My child hates reading

Most children who hate reading find it hard. Check that first — then make it short, make it winnable, and stop it being a battle.

For parents · ages 5 to 10

If your child hates reading, the most likely reason is the least comfortable one: it is hard for them. Children avoid things that make them feel stupid, and reading out loud in front of somebody is about the most exposed a seven-year-old can feel. So before anything about motivation, check the skill.

If the skill is fine, a reluctant reader usually comes round with four changes: let them choose what they read, keep sessions short, make sure most sessions end in success, and keep reading to them. And never use reading as a punishment. The rest of this page is the detail.

Why a child hates reading: check whether it is hard

A child who "just doesn't like reading" and a child who cannot yet read comfortably look identical from across the room. Up close, these point to difficulty rather than taste:

• They are happy to be read to, or to listen to audiobooks, but not to read themselves
• Reading is slow and effortful, and they are tired after a page
• They guess at words from the first letter or the picture
• They avoid reading out loud in particular
• The "I'm tired" or "I need a drink" starts the moment the book comes out, every time
• They are behind on the benchmarks — which you can check in five minutes

To check: pick a passage at their grade level they have not seen, have them read it aloud for one minute, and put the result into the words per minute calculator. It gives you accuracy and speed and compares them with the national fluency norms.

If accuracy is under about 90%, the books they are being asked to read are too hard, and no amount of encouragement will fix that. The answer is instruction at the right level — usually phonics first; see how to teach phonics at home. If they are accurate but very slow, it is fluency; see how to improve reading fluency.

This matters more than it seems. In 1986 the psychologist Keith Stanovich described what he called Matthew effects in reading: children who find reading easy read more, and get better; children who find it hard read less, and fall further behind. Avoidance is not a phase to wait out. It is how a small gap becomes a large one.

If the difficulty runs deep — effortful decoding despite good teaching, a family history of reading trouble — look at signs of dyslexia in children and talk to their teacher. And it is worth having their eyes checked, because a child who cannot see the page comfortably will not want to look at it.

The reluctant reader who can read

Some children read perfectly well and still say they hate it. Usually one of these is going on:

• They have not found their kind of book yet, and think reading means the books school chooses
• Reading has become school: logged, timed, checked
• It loses to a screen, which asks nothing of them
• They have been compared, corrected or rushed, and reading now feels like being tested

None of those is fixed by a lecture on why reading is important. They are fixed by changing what reading feels like.

How to get your child to read

Let them choose

Anything counts. Comics and graphic novels count. Joke books, football annuals, books about sharks, the instructions for a toy, the same dinosaur book for the fortieth time — all reading. The goal right now is a child who picks up print voluntarily; tastes widen later, once reading stops being a fight.

Take them to the library and let them bring home what they like, including books you think are too easy. Easy books are how fluency is built.

Keep it short

Ten minutes is plenty, and stop while it is going well, not when they have run out. A session that ends on a good page is one they will come back to. A session that ends in tears is one they will dodge tomorrow.

Make success the normal outcome

Choose practice books they can read with about 95% accuracy — one tricky word in twenty, not one in five. Rereading favorites is fine; it is repeated reading, the best-evidenced fluency practice there is, and children love hearing themselves get smoother.

When they stick, wait about three seconds, then just tell them the word and carry on. The sentence matters more than the word.

Keep reading to them

Do not stop reading aloud because they can read. Read books above their level, with voices. Stop at an exciting moment. Reading to a child builds vocabulary and the appetite for stories that makes their own reading worth the effort — and it keeps reading something you do together, not something done to them.

Share the work

Take turns: you read a page, they read a page. Or you read the narration and they read what one character says. Or read the same sentence together, out loud, at the same time. Each of these takes away the feeling of performing alone.

Let them see you read

Children copy what adults do far more than what adults say. A parent reading a book on the sofa makes a better case for reading than any reward chart.

Never make reading a punishment

"Go to your room and read" turns books into a sentence. So does "twenty minutes of reading before you can have the tablet", if it is said every day as a toll to pay. If you set reading time, make it ordinary — the bedtime routine, the bus ride — not a price.

Be careful with prizes, too. Paying for every book can work for a week; it also tells a child that reading is something you have to be paid to do. Praise the effort and the improvement instead: "you got that long word on your own", "that sounded like the character talking".

When a child refuses to read out loud

Refusing to read aloud is often about the audience rather than the book. A child who has been corrected mid-sentence a hundred times, or who reads more slowly than a younger sibling, learns that reading out loud is where they get found out.

What helps:

• No audience. Just one adult, no siblings within earshot.
• No interrupting. Let them finish the sentence, then go back to the word.
• Read together first. Echo reading — you read a line, they read it back — means they never meet a sentence cold.
• Read to a pet, or a stuffed toy. It sounds silly. For a lot of children, an audience that cannot judge them is exactly what makes it possible.
• Record them, then play it back a week later. Hearing their own improvement does more than being told about it.

Some children who freeze in front of a parent will read to an app, because there is nobody watching their face. That is one place our reading fluency app for kids genuinely helps: Tess waits about three seconds before stepping in, sounds out the stuck word, and cheers the effort.

What not to say

• "You're not even trying." They usually are. That is what makes it miserable.
• "It's easy, just sound it out." If it were easy for them, you would not be having this conversation.
• "Your brother could read this at your age." They already know.
• "You'll never get anywhere if you can't read." Fear does not make reading easier.

When to get more help

If your child is below the 25th percentile on the benchmarks, if accuracy stays under 90% after several weeks of the right practice, or if the distress is real and lasting — tears, stomach aches before reading, refusing school — talk to their teacher, and ask what the school's own screening shows. A reading tutor can help, and reading help for kids goes through how to match the help to the actual problem.

For what to expect at each age, see reading milestones by age. If they are in Grade 1, my first grader is struggling with reading is the place to start.

Free chart from myfluentreader.com — reading fluency benchmarks, a words-per-minute calculator and the full sight-word lists, free and without signing up.