Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Reading Woes

This is going to sound extremely harsh and will probably paint me in a very bad light, but I am going to say it anyway. I would rather have stakes hammered through my eyeballs then practice reading with my seven-year-old son. Lucas' teacher wants him to practice reading 15-20 minutes every day at home. That does not sound like too much to ask...that is, until you are sitting on the couch with Lucas cringing through every single syllable. First and foremost, the child has zero attention span. In the middle of reading a sentence, he will suddenly stare off into space and completely zone out. As a matter of fact, he rarely looks at the page at all when reading. He will observe the first letter of a word, then his gaze will wander around the room as he proceeds to recite every single word he can think of that starts with that letter. Heaven forbid he sound out the remaining letters of the word! So a word as simple as "they" becomes think and then and tank and top and turtle. Seriously....turtle? At the beginning of every page, he will ask, "Mom, can you read this one? I am getting tired." Tired? Let me tell you kiddo....momma is the one getting tired. Momma is the one sitting through this torturous exercise in psychological warfare. Seriously. If Lucas was a foreign spy trying to obtain government secrets from me, all he would have to do was read one paragraph of The Rainbow Fish and I would happily commit treason. I would spill my guts in a skinny minute to end the agonizing torment of listening to Lucas sputter and guess his way through the book. I know...I know...I sound like a horrible mom. If Lucas were in any way excited about...or even remotely interested in...reading, I would be thrilled to read with him every night. Really. I would. However, since I did not go to dental school, I have very little tolerance for pulling teeth. And that is exactly what it is like to get Lucas to read. I simply do not have the patience necessary to cultivate a voracious reader out of thin air. I am neither a dentist NOR an elementary school teacher. There are probably kids all over this great state thanking God above for that very fact this evening!

3 comments:

lbts1048 said...

Can he choose the books he wants to read? Tommy didn't enjoy reading at all and then we discovered the joys of Captain Underpants and the Spongebob comic books. I struggled with that being okay, but at least he's reading! He has actually gotten to enjoy it.

Shannon Ralph said...

Lucas LOVES the Captain Underpants books and we have read them all!

lbts1048 said...

Did you see there is a new one? The Adventures of Ook and Gluk - Kung-Fu Cavemen From the Future? Another classic. Tommy also likes the How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell.

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