Now that it is summer, I need help. I personally lack the discipline that it requires to get my kids organized, especially my LD 9 year old daughter. She would rather spend her day playing, drawing, watching TV and fighting with her sisters. That is all okay but she also needs to have DEAR time, Drop Everything And Read. This is only the 3rd week of summer and we have only cracked a book once, and that was a total disaster. She pretended to read to herself but was only spending what she thought was an appropriate amount of time on each page and not reading at all. She was on page 8 of an easy chapter book in about 6 minutes. When we read aloud, 15 agonizing minutes later we only at the end of page 2. I’ve also asked her to write in a journal everyday about anything at all. She usually just pisses around and says that she can’t think of anything to write about. PLEASE someone kick my butt and tell me how important it is that I follow through with her and her reading. I have 2 other daughters, ages 12 and 4 along with a husband that is of no help at all. 3 story townhouse, crap loads of laundry, all the usual stuff that goes along with life and now that it is summer the begging for friends to come over, trips to the pool . OH listen to me I am pitiful. Help me please
Re: Summer help
Sarah,
Pick one hour of the day or half hour of the day. Make it the same time every day. Don’t waver for anything. I like mornings. Your child will love the consistancy even if she protests at first.
Kids actually thrive on predictability. There won’t be an argument after awhile. It will just be a part of the day.
Re: Summer help
We’ve had some success this summer (so far) and last summer by giving my son a star chart for reading, writing, whatever he needs to work on. When he finishes the chart he gets something really good. Bribery works for him . And then also sometimes at the end of the day when I am truthfully too tired to read to him, I hand him a book he can manage himself and we sit side by side reading our own stuff. Can’t do this everyday, but I think it normalizes the whole reading thing.
Re: Summer help
First of all, allow yourself to be a little lazy once in a while. After a school year with any kid, most moms need the break from routine as much as the kids. Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook (I think that’s the correct title) has great suggestions that all 3 of your girls would probably listen to at the same time while you do the reading. Pull out the sleeping bags, pillows, popcorn etc. and make it a party. Read a book and watch the movie afterwards and talk about the differences. Who knows, you may be able to get them interested in acting out stories or even writing their own skits (a la “Little Women”). Will your 9 year old listen to books on tape? Does she have friends or relatives that she can write letters to, or find a kid oriented chat on the internet? Speaking from experience, with some kids the more you push, the less they are inclined to read, write, or anything else. My almost 16 year old ( middle name: “oppositional”) finally started reading for pleasure this summer and now she can’t be stopped! Sure, it would have been better if she’d started earlier, but hopefully she’ll absorb enough vocab. in time to score respectably on her SAT’s. It sometimes seems like more of a hassle, but have a heart to heart and tell them you’ve got too much to do— if they want to do the fun stuff, they’ll have to learn to do some laundry and other chores for an hour or so each morning— you may be saving yourself from headaches for many summers to come.
Re: Summer help
When she reads aloud, it takes her 15 minutes to read two pages? Is that because she reads slowly or because other things interrupt? That would be important to know.
In the meantime, there are books on tape at most local libraries. Pop one in while in the car. Listening is the next best thing to reading. It can’t hurt and it can help. Some children’s books are available on tape and she could possibly page along while listening to the book.
We all do the best we can. Summer is for trips to the pool, playing and drawing. Don’t spend any of it feeling guilty.
Re: Summer help
Two things helped my son — this was his attitude to reading one year ago. (He just finished grade 3 — he’s dyslexic.)
First, I used ‘assisted reading’ the way I was taught in an adult literacy project years ago. We read together, he reads aloud while I follow along — BUT no pain, no sounding out. If he stumbles, I give him a minute — ‘a beat’ and then supply the word. It is essential to use a book that is A) high interest, and B) where you don’t need to supply EVERY 3rd word. At first he balked me on this, at beginning of gr. 3, but I just made it LAW.
Throughout the year, I did alot of coaching and praising him, explaining that ‘it’s hard now, but when you get to the stage where you are fluent, it will be FUN…’ and as he saw his reading improve, these chats helped even more. I had a kid who stumbled thru Magic Tree House in September, tackled Beverly Cleary’s ‘Ribsy’ by December, and decided himself to read Harry Potter #1 in February — silently, and HE READ IT! Again, we often read when we got home, and since I knew he was now “REALLY’ reading to himself, I let him do less reading aloud. This is about the time when he started reading aloud to me at bedtime — Capt. Underpants OVER AND OVER…I loved it!
I’m also not good at forcing schoolwork, so I sympathize — give yourself a break! Take a full week, announce that this will be a HOLIDAY, and then start after that, using some of the other suggestions for ‘putting your foot down’. I really agree with the ideas for making reading a pleasure time — we did this too, and my nephew helped alot by joining in when he visited — maybe a private talk with the sisters about HOW important this is — and how it will be good for them too?
NEXT…I also ‘bribed’, but star charts are useless with my son, so I bribed with…EXTRA stay-up time! We did our reading aloud right when we came home, but then at bedtime we alternated — reading together with me reading, and reading ‘silently’ our own books — but together, snuggled up in my bed. He got to know that he could stay up later when he kept reading — I decided that he was doing so little at school (that’s another story!) that an extra hour of sleep exchanged for reading was a positive thing.
Over the year, this changed gradually. FIRST he began spontaneously wanting to read his chosen books aloud to me (jokes, Capt. Underpants, etc.) NEXT he began reading his chosen books spontaneously — ALOT, begging to stay up later. Next thing I knew, we had a problem in June with teasing at the after-school club. WHY? Cuz two troublemakers couldn’t understand why all the ‘new kid’ wanted to do was…READ!
I hated the situation but had to giggle…just a bit, to myself!
Good luck with this…in my opinion, as a former literacy tutor and now dyslexic mom, the most important thing is to learn to like reading so you can practice — only in this way will you achieve fluency. If you can help your child really see that improving her skills CAN happen, and see that she WILL read easily with practice, you are on your way.
And — take it easy on yourself! LIFE must be lived, and you deserve a break too! When I first came to this board I read a post where a mom said to tell yourself ‘It will happen, It will Come…”. I said this SO much in Gr. 2…and by gr. 3, I didn’t need to repeat it — I KNEW IT!
Sure, pick a time, set a timer and everyone who is at home reads, period. No arguments. Arguing = consequences, you know losing TV privileges for a day. It really isn’t too hard to require the less than fun activities to come ahead of the fun.