My child hates to read. What do I do?

Just read to your child.

Meg was a mum whom we met way back in 2009. She had enrolled her child Sammy into our programme and she would diligently send him every Friday evening for class. She very much caught our attention because every time she came, she would grab a book from our library, plonk herself beside Sammy in one cosy corner and begin to read aloud to him. While this seemed normal to many, it was not to us. Sammy was 12 – capable of reading any book by himself, capable of reading silently. Kids who are younger are usually the ones who are read aloud to, but not when the kid is of a PSLE-age.

We watched Meg with much interest each time she was at our centre. When she came, she would smile and say ‘hi’ to us and all the parents seated at the lounge area, and then without much haste, she would pull out a book, plonk down and read aloud to her son – who would listen with great intent. Both mother and child never seemed to be distracted by everything that went on around them. Meg was a working mum. To put in such effort after a long tiring, working day was admirable. And this went on for a few weeks until we saw Sammy’s compositions. When our teacher brought his work to our attention, our jaws just dropped. They were brilliant! They were among the best we have seen so far!

From that day, we listened in to Meg’s reading and took note of the books she chose to read to her son. It was what we had suspected all along after reading Sammy’s essays – they were ACTION books. PSLE essays are usually action-based and Meg had done the best thing for Sammy. We told Meg how her tireless reading had such a huge impact on Sammy’s compositions and it was only then that she told us that Sammy had an eye-condition since he was a small boy. They hurt and would become watery when he looked at small prints for a long time. So that explained why she’d been reading aloud to her son.

Sammy got 1st in class in his school for writing that year and guess what? Sammy kept getting 1st for all his writing exams in his secondary school. We could never be more proud of Meg and Sammy. And Meg, if you are reading this, we want you to know that ………….you are really one heck of a great mum!