WHat do you do with a 15 year old who just will not read?

Is he unwilling or unable to read or does he not enjoy fiction and literature? Does his unwillingness to read extend to content area reading (science and social studies), or is it confined to his language arts or extracurricular reading? There is a huge difference.

If his unwillingness to read is not interfering with his academic success in content area classes, I’d probably work to locate magazines and websites that he could read daily to motivate him to read about an area of personal interest. My 17 year old swears he has never read an entire book for his English classes because he just doesn’t like fiction. However, once we targeted his areas of interest for reading, he became a voracious magazine and website reader.

On the other hand, (and assuming he has not been identified as having significant processing deficits or LDs) if his reluctance to read extends to areas for which he has a passion, I’d have him evaluated by a qualified reading specialist ASAP. It is possible that he has underlying reading problems, due either to processing deficits or gaps in his understanding of reading (aka dysteachia….not a scientific term!) that could be remediated. Given that he’s come this far, it is possible that any areas of deficit he has could be remediated rather quickly and that this remediation would dramatically enhance his future.
Karyn

I always wonder about this type of thing. That is, as keb mentioned, if the kid will not read ANYTHING— magazines, nonfiction, something relating to their interests, etc. If that’s the case, and they have mostly been like that— ie it’s not a phase, then it could be something like poor fluency (able to read but the ability to read easily and quickly enough isnt’ there) or the kid has poor comprehension or both. Or perhaps it is an attentional thing, difficulty focusing might mean that reading is LOTS of work. Might even be visual or headaches (from reading or just in general).

Many kids say “won’t” when they really mean “can’t”.

—des

I know an awful lot of young men who rather take pride in the fact that they have never read a novel in their lives. Unfortunately, as far as I can figure it, the absolute trash given as reading on the early grades of the “whole-language” classes (repetitive meaningless predictable books, books written for preschoolers but given to Grade 3 and 4, etc.) completely turned them off books in general and novels in particular. BUT many of these guys read constantly because they are glued to computer screens; often in two languages.

If the boy will not read anything anywhere, yes I would be worried about lack of fluency and often lack of fundamental skills.
But if he is reading how-to books or news or computer email, I would only worry about getting enough background knowledge to continue his education — novels are not necessary in life, and like olives you can wait until later to acquire the taste for them.

How is his reading now? Does he read well? It can be the case that reluctant readers are those who are struggling to read even if they learned to read without difficulty. And how’s his attention span? Restless and distracted young people often just can’t focus in enough to enjoy reading.

Is it a problem for him in school? My own husband listens to audio tapes in the car rather than sit down and read himself. I’m wondering how not reading is specifically causing a problem for your son.

He does not read magazines or even high interest material. If it is written then it is not high interest. He has been labeled and unlabled ADHD. He like so many can focus for hours on art projects of interest. He can not get started on activities that do not interest him. It impacts him with bad grades for English and Social Studies and classes that have reading. Hard to picture college at this point and yet he is very bright. Frustrating for all.

OK, this is something I harp on constantly, but here we go again.

When we are discussing methods of teaching reading, a lot of people come out with the theory that well, yes, they’ll admit a systematic phonics-based reading method is needed for LD kids, but all of those others do “well enough” with a guess-and-hope approach and maybe a few disorganized and disconnedted phonics games on the side.
Well, is this kid doing “well enough”? Sure he can read, but it is tiring and distasteful to him — I don’t call that great success, do you?

If he is like many I meet, he probably has less than stellar decoding skills and has to use a lot of energy reading because he is constantly running through his memory banks to match each word with an image, and re-reading to make sense from context. While he does get there in the end, it is fatiguing and boring.

It’s really hard to change outlook and opinions and habits at this stage, buit the very few people I’ve convinced to work on this have definitely benefited from a fast, high-level look at advanced phonics — not the kindergarten consonants and short vowels, but all the vowel patterns nd the silent letters and all that, along with a very strong stress on tracking left to right.

Cynpear wrote: “I have a son who will not read. He did not have trouble learning to read.”

I gather from what Cynpear wrote that her son can read well enough to meet his needs, but he chooses not to read. My supposition could be incorrect in that the boy has poor decoding skills and/or weak comprehension. Thus, he is reluctance to read is because he finds reading painful.

Does Cynpear have an objective measure of her son’s reading ability?