Why I Won't Teach My Son to Read

**If you make a purchase through the following affiliate links, I may receive a commission and you will be helping me support my children's insatiable love of learning through materials and opportunities. I only link to products I truly believe in. Thank You.**

"Can I get one of my own? Can I? Can I? I want one!" Mister 4-soon-to-be-5 is asking for a library card.

I remember when Miss 7 got hers...she was almost 5 too but the excitement for the library card was mostly mine. I wanted her to get a card. I wanted her to want one. She got it, and then didn't use it.

I started teaching her to read with The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons which uses phonics as the basis for learning to read. Getting her to read like that was like Phoebe trying to teach French to Joey . Funny for a TV show but exasperating when you think your daughter's ability to read is on the line!

Instead of continuing down that road we switched to the Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool McGuffey Primer . This curriculum used the computer (a big motivating factor is getting her to do the lessons) and focused on whole words from the get-go which made more sense to her. We stuck with it almost to the very end.

Thing was, though the reading curriculum was working it wasn't enjoyable. Most days I had to prod her and plead with her to do the lessons. I reminded her how important it was to learn to read. On the days when she really struggled I assured her that one day reading would be so easy she wouldn't be able to look at a word without reading it. Still, practicing reading was a chore. With only 20 lessons still left I quit pushing the reading program completely. It wasn't out of conscious choice so much as sheer fatigue.

I had, at least, firmly established a habit of reading together in our family from the time she was 6 months old and we continued our reading aloud daily. Usually we would read 3 picture books of her choice at bedtime, sometimes as many as 8 or 10! We often read books throughout the day. We visited the library (still do!) a couple times a week. One day we were gifted a giant box of Dr. Suess books from a friend and we spent days reading and re-reading them.

A few months after I quit pushing the her to practice reading she asked if she could read me a book.

I was blown away. She read the word "electrician" with ease at 6 years old. Even the last lessons of the McGuffey Primer (which we didn't get to) didn't have words longer than six letters for practice. I know the primer never covered how to pronounce the letter combo -cian. Somehow she had just figured it out. From then on, she was a reader.

She would ask us to choose books for her to read from our library of picture books every night. When she was ready to move on to longer books she read the Rainbow Magic Fairy books by Daisy Meadows (we read them together too). In the last year she has discovered Geronimo Stilton books and she devours them. She jokes about having a "reading problem" because sometimes she just doesn't want to stop reading!

Yesterday we picked up some books about Minecraft and she was reading the Minecraft Combat Handbook.

She didn't want to put it down. And Mister 4 was equally absorbed by the other books in the series even though he isn't reading the words yet. At bedtime, Miss 7 was excitedly telling me all the new things she had learned about fighting mobs and other players in Minecraft.

Do you know the pleasure of listening to someone talk about something that they are passionate about? I felt that. I could have listened to her talk all night except that I was dead tired. What I realized that she had discovered was that reading could be powerful as well as fun! She can learn anything she wants to now that she can read.

Would Miss 7 be reading now like she is if we hadn't followed the reading curriculum we had? I don't know but I think she would be where she is or possibly further along because I have been watching Mister 4 closely and here is what I have seen without doing any formal reading practice with him at all.

- In the past year he has been asking me what letters are called and what certain things say and I have answered him.

- Once, he asked me to give him a test to find out which letters he didn't know. He now knows them all.

- He writes (Miss 7 still doesn't write much for fun though I worked with her on handwriting a lot during the reading curriculum too) in what he calls his "code" when he scribbles. He knows we can't read it and so calls it "code" instead of "not real writing".

- He will ask me to spell something for him like "birthday" and he will write the letters himself.

- One night, he used the alphabet page I wrote out for him to write what he called a "poem". He was using the letter page, not to know how to make the letters but, to help him choose which letter he wanted to write next.

- He asks me to write menus for meals so he can read the words and choose what to eat. I don't really like doing this because it slows down the whole eat-and-let's-move-on habit I have but I try to do it for him.

- When he wants to know about something he will go to Google and ask me to spell it so he can type it himself on the keyboard.

- He has listened to his Me Reader Marvel books so much that he can "read" his favorite to me from memory.

Miss 7 did not do these things at his age, except the Me Readers (we have 4 of them because the kids use them so much) and when she did it was often by following my lead. How thankful I am that my pushing her to learn to read at 5 (which I felt I needed to do in order to prove that homeschooling was the right path for us to myself and - I believed- to others) did not squash her love of reading now!

"I am convinced that the best learning takes place when the learner takes charge."

- Seymour Papert

I agree, Seymour.

Mister 4 got his library card that day. I now have three to keep track of but I have hole-punched my kids' and put them on strings so I hope that will keep them from getting lost. Though, I must say I really have my eye on these book bags from Read Aloud Revival.

Please share your experiences with teaching reading, learning to read, or what evidences you see in your kids regarding the reading journey. We can help inspire each other!