My child doesn’t want to read: what helps, and what doesn’t

“I don’t want to read.” Most parents hear it at some point. It is rarely laziness. More often, reading feels hard, slow or embarrassing — and nobody likes doing what makes them feel bad at something.

That is why confidence matters so much. In the IEA PIRLS 2021 study of ten-year-olds, children who were confident readers scored 541 points on average, against 449 for those who were not. You cannot order confidence, but you can help it grow.

What tends to make it worse

• Making reading a punishment, or a condition for screen time.
• Comparing your child with a brother, sister or classmate.
• Correcting every small mistake the moment it happens.
• Long texts that are clearly too hard.
• Reading only when there is a problem to fix.

What helps

Let your child choose. Comics, jokes, football, animals, the instructions for a game — every text counts. Interest carries a reader through hard words.

Read together, taking turns. You read a page, your child reads a line. The effort is shared, and the story keeps moving.

Keep it short. Five or ten minutes that end well are better than half an hour that ends in an argument.

Celebrate small wins, specifically. “You read that whole sentence without stopping” means more than “well done”.

Make reading useful. A recipe, a message to grandma, a shopping list, the rules of a board game. Reading that gets something done feels different from homework.

Be a reader yourself. Children notice what adults do with their free time.

Try audio alongside the text. Listening to a book while following the words lowers the effort and keeps the story alive.

In Latvia, the National Library’s Children, Youth and Parents Jury (Bērnu, jauniešu un vecāku žūrija) publishes a new list of books every year, grouped by age — a good place to find books your child might actually want to read.

When it is more than reluctance

Sometimes avoidance hides a real difficulty. If your child keeps mixing up letters, reads very slowly despite regular practice, or gets upset whenever reading comes up, talk to their teacher. A speech and language therapist (logopēds) can assess what is going on. Only a specialist can say whether it is something like dyslexia — and support that comes early helps.

How Vokela approaches it

We built Vokela around this problem. The app never shows red, never puts scores in front of your child, and ends after three stars — while it still feels like a success. It is not open yet; you can join the waiting list. If you are just starting out, read how to teach your child to read.