u/ZealousidealRun595

I am still kind of processing this. my son has adhd, same as his dad, and getting him to sit with a book has been a losing battle for a long time. he's either on his tablet or watching videos or bouncing off walls. we tried cutting screen time, we tried schedules, we tried rewards. nothing really held.

tonight he just came up to me out of nowhere, grabbed a book we used to read when he was maybe 6 or 7, and said mom read with me. we got through about 20 minutes before he got antsy but i honestly had to hold it together because that hasn't happened in so long.

now I am trying to figure out how to not blow this. like how do i keep this going without making it feel like a chore to him. last time we pushed reading it turned into a standoff.

My 10 year old does not read unless I make him. Everything else, games, videos, whatever his friends are into, gets his full attention. Books get about five minutes before he is mentally somewhere else.

We do bedtime reading together sometimes and it starts okay but he checks out fast. I have tried letting him pick anything he wants, no limits on genre or topic. Still does not move the needle much.

Last week I told him about someone I knew who read constantly growing up and ended up doing really well. He shrugged and went back to his ipad.

I a not looking for him to become a bookworm overnight. I just want reading to not be the thing he dreads. Has anyone found a way to make books genuinely interesting to a kid who's used to faster rewards? Not a shortcut, just what worked in your house.

My 8 year old was spending every free minute on tiktok or fortnite. Comes home, grabs the ipad, gone until dinner. i decided to cut the gaming and social apps during the week and push reading instead. We started tracking his reading days in a row. he uses a timer when he reads so there's something to look at besides a page count. it's a little gamified but it doesn't feel like a game exactly, more like logging a workout or something.

He's on day 12 right now which surprised me. but i won't pretend it's smooth. some nights he reads one page and declares himself done. other nights i'm pretty sure he's just staring at the book thinking about youtube. I don't know if this is building an actual habit or if he's just tolerating it because the other stuff is locked.

curious if anyone else tried the streak or timer approach. did it stick past a month or did it fall apart once the novelty wore off?