I guess I'd like to see him just work to his potential but his lack of desire prevents this, I think.
For math, he'll lay in bed before he goes to sleep and jump up and request to be taught this, that & the other thing and then practices it until mastery (which isn't long).
How do I get anywhere close to this for reading?
You may not ever get the reading to match the math, if the passion is not there. Or he may just be learning in spurts, and some day he'll switch his interests. I don't think there's any one magic trick to make your kid into someone who enjoys reading. And sometimes it just takes time. Our DS7 will read in the car for long trips (and it turned out to be lucky that we switched to a school that's a 45 minute ride each way, so he'll read). Otherwise, there are many other things he'd rather be doing. He will also spend a lot of time reading wiki entries about his favorite pasttime, Minecraft. So he is getting reading in, just not high quality literature! We encourage him by reading a lot ourselves, getting lots of different books from the library we think he'll like. He's enjoyed the Life of Fred series very much (which is math). The Penrose the Mathematical Cat series is fun too.
