Ability AND Motivation

Jaron, my five year old son, has been able to identify all the letters and their phonetic sounds since he was two and a half. After learning the sounds he promptly stopped having any interest in growing his ability to read. I thought, "No big deal, he's only two, I'm not going to push it." and then I said the same thing when he turned, three and four, but last summer when he turned five, I thought maybe I would push him a bit since it seemed obvious that he had the ability. He had long since learned other pre-reading skills, like rhyming beginning letter sounds, ending sounds, and some phonetic rules besides basic letter sounds. I began with phonics, and he quickly learned rules like, "when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking," and the "silent e," but when I sat down with a book with him, we would quickly find a work that did not follow the rules he had learned, or any phonic rules at all, and he would throw the book in frustration and refuse to try again. Jaron is a major perfectionist, so his response was a bit more extreme than most, but I understood his frustration. I do not question the need for phonics, but I am beginning to wonder if maybe it was not the best place to start with Jaron. We also have redl out loud to him all his life and have now read approximately 50 chapter books to him in his life. He loves to listen to us read to him and associates reading with spending time with me and his dad. I wonder if this also plays in his lack of motivation to read for himself. I think maybe he is afraid if he learns to read we won't read to him anymore. Another possible lack of motivation is that the books he could read independently do not have the more complex character development and plot as the stories he enjoys listening to. This point I question because he still enjoys listening to the more simple books we read his sister.

I am trying a few things to see if they help his motivation to read. First and most importantly, I'm releasing my expectation for him to be an early reader. I always expected this from him because he has been early at everything else, especially math, and because he learned his pre-reading skills so young. He does not need this pressure and is certainly not behind. I also don't want him to loose the enjoyment of looking at books, gleaning what he can about the story from the pictures and listening to us read to him. Secondly, I'm pointing to the words as I read to him. Lastly, I occasionally ask him to take turns reading pages in a book as I read to his sister. He can easily do this since we have been reading those same books to him for two or three years. He still is very hesitant to read a new book to us, even if it is REALLY basic and I know he could do it. Every once in a while I ask him if he would like to try, about 50% of the time he does, but I don't push it too hard.

In a few months I'll post again about this and see where we are at!