Why can't my son read?

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
1

I need someone to listen to me cry and give me some encouragement.

My little boy is almost two years old and most days it seems he truly can’t read a thing! I started reading to him when I was 3 months pregnant, and reading running my finger under words when he was about 5 months old, spending 30 minutes a day back then and we’ve built it up, now we read 1 to 3 hours a day. He loves being read to. He “read” his first word at 10 months. Then we got little reader when he was one year old and we’ve been doing about 10 lessons a week. Two weeks after we got LR, I would write 2 words from the program down and he could pick the correct word EVERY TIME! “reading” about 20 words. After doing this once, he never ever did it again.

He surprised me the other day. He doesn’t like the new LR game feature, but he was asking me to re-read a story at the end of one of the lessons, I clicked the game button by accident. He correctly answered the first 3 questions, each in the blink of an eye, then refused to continue. This was amazing to me because he could spot the correct answer before I could (I’ll admit I’m pretty useless) but these were 4 full sentences being displayed and he found the correct one so quickly. This experience gave me hope, but I’ve been trying to get him to read words ever since with no success. If I BEG him to read a word, he just answers anything, usually his own name!

I can’t complain to anyone in the real world and I’m feeling very discouraged, so please anyone, what’s going on? Where have I gone wrong?

2

Oh you are not alone! Your story is similar to ours- she points to correct words but will refuse to read them out loud. She would say silly words if I ask her to read .She hates to be tested in any way. Of course I would loved her to start reading but if she is not ready and wants me to do the talking I will. But yes all would be easier if she reads already!!!

I “explained” it to myself lol lol lol that she is more right brained orientated and that is a good thing, right?

I am actually looking forward to the new Uk version and I hope it will work for us!

3

Gee try the same sinario with a 4 year old and you will know what frustration is! lol
OK to be blunt…you are asking too much of your son! He is not even 2 and you are testing him like a 6 year old! :frowning: please stop! A small child should NEVER be expected to answer testing questions. I understand your frustration. I knew my son could read for months before he chose to share that with me when I asked. The problem is at the age your child is, you are asking a lot of cognitive funtion. You are asking for attention, understanding, reaction, logic, knowledge, reasoning, verbal skills and all while under pressure to keep mummy happy! All that just to answer one question which in the bigger scheme of life just doesn’t matter. most kids that age can’t even speak.
Perhaps you don’t realize that each time you question you are adding pressure to the situation. You may not even feel it but your child does. The pressure closes the doors to learning. I need to CONSTANTLY remind myself of this everyday at work. I need to constantly remind myself to keep our learning sessions short and FUN! If I need to be grumpy at a child who is disruptive then I need to remember to have a giggle with the group strait after to reset the mood. It is difficult some days! :yes:
I suggest you change your focus. I may have said this before lol focus on IMPUT! IMPUT! IMPUT! Please try to see your role and the data entry person. Your job is to IMPUT all the information and as quickly and excitedly as possible. You are not the examination board. You do not need to ask questions to check understanding or learning. You do not need to test. All you need to do is have faith that your effort will be useful as the more data you IMPUT the more your son has to draw apon later, when he decides he is ready to express himself that way.
I promise that if you think this way you will not loose heart in what you are doing, your learning sessions will be more enjoyable and fun and you WILL get the results you want in time. Plus you and your son will develop and even closer bond as a bonus!

4

had to relearn this notlong ago, and I have to say … it is nicer for you and the kid if you are not looking to see what he knows, just enjoying the beeing together, for me it is enough to know that I can be with them all day,
for exaple we spent a good 4 months trying to teach my son to swim, we thought it had all gone to nothing because he started to not event want to go to the pool, we stoped for 2-3 months, and in just two days he was swiming allover the pool (doggy still, but still AMAZING), so just relax, and on top with computer programs it dosent take much efort to put them on to the programs and let them enjoy!!!

5

Thank you guys so much, I feel better just knowing you listened to my story.

I got the impression from Doman and other places that memory recall is important in learning, but I’ve never been able to make any forms of “testing” FUN for my child. Also, some reading techniques involve the child sounding letter sounds and words out, mine never plays along (we have fridge magnets.) In general, I ask many questions while reading or playing with him, but in the way you would ask a newborn, not really expecting an answer, but responding to the slightest communication effort.

@lelask: It seems we’re in the same boat. Just one more question, how do you mean your little one is more right brained? I’ve read about these topics but I’m still very much in the dark.

@Mandaplus3: I’ve read many of your posts, and I’ve always agreed with you idea of “imput” and live by it for most part, it’s just hard, I’m impatient. You are right, I’m putting unwanted pressure on my boy.

@msocorro: Congrats on your son’s swimming! What fun! It is also a good example, makes me think of my son not wanting to speak, then all of a sudden around 18months he took off!

Thanks again, I really appreciate your responses.

6

Manda is right! To be honest I did not notice the age of your child when I answered. I would also point that out. Some children don’t mind testing but mine can not even be tricked to give me an answer lol
I know that after you do so much you would loved to get a reward - mainly after reading all of those amazing stories here on the forum. Soon after you relax and start enjoying your teaching you will see results and have beautiful relationship with your little one. :slight_smile:

Reading is a left brain ability and because she is not there yet it persuaded me she is more in her right brain side. She is very good at drawing- when she was 23 months old she could draw a beautiful penguin, and in a few months later after seeing a bird in a bird feeder she drew it within 2 minutes with all the details . I would have to “freeze” that bird to be able to draw it lol so I know that she can " take pictures" and recall every detail - which is also a RB ability.

Every our " teaching" seasion has to be very playful and often with a new material ( that is not easy :wacko: )
She also prefers physical flash cards. iPad kind of saved me a lot of work as she can interact more than what computer has to offer.

Anyway , it is great that you have shared your thoughts as people here are experienced and happy to help anytime. I know it myself :slight_smile:

7

MamaOfWill - I’m going to reiterate what the others have said. Some kids like the “testing” games and others don’t. Sometimes even the same child can go through phases of enjoying it and then not wanting to play the games any more.

Then you have kids like my older son - who answers initially and after a while looks at you like you’re treating him like a circus performer. My mother was so proud of his “abilities” that she would often ask him test questions just to see what he could do. Once I caught him rolling his eyes at a test question she gave him so I quickly intervened.

Seriously, these are signs that indicate you should back off on the “testing”. My second son also refused to answer for the longest time so I just focused on input without asking him anything. Now he’s come out of his shell and he’s volunteering a lot more. He reads random words off billboards and signs when we’re out and about.

You know he can do it so just relax and concentrate on input.

Oh yeah, there is also another reason… children love being read to so they might not want to show you how much they can read so that you continue to read to them. That’s what my elder son would do. Even though he can read by himself, he would still rather have me read to him. He would pretend he couldn’t do a lot of things so that I would help him. It’s just his way of getting attention.

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@lelask: I think a little two year old drawing anything recognizable is amazing, I bet she still loves to draw. I think I’m starting to understand what you mean by being right brained dominent, but it’s hard to tell with my little one, I think he’s car brained dominent lol .

@ShenLi: Thanks for also chiming in, thinking that you had similar issues, but with great successes in the end, gives me more hope.

So what I sould do in STOP testing (that’s reasonably easy), and continue with input, input, input.

But what kind of input? (With a specific focus on reading.)

Part of me knows he can read for real. He read “Terry Pratchett” and “Land Rover” without anyone ever telling him what those words said (not that I know of.) So assuming that he CAN read, but he just doesn’t want to read out loud or demonstrate his reading skills in any other way, what is my next step? Whould you just continue reading books together as much as possable, would you focus on sounding words out, would you continue with LR style flash cards? I don’t want to waste a lot of time focusing on letter sounds and blending, or YBCR DVD’s, if he can allready read. On the other hand, I would hate for his abilities to decline because I quit my efforts. :wacko:

It’s hard to teach if you don’t know what they’ve mastered allready.

9

MamaofWill-
I absolutely agree with the idea of focusing on the input, especially at the age of your LO! Be VERY careful if you feel the need to test at all, although I am including some fun games we play/played that helped if I needed to gauge or check understanding. Also, even if you are not pressuring your LO to perform, make sure that you are not discussing your kiddos abilities/programs/advanced level/etc, within earshot of your child- they pick up on SO much, as I am sure you are fully aware, and I think this puts a lot of unintended pressure on them…
That being said:
Kids are notorious for their stubbornness, and I am almost certain that your little one is quite confident in his reading!
In my experience with my LO, it is only when she absolutely knows an answer or the material that she will contrarily invoke an opposite or completely ridiculous answer! In my experience, there is a completely different reaction between complete incomprehension and either cheeky disregard/casual ignoring/situational deafness lol You can look at it as the next step, they are resisting and learning humor (at least their version!) and testing for a response. A fantastic book called the Scientist in the Crib gave me some wonderful insight into this! They learn as much from our reactions to their answers as they do from the questions themselves, especially when they already know the material! Why would he want to give you a boring old correct answer when it is so much more fun to make up a nonsensical one to gauge your reaction lol
Two things we did when Alex started this:

  1. if your child has a pet or stuffed animal friend (Alex STILL adores her ‘illiterate’ plush hen!), try encouraging your kiddo to instruct their friend in reading (or anything! Lessons)…“Now that you know how to read LO, you can be the teacher! Do you think you can teach (insert beloved friend) to read? "
    And you don’t have to have them do it in front of you! In fact, just the opposite…give your child a book to read to their student, and ‘leave’ the room for a minute. Read a page, then say, 'oh! I forgot to check something! I will be right back…do you think you might like to read to your friend until I come right back?”
    If not, say okay, maybe another time…
    If you really just need a basic guideline to see where to go, this is a fun, low-key way to do it! It also helps give them confidence if they are shy or inadvertently pressured.
    2). We started playing True or False at about 18 months, and it is still one of Alexs favorite games. Instead of asking them to provide an answer, supply them with one and teach them to say true or false, or 'Do you agree/disagree …funnily enough, one of the early lessons in several math programs is the same-make sure they know how to voice agreement/disagreement with an answer or statement, allowing them the confidence to speak up ( and learn from mistakes!) rather than assuming you are correct and they must be wrong!
    Start out with absolutely ridiculous statements that have an unequivocal answer: there are 5 purple monkeys eating ice cream in our house, true or false?! Play a game with it, have them giggling and laughing, and you can occasionally play this ‘test’ if you need to check comprehension. It is also a whole extra layer of though process, so is a good logic tool!
10

What to teach now?
If your pretty sure your child can read then I would give a couple of suggestions for what to teach now.
Firstly switch your flashcards focus to encyclopedic knowledge. If you do this AND STILL SHOW THE WORDS for each card your child will be reinforcing reading skills and learning new things also.
Secondly work systematically throu a phonics word list that includes both basic and advanced phonics like digraphs, and double vowels. LR has all the basic phonics covered. Just flash words including these sounds in groups, so the pattern is obvious. ( interestingly this is often what grades 1-3 spelling lists are made up of, just in case you are stuck for inspiration :wink: )
Thirdly, make LR files based on words and categories that are specifically of interest to your child. My son tells me what words to put in his files but your child may like files made from new words he is learning to say. Things like Land Rover and such would be perfect!
I recommend you continue to read to your child at the same rate you are, but with the awareness that he may be reading along with the words. That means get the story word perfect and use your finger to point where you are reading.
Finally feel free to focus on other things now. Prhaps you could focus on math for a while until your child’s vocabulary cached up to the reading ability? Don’t stop showing words but work on imputing in other areas. Use these other areas as an excuse to teach new words whenever you can.

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As long as they having fun while learning, they will learn automatically :slight_smile: Life is supposed to be fun.

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@MamaofWill

Car brained dominant lol

Right Brain or Left Brain
To understand which side of the brain is dominant in a child, adults can observe how the child responds to various situations. diane connell, ed.d, finds children who prefer to work alone, and find researching and analyzing facts interesting are left-brain dominant. Children who are right-brain dominant enjoy art projects and hands on activities over writing papers and doing research.

Along with the right side of the brain having a significant role in creativity, the Neuro Psychiatry Reviews finds the “frontal lobe to be the part of the cortex that is most important for creativity, being critical for divergent thinking,” and that the ways family and friends encourage the development of the frontal lobe encourages independent and divergent thinking. Divergent thinking stimulates kids to look at things differently, use creative thought processes for decision-making, and motivates them to ask lots and lots of questions.

http://www.funderstanding.com/educators/right-brain-vs-left-brain-children-and-creativity/

READING
To help your child develop better reading comprehension, have him create a mental “movie” of whatever the words describe. This visualization should be a fluid, ongoing representation that moves right along with what she is reading. This enlists the imaginative side of her brain into the process, firmly grounding it into her mind. World memory championship competitor Mark Channon contends that “we all have excellent visual memories, especially when there is a strong association, we remember the images therefore we remember the information.” Whenever your child needs to recall information from the story, suggest that she start at any point and then simply “rewind” or “fast-forward” the sequence of events until she reaches the appropriate moment in the film.
MATH
Help your child learn to add and subtract quickly at home with this right-brain method of study. Again, obtain a deck of index cards. Write a simple, two-number additive equation on each card. However, illustrate each number in a series of dots, totaling the number they represent. This helps your child visually combine the numbers by counting according to the dots displayed. At first, he may need to touch each dot with the end of his pencil while counting. Encourage him, though, to take a mental snapshot of how each number looks when adding to develop his mechanism of visual recall.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/127681-right-brain-exercises-children/

Yes, she still loves drawing but now she is very fast at it and it takes her only few minutes to complete it.

13

MamaOfWill, it sounds to me like your son can read, he just doesn’t want to read out loud. I wouldn’t be too worried about this. Just carry on. H. was the same way (although maybe not quite so extreme in his resistance). I had to “trick” him into reading the occasional word, by stopping before reading a word I knew he knew very well, and then he would supply the missing word. There were also special contexts in which he was entirely willing to read, such as when we did flashcards (but he went through periods in which he refused to do them for a week or a month) or when we did the Starfall stories. The trick there was that I never read those stories to him; he had to read them to me, or we wouldn’t look at them at all. Since he wanted to look at them, I had less trouble motivating him to read out loud.

I agree with those who say that for kids under 2 or 3 or so, it’s best not to test, if there’s any resistance. Of course, if you’re using Reading Bear or other systems in a way that requires a response from the child, you don’t have any choice…

E., age 25 months, is now rather different. While he is willing to do Starfall, he is less ready to do it than H. was. He is also less frequently interested in Reading Bear or LR (which I offer him regularly). On the other hand, he is almost always game to read a few pages out of books, including words that he hasn’t been exposed to the phonics rules for. H. was never willing to do that.

Back to H.–when he was 3 & 4 he almost never wanted to read to me, and that was long after I knew that he could read very well. I think the only time that he reliably wanted to read to me was at bedtime.

14

Well I tried it and tested her (point to the correct word) and she gave me a wrong answer as expected lol But then I asked her if that really said that and she answered no and corrected herself . :slight_smile:

When you test do you give a choice ?

15

Thank you all for the great ideas and support!

I’m only responding now because I spent most of my evening last night to get our new Leap Frog Tag reader set up. (I bought the product here in South Africa and assumed it came from the US, in the end the books were compatible with the UK software instead. It took me hours, I wish I was an Ethiopian kid, would have had it set up in a jiffy.)

I believe my son must have learned the LR story sentences as a unit, that was how he could spot the correct answer at a glance, almost like speed reading, but there’s no telling how he reads new sentences. Because of this, I will be making more short sentence LR categories (as part of EK.)

Other interesting qualities of Wilhelm’s reading acquisition is: He insist on me pointing my finger to where I’m reading when I’m reading Afrikaans but not when I’m reading English (Afrikaans is our home language, but 80% of what we read together is English.) He often pronounces things the way they are spelt, even though I’ve NEVER done that, (like bottle, he pronounced as bot-luh for a few months, but he could say sit still without a problem.) His speech was delayed because of our bilingual environment, but now he talks so well (and he’s also pretty tall) that people mistake him for a 3 year old. Maybe (and oh I’ll be so happy if it’s true) he’ll only read much later because of him learning to read in two languages, but then read well when he eventually starts. I know there are many of you teaching multiple languages, can anyone relate to my experience?

@cheripam: You are so right!! And I need to remind myself sometimes, learning should only be fun.

@lelask: Those drawings are awesome, you must be so proud. My son can’t do that deliberately, but he scribbles and sometimes sees images in his scribbles, I can sometimes see them too, he’s scribbled and owl in the sand once and an elephant on his white board. Thanks so much for your info and links. I really don’t test often, but when I do, I usually ask “which one is …” or “what is this one” or “does this one say….” So I either give a choice, or ask directly or I state a true/false question.

@DadDude: My boy loves your power point books, we read them to death! That’s how I started reading your posts, watching your video’s etc. I figured that my boy is now about the same age as when you started teaching your eldest to read, so if Wilhelm is still not reading, your techniques might just do the trick. I was trying hard to get him to play along with sounding out, but I think I’ve only added pressure, so I’ve stoped. Unfortunately he hates reading bear :frowning: I think my internet is too slow or something, but we’ll try again in a couple of weeks. Thanks for your input, it is comforting to know that a family with as much success as yours also had some of the same issues that we are having.

16

I posted the same thing more or less a few months ago. My son is now almost 26 months and he reads many words by sight (words from preschool prep) and can read phonetically sounding out if I help him. Occasionally he will sound a word out on his own but this is very rare. He can now also get many of the words right on the LR games. He knows how to distinguish what letter a word begins with and I taught him to look at the first letter in each word. Like if it asks for “hedgehog” I ask him “What does hedgehog start with…okay which words starts with h?” It’s sort of cheating but I’m hoping it will help him to start looking at words phonetically. I think he may be getting some of these right with out this trick too.

He used to HATE being tested and then suddenly he didn’t mind as much. Now that he let’s me ask him questions I have to be careful. He of course doesn’t say “Okay mom, that’s enough with the questions!” I have to look for clues that he is not enjoying it and be mindful of it. He will start avoiding looking at the screen or not answering. When he does this I have to take a hint! Even when I ask him if he wants me to read it sometimes he says, “Okay…no Ian will read it!” But, its obvious he doesn’t want to because he will not look at the words and avoid it again. So I try not to push it. But, it is hard because of course I do want to see him making progress.

So I understand what you are going through. Thanks for the thread. It is a good reminder to me!

17

You aren’t doing anything wrong - you just have a child who is nearly 2 - just you wait til the terrible twos hit and then the 3s - it won’t just be reading he will be resisting. It is clear your child is reading but as you will see as he gets older its a skill that grows with time and experience too - think about how you teach him about visual things - do you keep insisting he tells you that the picture of a dog is a dog or do you just enjoy looking at animal pictures (and real life animals) with him? I think in some ways it is easier with a second child as you know what is coming and can relax a bit (with a second child you spend your time wondering why they aren’t doing everything on the same time table as the first).

As to where to go now - I would probably try a few things. Introducing phonics without testing is a good place to start - show him the sounds/phonograms and tell him what they say, blend for him (not just cvc words but even the really long ones in the books you are reading him - it is all to show him how to do it when one day he needs/wants to himself - so cover the word up (make sure you use large print) and show him how you uncover it and sound it out no matter what the phonics is - (r-ai-n or e-l-e-ph-a-n-t or whatever) exposing all the time and testing as little as possible. If he is into puzzles make him one with words/sentences on and get him to build it then read it to him if hasn’t shown he knows what it says. Make a treasure hunt for him where if he reads the clue he will go to the next clue - if he doesn’t then read it to him and he can then move on. You need to stop your own disappointment if he is not performing and enjoy the time together instead.

18

lol

He’ll get there, no worries!

19

Thanks for this post I really found it helpful.

20

Thank for all useful advices from BK mums. But I have a confused question that needs your help.
My son is 18 months old. He is late talker. Now he does not speak any words. I started to teaching him in English when he was about 13 months old. It took nearly 6months for him to learn English and during that time, I never tested him. LR v3 has new game feature. For several times, I have asked him to pick up the answers in Games, he almost pointed at the wrong anwers. Whenever I played LR, he went back and shouted. Now He does not like LR. I do not ask him to choose any choices in Games.
A month ago, I started teaching him Chinese. He took an interest and he picked up almost right answers in the Chinese games.
I am confused whether he cannot read any English words or not?