What to Do when your Kids Hate to Read

My children hate to read.  Do you have any children like that?  I grew up a voracious reader.  My first experience with reading was sequenced word cards when I was in first grade.  At home I listened to books on tape and followed along before I could read.  Throughout my school years I read books such as The Hobbit, Bridge to Terabithia, Bunnicula, the Narnia series, The Phantom Tollbooth, and my personal highlight, Gone With the Wind.  I could always get lost in a book, and whenever I was bored I would pull out a book to read.  I do not understand how anyone could hate to read.

Fast forward to today.  I do not go anywhere without a book, because if there is more than one minute of waiting time I will need something to keep my mind occupied.  However, I married a man who would do anything else besides read.  (Funny thing is, he is a teacher.)   He thinks that I am nuts for bringing a book wherever we go.

My Children Hate to Read

When my children were born, I desperately wanted to encourage them to read.  Super Stuffy and I would sit together for hours and read when he was a baby.  To this day both Super Stuffy and Bear Bear love to listen to me read.  But they both fight me when I ask them to read for themselves.

Where did I go wrong?  Do you ever feel that way?  My greatest time of relaxation is when I have the time to pull out a good book to get lost in.  To my kids they would rather do their chores.   How in the world can I get them to enjoy reading as much as I do?

To be honest, I really have no hard and fast ideas.  All I have are some things that I have tried.  Through trial and error, some of these things have worked ok, some have not worked at all.  I am still using trial and error to figure  out how to encourage them to enjoy reading.

To assign or not assign?

I have waffled on this question many times, and gone back and forth in between them.  While they were still learning to read, I required them to read for their phonics practice.  I did this with Super Stuffy more than with Bear Bear.  I believe this caused Super Stuffy to hate reading.  While we hit our experimental time with unschooling, I let go of the requirement for them to read altogether.  That didn’t work.  Neither one of them would go near a book.

Once I started putting some boundaries around their technology time, I hoped that they would go towards reading while they were bored.  It didn’t happen.  I knew that they would not get better at reading without practice, so I started to require them to read for thirty minutes of time each day.  I read with them as well, believing that the enjoyment of reading together would increase their love of reading.

That still didn’t work.  It got to the point where Bear Bear just flat out hated reading.  No matter what book I put in front of her, she still complained about having to read.  I could not find anymore ideas or tricks in my barrel.  Both Super Stuffy and Bear Bear told me that they would be more likely to pick up a book if they could make the choice to read.  I still haven’t seen much of that happening, but my hope has not died.

Audiobooks or not?

For a long time I did not want my children to become dependent on audiobooks for reading.  We have enjoyed many books by listening to them in our car and both of them have checked out many books on CD from the library to listen to at home.  But how could they practice their reading skills without actually reading the book for themselves?  I told them that they could use audiobooks for their required reading if they read along in their own copy of the book.  This caught on with Bear Bear for awhile.  She read through parts of series such as Junie B. Jones and Clementine.  Her favorite audio book is Matilda by Roald Dahl, and she goes back to that story often.   But I found that she did this less if I required her to do it.

Super Stuffy had no interest in following along with audiobooks.  He uses his CD copies of “Encyclopedia Brown” to fall asleep.  I have to remind myself that it’s ok if they use those for falling asleep.  They are still learning good language and the elements of story, even if they never pick up the book and follow along.  

The other pet peeve that I have with audiobooks is that my kids listen to the same things over and over again.  I would not doubt that Super Stuffy has memorized all of his Encyclopedia Brown books and Bear Bear has memorized Matilda.  For a while I paid for a subscription for the Epic! app and they loved it.  But they listened to the same book over and over again for weeks on end.  I finally discontinued the app because it wasn’t worth the money for what they were doing with it.  

Reading Logs – to keep or no?

Ever since Stuffy and Bear have started reading on their own I have wanted to keep track of the books that they read.  I think that it would be so cool to go back to a reading journal to remind yourself what books you have read in the past year.  At the beginning of this year, I determined that we all needed to keep a reading journal, even me.  But that idea quickly died.  I struggle with requiring my kids to keep a written record of what they have read.  We tried both online apps and paper journals, but it was difficult to keep track of what books were read.  I just love to go from one good book to another and find it difficult to stop and record which book I’ve finished.

I also found that trying to write down the title and author of the book that I just finished had the effect of destroying some of the joy of reading the book.  The last thing that my kids wanted to do after reading a book was write about it.  This caused them to dislike reading all the more, because they didn’t want to have to record anything when they were done.  Keeping a reading log did not last very long for my children.  I still want to find a better way, however, because keeping a log of the books that we read would be a precious keepsake.

Living Books, or Twaddle?

Charlotte Mason wrote about the difference between living books and twaddle.  Living books are those that are full of great language and enriching content.  Twaddle is dumbed down and repetitive language, books that are not interesting and perhaps have no connection to  the child.  Being a teacher, I have a large personal library of children’s books, both picture books and chapter books.  Once I started using Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, I purged my library of twaddle.  I only wanted my children to read good books.  

But as we got deeper in to Charlotte Mason, I realized that even though these books interested me, they held no interest for my children.  They didn’t even want to sit and listen to me read these stories, and I knew that their love for reading continued to wane.  So I opened up their choices.  I let them read whatever they wanted, as long as they were reading.  I read stories during my childhood that my mom told me were, in effect, twaddle.  She also told me that I wouldn’t learn much by reading that stuff.   

But now, I have very little interest in the kinds of books that I read when I was a child.  Now I love books that force me to think.  There are some times that I still go back to my old favorites, but I want to read books that have a good plot.  My favorites are Jane Austen, Francine Rivers, C.S. Lewis.  I just finished a long book by Frank Peretti.  I realized that I grew into these books.  Nobody forced me to read them.  I need to allow my children the same freedom.

Special Places to Read In?

Reading nooks, forts, blankets, pillows, bean bags.  All of these things are wonderful.  If I ever get the chance to build my dream home, it will have a special window seat on the south side of the house so that I can sit in the sunshine and read.  A lot of the research that I have read suggests using some of these techniques to encourage a love of reading.  I have tried them all. 

I have created many different types of forts, all the way from couch cushions and pillows to building a small house out of wood, to make a special place for my children to read.  We have all cuddled together on my bed, or cuddled together with our bean bags.  We have tried wrapping up in warm blankets.  None of these really changed my kids’ attitudes about reading.  To them, reading was just more work to do.  Their attitude said, “Let’s get this over with so we can get to our fun.”

Some Suggestions, but no Rule

Therefore, what do I suggest to increase your child’s love of reading? 

• Go ahead and create a special reading corner with blankets and pillows.  My husband built a special fort out of wood for my kids.  Bear Bear supplied it with lots of comfy blankets and pillows.
• Show your children that you love reading by taking a little bit of time each day to enjoy a good book yourself.  I try to read for fun at least 30 minutes each day.
• Read a good book to them, even if they are able to read for themselves.  My kids still love to gather around and listen to a good story.  They have learned so much vocabulary just from listening to good books.  We also love to get caught up in the story together.
• Let them choose the books that they want to read.  I do want my children to get into quality books, but right now I am more concerned that they just read, even if it is Captain Underpants.  I trust that as they get older they will want to read more living books, but right now I just want them to enjoy reading.
• Let them access good quality audiobooks.  I have learned that listening to audiobooks is NOT cheating.
• It’s up to you whether you assign a daily reading or not.  I still haven’t decided for myself, but right now I have decided to create a reading challenge for them for the summer, and give them the choice whether or not they want to participate.

If you have any other wonderful ideas about creating the love of reading in your children, please let me know by leaving a comment below.