My first two children spoiled me rotten. Their happy attitudes toward our home school adventure fed my home-school-mom pride. They gobbled up nearly everything I placed on their educational plates. I thought that whatever I decided to do would work the same way for all of my children. That is, until my third child turned five years old and joined our little school. Little did I know, I would be the one doing a lot of the learning.

Sweet Noah didn’t like to sit at the school table. He didn’t like to practice writing nor did he care about showing me his best work. He didn’t really care for coloring, either. He was more interested in numbers, snack time, and playing outside. Instead of learning to read, he preferred to have me read to him. It’s not that he couldn’t learn to read; it’s that he didn’t want to learn to read as long as I was nearby. “But you do it better!” he declared.

So, I didn’t push it. “He’s only five,” I told myself. “Lots of boys are slower to read. This is normal.” We continued with the other subjects and I didn’t push phonics so much. Thus ended his kindergarten year.

The next year he was six years old — a first grader. I promised myself that this year would be the year. I even exchanged my rigorous phonics curriculum for something more “fun” and “interactive” just for him. Again, Noah bucked my system. It wasn’t just a five-year-old boy thing — he really didn’t want to learn to read. This came as quite a shock to me. We pressed on with the curriculum, but Noah hated it. And at the end of the year, I still didn’t have the reader I had hoped for.

We are now three months into his second grade year. He’s seven years old. And now I have a reader.

At the beginning of August, I couldn’t help but feel like I needed “do-over” with Noah. I had so many fears about this new school year: Should I go back to my original curriculum plan? Does he have a learning disability? Have I failed him? No matter what, I simply decided to make the best of the situation.

I decided that when it came to teaching Noah how to read, I would,

1. Relax,
2. Reassure and encourage,
3. Review, and
4. Reinforce.

I would soon find out that I was missing one key ingredient.

I continued teaching and reviewing all of the phonics he already understood. I added some fun activities and workbooks to reinforce. And I doled out lots of encouragement. Part of my encouragement included little readers that I thought would be easy enough for Noah to read on his own, thus making it more fun for him. How wrong I was! He hated those little books. I thought I was doing him a favor by not giving him books that were too difficult for him to read. After all, I didn’t want to discourage him. But my encouragement had the opposite effect. He was more discouraged by those little books because they weren’t “real” to him. A child like Noah, who has been listening to real books since the time he was born, can tell a fake story from a real story before you can say, “Jan ate jam.”

Not only was I doing the opposite of what I intended, we were suffering from a communication breakdown.

He said, “I don’t want to read.” And I heard, “I don’t like to read.”

I said, “Try reading this.” And he heard, “You’re not ready to read a real book.”

I thought he refused to read because he hated reading. He thought I was just trying to make him miserable. But the reality was that I was giving him books to read that he had no interest in reading. He wasn’t concerned with whether or not they were on his level. He wanted to read something like the books that he saw his brother and sisters stealing away to read, using flashlights to read just one more chapter after lights out.

One afternoon, after giving up again, I said, “OK, Noah, pick out what you want to read.”

He went over to the book shelf and picked out a short chapter book. Now, keep in mind, I had not heard him read more than very simple sentences. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to keep him from feeling discouraged. I wanted to build his confidence and help him work his way up to a short chapter book. Noah, on the other hand, wanted to jump right in.

We sat down on the couch together and Noah began to read slowly. With a little help from me, he made it through the first chapter. We were both so happy for him!! He wanted to read to his daddy as soon as he walked in the door from work. It’s been a couple of weeks now and he’s moved on to his second short chapter book. Praise the Lord, he’s catching up to his grade level!

While it was important for me to relax, to keep teaching and reviewing the reading foundations, and to encourage Noah, it was even more important for me to find out a little more about his learning style and to discover his interests in order to fuel his desire to read.

Leslie makes her home (and school) in the beautiful Alabama. She and her husband of 12 years have four children whose God-given curiosity keeps them on their toes. Leslie prefers books and quiet contemplation, but she’s been caught jogging, gardening, and talking for hours with her girl friends over cups of coffee. You can also find her at her blogs, Lux Venit and Lux Venit Home School.