I won’t soon forget when I learned my child hates to read. It was Christmas day some years ago. As is our tradition, one of my dearest friends dropped by with her two kids to exchange presents and merriment.
As we all gathered, the kids excitedly tore into their gifts. I noticed my then 6-year-old son put down the book he had unwrapped and look around.
Slightly confused, he seemed to be searching for something.
“Hey Bud, what’s up, are you looking for something?”
“I didn’t get a present from Auntie,” he says matter-of-factly.
“But, what do you mean? You just opened your present.”
And then, as he registered understanding, he looked down and the unwrapped book on his lap, then back up again. His face crumbled and his eyes welled with tears as he wailed:
“That’s not a present! That’s a Boooook!”
And so began my son’s love-hate relationship with books.
Accepting my child’s love / hate relationship with reading was a struggle
I cannot lie, as an avid reader myself, this struggle has been real for me. It’s hard not to take it personally when your child vigorously hates something you take great pleasure in.
I worried that I had done something to inadvertently foster this strong anti-book stance. We had done no different for him than his sister but she was as much of a book nerd as her mother. I am constantly looking for ways to support her reading habit. She is the biggest reason I was able to write the Ultimate gift guide for kids who love to read! I didn’t need to research, I just looked in her room!
The thing is that when it came to my son and reading, it wasn’t always like this.
We read to him every night when he was little and always played games, sang songs, and made bedtime reading fun – we all loved that time.
But, that Christmas morning, as the gifted book lay in a pile of crumpled wrapping paper and tears, I knew that was the end of that.
And I won’t lie, I may have panicked a little.
The fact that my child hates to read feels like a personal attack.
First off, again, I’m a reader – so I struggled to understand what there was not to love about reading! New worlds, characters, emotions, new words. I have learned so much from reading books.
When we were buying my house, I swear I purchased it for two reasons. The first is that it has the perfect window to display my Christmas tree. But a close second was the built-in bookshelf in the study that I salivated over. When researching vacations world-renowned libraries are always on my list of “must-see” stops…
The fact that one of my kids hate to read felt like an attack on everything I was!
Then, other thoughts plagued me. Kids have a very real need to read. Teachers and schools demand it, it’s essential in life no matter if you want a degree, trade school, or whatever.
Did my child not wanting to read a book mean that he was never going to get a job and would be living here forever?
And then there was the social justice advocate in me … let me get this straight, for years our ancestors fought to be allowed to read, and now, what – you just don’t wanna?
*ugh*
Ok. So it’s fair to say that I panicked a lot.
Once I got out of my own head a bit, I knew I had to figure out a more constructive approach to the problem. Even if my child hated to read, he couldn’t escape reading for his entire life.
Through trial, error and research, I learned key things to keep in mind if your child hates to read.
First, repeat after me: it’s not your fault, they will not fail at life… do not resort to panic and mommy guilt. Then, try any of these more helpful approaches.
1. Get curious about why your child hates to read
Maybe it was the state of denial I lived in, but I hard-headedly believed no one was born hating reading. My research uncovered interesting facts that proved this to be true.
Many kids who say they dislike reading, are instead frustrated readers who feel they aren’t as good at reading as they should be. They are overwhelmed by the content or bored by it and don’t put in the effort to improve.
After doing due diligence and consulting medical professionals to ensure a learning disability or vision issue wasn’t at the root of his anti-book stance, I considered maybe the content sucked and my son didn’t like what he was reading. This was a possibility I could understand.
Even though I am an avid reader, a writer, and a straight-A student, I confess that I finished exactly one book that was assigned in my high school English classes – the Chrysalids.
That’s it, just that one – in all four years of English.
The other stuff they assigned was tedious or had come out in a movie! Ah ha! I had hated reading sometimes too!
Romeo and Juliet? No thanks. The Great Gatsby? Hard pass.
I absorbed as much as I needed from the Coles Notes versions (remember those?!). I was bright so I could twist the pieces I read and insights I took from our class discussions into essays and test responses.
This approach allowed me to save time I could instead invest in reading well anything other than what they assigned.
I hated reading sometimes too.
Keeping my delinquency in mind, helped me to seek out different content for my son. I was driven by my belief that there is a book out there for everyone and tried to keep looking until I found one for him.
My son’s choices don’t lean towards what I’d call literary masterpieces – he loves the Captain Underpants and Big Nate series – and while I don’t understand it, I am not here to judge.
My kid is also more apt to read while chewing gum – and although that was technically a “no-no” while he had braces, I faithfully stocked that kid’s gumball machine with every variety of gumball I could find. We made a deal that he could chew as much gum as he wanted whenever he wanted as long as he was reading.
Some might call this tactic bribery, I call it creativity. I was all in as long as it translated into him reading more.
2. If your child hates to read books, try something else
It’s important not to judge a book by its cover. Or expect a cover or a book at all.
Reading is everywhere. And now book lists exist that allow our boys to see themselves and their stories in ways that didn’t exist not so long ago and may inspire them to read something new.
There are also comic books, graphic novels, magazines, and audiobooks. Good grief, I love audiobooks – but until I listened to Trevor Noah’s autobiography Born a Crime, I never knew I could love an audiobook as much as I loved physically flipping through pages. It is one of my favourite books of all time because the way the content comes to life in the audio version is unbelievably engaging.
Ableist attitudes used to exist toward audiobooks but hopefully, that is changing. Certainly, audiobooks are not for everyone, and the narrator makes a huge difference in your enjoyment, but I challenge anyone to suggest I didn’t glean just as much insight and historical knowledge from listening to Born a Crime’s descriptions of Apartheid as I would have reading the words.
Listening to an audiobook can also improve young readers’ confidence because they can hear how words should be pronounced. Listening to entertaining productions can re-ignite some of the joy in reading.
If you have not uncovered underlying medical or other issues thwarting your child’s effort to read, you have opened your mind and home to new genres and formats of books and your kid still doesn’t like reading:
3. Do not panic if your child hates to read
I know, I know, I am not exactly one to talk, my child’s aversion to reading did not bring out the best in me!
But there are lots of reasons kids don’t like reading and apparently, some of these kids turn out just fine.
Prolific young adult writer Jason Reynolds admits in an interview that he was in his late teens before he read a book cover to cover. An award-winning author who has sold millions of books around the world says he didn’t find a book he connected with until he read Richard Wright’s book Black Boy.
And arguably Jason seems to have turned out ok.
4. Keep reading
Ok, I’ve saved the best tip for last.
If you are a reader who is looking to encourage your child to read, I have good news! Research suggests that one of the best things you can do to forge a lasting relationship between your child and reading is for you to demonstrate the behaviour yourself!
So heck yeah, keep that “To Be Read” list, long and strong! Fill your house with books, magazines, and audiobooks – and make time for leisure reading and lean in hard to your love of reading! It’s for the sake of the children, after all…
Reading for “fun” or leisure isn’t for everyone. When I learned that my child hated to read, I had to work hard not to take it as a personal insult or panic thinking that he would never learn this super necessary life skill. If the same goes for you, take a deep breath.
If your child hates to read, take a deep breath.
Make sure no medical or developmental reason exists and then start to get curious about why your child doesn’t like to read, consider the kinds of books that may interest them and alternative formats they may enjoy more like magazines and audiobooks. Most importantly, remember the best thing you can do for your child who hates to read is to lead by example, indulge in your favourite book, and keep your love of reading front and centre.
