My 7-year-old son just hates to read. It is an argument every time we sit down to do his homework. He has to go to summer school a second time already in order to pass. He is in tutoring 2 days a week at school and is in a special reading class, but he still hates school and especially reading. Any suggestions on how to get him to sit down quietly to read and somewhat enjoy it?

Learning to read can be difficult for some children, especially if they don’t want to sit still, for even a minute. I know, I have a son just like that—he would much rather be doing anything will a ball rather than with a book. Nevertheless, reading is fundamental to our culture, so we need to figure out why he hates it so much. He’s not too young to start over with the basics.

You mentioned that he has to attend summer school in order to pass. If they are just teaching him more of the same thing that he “didn’t get” during the school year, I’m not sure of the benefit there as he probably won’t “get it” in the summer school either. So perhaps he needs to be taught with a different method. I’m not sure what methodology your school district is currently using to teach reading, but it would benefit you to find out and discover what isn’t working for him, so that you might be able to discover something that would.

Do your homework with the school first, find out what they’re teaching and why. There are many different ways to teach reading, and I would bet that your school is only using one. Perhaps he will respond to some other method or methods.

Keep your work sessions very short—10 to 15 min. at a time. That way, even if they’re not enjoyable, they’re at least bearable for him, and then after he completes “X amount of work”, then he can do what he wants to do. I try making it an agreement in my classroom. “You do this for me, and then I’ll let you do that (or I’ll do that for you).”