Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy DS pretends he cannot read

You guys are just awesome!!! Thank you so much for all your ideas and support. I'm relieved to hear that my son's behavior is not completely unique. I also just love reading about your children. They're all so special.

After reading all your posts, this is what I'm thinking. It doesn't seem like there's some weird latent phase in beginning reading that I was unaware of. His vision was better than 20/20 at his three year check-up, so I don't think that's the problem. I don't think he is motivated by wanting to fit in like Zia's mom's son because my kid is just not that socially aware, at this time anyway. So I think maybe it is a combination of fearing that our mom/son reading time might come to an end (he really dislikes change like most 3 yr olds), and just wanting to relax and get into a good story without struggling to figure out each sentence. He does get frustrated easily if he doesn't understand what he had just read because he was concentrating on reading every word. Maybe that's why he prefers to read silently. Also, we did move to a new city last summer and I am pregnant. Maybe these changes have affected him in ways that were not obvious to me.

I think once he becomes a more competent reader (by his own standard), he will probably get over it. In the meanwhile, I will assure him that I will always read to him as long as he wants me to, and I will also try introducing some books of various levels and types he hadn't tried yet, just to see what happens. I'm actually really excited at the possibilities.

Junior

Jr.
I would add that a vision check is good, but it has nothing to do with a field called "behavioral optometry." This consentrates on how the eye muscles move, and is highly controverial, and basically poo-pooed by the Opthomologists. Yet for at least 50% of the families who try it, they see big improvements. Not sure if you want to follow through with the therapy, but I do reccomend you contine to at least get the evaluation.

2nd, I have read outloud for many years to my son and DH at bedtime. Sometime I notice that I've been reading for 5 minutes, with experession, but Zero comprehension. I just stopped paying attention, right there in the middle!
Don't you? Reading aloud is just not as engaging as silent reading.

Also, I would hope that the books you read to him are much much higher level than the books he reads to himself. My friend reads "Magic Tree House Books" to her 7 year old, and I turn purple over it. Sure, he has to read easy stuff to himself, but can't he at least hear some interesting stuff when you read?

She looked at me blankly and says that he isn't interested in Harry Potter, she tried. So I learned that there are readiness levels for decoding, and for story interest. Those readiness levels might be similar or 5 years different. It doesn't mean a child is or isn't as gifted, it just says: "Here is my readiness level. I'm a kid, so I can't tell you, or I might try and you might not believe me. So you, the adult has to figure it out."

UG. I'm guilty of this too. DS11 wanted me to read "Animorphs" to him as some crazy age - 3, 4, 5? I objected, as the themes were "too dark." LOL! I thought that he just liked the pretty covers. Every trip to the library, I would allow him to choose one, only one. When we got home I would "read" it to him, skipping whole disgustion paragraphs, and them say, let's choose a different one for tommorow. The Animorphs book would go "up high" until the next library visit to be returned for a new one. I guess the first time I did give it a more honest try, and Science Fiction fan that I am, I still couldn't stomach these books. I wish I remember when we scooted over to the Young Adult section, but he was so young that I remember feeling embarrassed. We found lots of interesting SF there that we both could enjoy. Was he 5? Maybe, since he wasn't reading independently at all at that age. Except a few word from playing the computer - "EXIT" "START" and "QUIT"

Sorry if I'm a little weird here. We all think that our kids strenghs are "just a little advanced" and the fact that they forgot to clear the table shows their true mental functioning.
DS11 is kind of unusual even amoung the YSP kids. He fits nicely amoung the more mildly PG, but his areas of interest just seem different. He's taking Pre-Algebra and coasting along, but last year it was really too hard. He is much more the 'walking and spouting encyclopedia' and 'I need you to explain what you are talking about, right NOW' kind of unusual. He likes fiction better than non-fiction. A story boy.

So, although I've come a long way at getting less "denial"y, I still have a way to go.

Isn't every child a lovely puzzle?
Grinity

Grin-

I think that the words typical and PG are not meant to go together! LOL, every child IS a lovely puzzle. Think about it this way, if a PG kid is learning years ahead of age-mates, he can cover years worth of specialization or esoteric knowledge by the time he is eight or ten. Typical kids just don't have as much time to get into things, and they don't end up so far from where they started. The further they get from "start", the less likely it is that they will follow that well trodden center path that gets most of the traffic.

So true, Lorel

I respect what you're saying Grinity, and I don't think vision is something to take any chances with, but the child showed that he is capable of reading when he was playing the computer game, no? Or does that not count? (Not my area of expertise, so I could be wrong there...)

Still, I think the fact that she's pregnant (I knew it!) is the big key here. This sort of refusal to do "big kid" things is SOOOOO common in all kids expecting a sibling, not just GT kids. Some backslide on toilet training because that's what they think of as a "big kid" thing. Mine wanted me to carry him around again when I was pregnant, and once his baby brother was born he wanted to sit on my lap and pretend to breastfeed a couple of times a day. These faux-regressions were just a sign that he understood that he wasn't the baby anymore. No big deal.

My advice, FWIW:

Read to your DS whenever he's interested and you can make the time, as often as you can. Don't make reading to him an "either/or" thing with his reading to himself. Treat them as two separate types of activities.

Reassure him often that you love to read to him and that you will read to him every day for as long as he wants you to. Make sure he believes it.

In subtle ways, reward him for any reading he does do, like letting him stay up later if he reads to himself in bed (assuming that's not going to cause more problems than it solves!).

Tell him how much you like to hear him read to you while you make dinner or drive, and then use the reading as a way to pay extra attention to him at a time when he would usually be mostly ignored. Fuss over him a little when he does this so he feels special.

You may already be doing these things--certainly they're not rocket science!--but I thought I'd give you what I had. Maybe there will be something useful there.

I'm betting that soon enough, he'll get bored with playing baby and will get over the reading hump.

My son read his first easy reader book at 2 1/2 without being taught to read, could identify words that were spelled out for him orally, and he liked to spell words like boy, girl, and stop instead of saying the actual word, just for fun, at age 2 1/2. He would read for me a little and he would read for other kids (he loved doing this because he got a lot of attention from them by reading or naming words they spelled for him) but he still would tell his dad and other adults he couldn't read.

At three he loved Aesops Fables and Grimms Fairy Tales and the dictionary. At four he loved "how it works" type books and encyclopedias and the adult National Geographic.

We also watched him on the computer before he turned three and we knew there was no way he could do some of the things he did without being able to read, so at three we bought him Reader Rabbit First Grade and he really seemed to enjoy it and had no trouble at all doing it.

But he wouldn't read much for me, maybe a sentence from each page and that was it and he wanted me to read the rest to him. He would name the words if I spelled the words out loud while he looked away from the page so I knew he could read them if he could do that and I thought it was strange. The month my son turned four, I told the doctor about this and he listened to me spell out the words from a book. My son instantly identified the words but still refused to read from the book. The print was kind of small and there were a lot of words on each page. I asked the doctor if there might be something wrong with his eyesight but the brief vision test they gave my son didn't show any problems. At nine, he still doesn't need glasses.

At 4 1/2 he started a musical theater class and he had no trouble reading the White Rabbit lines from Alice in
Wonderland (maybe 5th grade level?) and songs from Babes in Arms, but all of it was double spaced and he had to have a finger under the words as he read or he would lose his place. He was the youngest kid in the class by several years and all the other kids were reading, so he read. Nobody had told him that he wasn't supposed to be able to read yet. He hadn't started Kindergarten and he didn't go to preschool, so probably assumed all kids could read.

At five, the Kindergarten teacher let him read one page double-spaced reports that I typed for him to go along with his letter-of-the-week show & tell. I did not worry about the reading level of the reports because there were usually only a few words that he didn't know, if any, and he only needed to see them once to remember them. I later typed one of them using Microsoft Word and it showed 12th grade Flesch-Kincade grade level, but most were probably 6th grade level.

I did not think he could possibly have a problem with vision since he was able to read at such an advanced level--but he did. He had trouble with tracking and his eyes would tire easily. We didn't discover this until he was seven. Vision therapy helped with some of it but I still don't think he can read as much as other kids without his eyes getting tired, yet I think his reading level and comprehension are probably better than his gifted friend who is several years older who reads all the time. This friend, who is in the public school gifted program, used to ask me about my son's IQ and wanted to know how my son knew so many words that he didn't even know.

I have thought a lot about this. Maybe it is because I continued to read to him. He still likes the adult National Geographic and I have noticed that some of their writers use metaphor and advanced vocabulary and he picks up a lot of vocabulary this way. He also got in the habit of looking up stuff on Wikipedia and since one link always leads to another, I think he might end up doing more reading than I think he does.

After reading the thread up to this post, it sounds like the changes (especially pregnancy) may be the cause for this behavior. A child may feel like they are replaced and they may regress (or want to appear regressing) in areas such as potty training, dressing, feeding and for GT kids reading and writing. Since he is clearly still reading in secret, he may want that alone time with parents through reading. I would certainly spend time with him reading but also other types of play. If he feels her gets attention through other activities, he may resume reading by himself.

LOL. This is so me.


I think I have quite a long way to go.

Regarding vision and reading early. You could see the difference when my older one moved from big font in easy reader books to chapter books. At the beginning he had hard time reading the smaller letters and got tired easily.

Just to give you a quick update... DS has gotten some new books for Christmas that are at his age level or below age level (I think) and I've been reading them to him. He seems to enjoy those as much as he enjoys chapter books and advanced non-fictions. Today, when I was done reading to him, he said, "OK, my turn now." I thought he was going to read the book from the beginning, but instead, he took the book from me and started reading the back cover, which is intended for parents (you know, summary and praise for the book). I had to stifle a surprised laugh. He doesn't even know how ridiculously unusual that kind of reading is for a three year old. There were some difficult words he had never encountered before, but he pronounced them the best he could (very cute) and did not get frustrated like he used to. He just moved on and kept up the comfortable flow of reading speed just like an adult would. I was so relieved to see that he has regained his old confidence in reading and has initiated reading again when he felt ready. That's how he is. He always does things in his own good time.

I think the advice from some of you to explore different reading materials and to read to him without pressuring him to participate has paid off. Thank you!

Junior

Good! I'm glad!