What is your 5-year-old boy like? Mine just wants to play all the time. Getting him to concentrate is like...?

Question

pulling teeth. No, he doesn't have ADD. He just can't seem to motivate himself to think about anything that does not interest him. If you tell him to do something he doesn't want to do such as brushing his teeth, it's like he suddenly loses the will to live and starts falling asleep. He will play with toys, ride his bike, or watch TV for hours on end but does not want to learn anything at all. He's smart, just unmotivated. Others his age can read and do simple math. He can barely tell what the letters and numbers are. I don't get it.

Answer 1

make the things he doesnt fun make him brush teeth with you and sing, make all those small things bonding time it will be hard at first but he will get better, stay stronge

Answer 2

He sounds like my nephew who's 6 now. He just wasn't interested in the typical school stuff, his teacher actually told my brother, "It's like he has no desire to learn." LOL. He's a smart kid too but would rather ride his bike (he races BMX) or play with action figures than learn to read- he just doesn't care about it and thinks it's boring. I think there are a lot of kids like this, you just have to do your best to try and keep him interested in school so he doesn't fall behind. Hopefully he'll get some really fun teachers that can help get him excited about school. My son is also 5 (just turned, hasn't gone to Kindergarten yet) and he likes to count but hates when I try to get him to write his letters, he'd rather go outside and pretend to be Spiderman. So I think it's pretty common. And as far as not wanting to brush his teeth- my son does that too. He also tries to avoid taking a bath. I swear he just likes to be dirty. LOL.

Answer 3

Make learning a game. You can even make brushing your teeth a game.

I work with an autistic child and its hard to teach him. I started teaching him how to count as we danced around the room.

Answer 4

Children mature at different rates so I would not worry at all. But I would maybe curtail the watching TV for hours on end.

Contrary to popular belief hours of drilling young children on letters and numbers does NOT give them an advantage in kindergarten.  I never pushed my kids and my daughter is reading at the 99th ++ percentile and scored the highest in math olympiad this past year in school. She has always been ahead of her class and she reads endlessly while also having fun riding her bike and playing.

My five year old son went to pre-k four days a week this past year and so he did learn his letters and numbers and can sort of write his name. I do give him the chore on his chart of being read to 1/2 hour a day since his big sister and brother have the chore of reading on their own 1 hour a day. Quite honestly I would rather he run around at the park across the street and ride his bike all summer and not do a darn thing academically.

Here is what your son really needs to know for kindergarten. The academics will take care of themselves when he gets there. And if he really does not catch on to reading until grade 2 or 3 -- don`t worry and don`t let them force him into Chapter 1 reading in 1st grade. Some children are simply not developmentally ready to put it all together until they are about 8 years old. But once they do they are off like rockets.

Okay. Here is what he really should know by kindergarten.

This may seem odd but the parts of a book: cover; title page; author`s name; title; page numbers; etc. Sometimes especially in our electronic age kids do not always know automatically that all books are pretty much the same in these ways but trust me -- it makes a difference in their early reading. Hard to explain but all the kindergarten teachers here teach it.

Learning cause and effect and the properties of physics through practical and hands on things -- clay; baking; painting; pounding a nail; crafts.

How to sit still; wait his turn; occupy himself when the focus is not all on him; be a friend.

The biggest complaint among kindergarten teachers today is not that children do not know their letters and numbers but that so many children of hovering helicopter parents -- who undoubtedly have drilled them on letters and numbers and phonics -- cannot stand when all the attention is not on them individually and they try to monopolize all of the teacher`s time or think nothing of interrupting the lesson with their own agenda or topic at random with no notice that other children are learning.

So...if your son is not narcisstic that would be good.

Self-care -- can he operate all the buttons; zippers; snaps; etc on his clothes and help himself in the bathroom?

Can he follow simple directions?

So DO NOT push him to work with letters or reading yet.

Numbers and counting -- you can do an illustration of addition and subtraction using m&ms or skittles or something else fun but there is absolutely no reason to force him to learn to write letters or numbers yet.

Answer 5

my son is a monster! he lovessss sports he would rather watch that than cartoons! he's very good at whatever he does. i buy him learning books and i won't allow him to play or watch tv until he has finished his work and he knows that he cant play until then.  Just try to get him interested whatever he likes to do if he loves baseball buy him learning books about baseball it will capture his attention but still let him learn and keep focus

Answer 6

Every kid is different and at 5, honestly, they are supposed to play and have fun. We put too much pressure on kids to learn and excel when they should be focussed on play.

One of the problems (I have seen first hand...I have a soon to be 7 year old boy) is that schools expect them to be little girls and sit and listen and want to learn. Most boys are not interested in that, and have a hard time doing that at this age. My son was the best reader in his class and excelling academically, but he talks too much, is too wiggly for the teachers liking, and rushes through his work so he can play.

I have a friend whose son just finished kindergarten and when he started he didn't know his letters very well and all that, but within a couple of months something clicked and he was doing fine.

Let him play...maybe make a game out of learning. That's what we did...we'd be out and about and we'd "practice" reading signs and such, but my son didn't think of it as learning, but fun. I tried the "teach your child to read" stuff, and he couldn't focus long enough and it was frustrating for both of us.

Anyway, my point is don't label him unmotivated or lazy at five. Let him be a boy. He'll learn the stuff he needs to learn, and don't compare him to other kids. They may read and all that, but do they have much fun? My goodness, if you can't have fun and not worry about academics at 5, when can you?