
23) keep some reading material in the bathroom

I'm seconding comics. For a long time, my reluctant reader (ADHD) would not voluntarily read anything that wasn't a comic of some form. I even bought Super Underwear Man, or some silliness like that, because that caught his eye, and he read it! The Bone series of graphic novels is excellent. The artwork and coloring is beautiful and the story is a good one that includes a high word count and is entirely appropriate to a nine year old. I even enjoyed it. There are nine of those books.

You can even buy classics like Tom Sawyer, Frankenstein, etc in graphic novel form. The Wizard of Oz has several different comic versions out. (He was really into Wizard of Oz when he turned nine. He even had a rainbow lawyer cake that was decorated with those figurines, and owns three separate comic versions of it--which he read!)

Not sure how you feel about real comics at his age. Mine are now 13 and almost 12, and I have started letting them read real Marvel Now comics. These often have content or pictures that I would have been leery sharing with my boys when they were nine.

Also, he did probably hundreds of hours of audio books. Librivox has an absolutely huge library of completely free and legal audiobooks. They record things that are public domain or that the authors have given permission for. The quality of readers does vary somewhat. When we were listening to Dracula as a family, there was one chapter that I ended up reading out loud, because the reader was very monotone. The rest of the book was done well. One man has done all of the Mark Twain recordings. He is a professional Mark Twain impersonator. He does the accents and varies his voice by character, and is generally amazing. I tend to not like audiobooks, because they are slower than my reading pace and I don't comprehend as well by listening, but even I enjoyed listening to the Mark Twain recordings.

I've sneaked reading in on him by having him read to his baby brother. Preschool level books are something he could read in one sitting, maybe even several of them if they were shorter, and he could be successful without my help while still getting practice.

It takes a long time sometimes. He is going to be 12 in a month, and he only recently finished his very first grade level appropriate real book cover to cover all by himself. He was very proud! Now that he is older he is recognizing that he needs to be faster and is willing to put effort into it where before it was always just that I was trying to be mean to him.

I forgot to say that the biggest part of why we had him listening to audiobooks so much was that he had a huge gap between his ability to understand things he heard versus things he read. He had so much trouble with decoding that he often didn't understand what he just spent so long translating off the page. Kind of a forest versus trees situation. The audiobooks let him experience worthwhile literature without the slogging struggle of decoding. I wanted him to be able to love good literature without associating it with the trauma he was going through to decode.

I just remembered that we also did (and still do) a lot of co-reading. He LOVES attention, so he'll even go through the horrors of reading, if it means that he gets to sit right next to me while his brothers are banished to another room. We're up to a page front and back for each of us now, but we started out with me reading almost all of it, and him only reading a paragraph at a time.

First of all, have you had his reading evaluated? We found that DS had a scanning problem that made him frustrated, and therefore stop reading (for instance, does covering the text below the line he's reading and slowly moving it down the page seem to help?)

Second, we used a lot of audiobooks - sometimes with both the audio and the text version simultaneously. We also do rely heavily on books with lots of pictures; DS really liked the How To Train Your Dragon series because it was a good balance of pictures to text for him.

Third, try making sure the closed captions are on whenever you watch TV or he plays a video game. Any time you can squeeze a bit of practice in there, it helps!

I'd say - just find a good enough book.

An engaging enough book will catch his attention, and will get him to start reading other books.

I'd say just take a book and see if he likes it. I've heard Harry Potter might be good enough to work, as from other people's comments on it (Haven't read it myself) It's certainly engaging and it's the right age group.

If you're worried about content, maybe try and get him to write his own? It would allow him some creativity, and it'll help in figuring out other people's books as well.

http://www.davidfarland.net/writing_tips/
http://www.writingexcuses.com/

These ones are my two most used writing resources. Hopefully they'll help him out if he likes writing ;p

Biggest things are, in my experience as a children's librarian....

Find something that interests him. Doesn't matter what -- if it's something that he's passionate about, he'll be motivated to at least try to read. Comic books, media tie-ins like Ninjago or Star Wars, non-fiction, jokes....

(Be careful on that last one. I brought home a book of knock-knock jokes once, and heard every single joke in that book over and over again in the weeks that followed.)

...whatever. Even if it's something that you personally can't stand, as long as it's not age-inappropriate, go for it. I am very tired of potty humor, but Eldest can't get enough of it. He's a nine-year old boy, though, so I suppose that's to be expected.

If you can get him to the library to pick out his own books, give him that sense of ownership and self-determination? All the better.

And read to him. Eldest is a great reader, and can read well above his grade level...but rarely does, preferring books for younger readers. His mom has been reading to him at bedtime every night, books at or above his reading level, and he's loving it. And it's motivating him to read things outside his comfort level.

(I should also mention a trick that author Spider Robinson's mother used to use on him. She'd start reading a comic or book to him, and at the most exciting point? Suddenly remember that she had something important to do, and have to take a half-hour break. Strong motivation to try reading for himself, apparently.)